Fifteen deans. Two strategists. Two days for real progress.

This is not a conference.
It’s a working strategy circle—grounded in real institutional conditions and oriented toward paradigm-shifting change.

You’ll join a small group of deans from across North America, and two strategists, to work directly on the decisions, tensions, and responsibilities you’re carrying right now.

THE ROLE YOU’RE CARRYING

You are positioned between vision and reality.
Between institutional direction and daily consequence.

You’re holding strategy, people, resistance, and responsibility, often without full authority, perfect alignment, or time to step back and think.

You don’t need more ideas.
You need space, structure, and peers who understand the weight of the dean’s role.

WHY THIS MOMENT IS HARD

There is resistance—to change, to loss, to uncertainty, to the pace this moment demands.

But resistance isn’t the core constraint.

The deeper challenge is isolation, paired with a leadership model not designed for systemic transition, more for stability or constant reaction.

Deans are being asked to navigate rising complexity while authority diffuses, trust thins, and decisions carry real institutional consequence.

What’s strained is not commitment or capability.
It’s the expectation that deans should carry too much alone.

FROM DEANS WHO HAVE BEEN IN THE ROOM

“This was the best workshop I have attended, maybe in my entire career.”

~ Tammy Hopper, Dean, Faculty of Health, University of Victoria
(Participant, Dean’s Resilience Summit, 2025, contributor to the Strategy for the 2.5%)

“The Summit exceeded all my expectations.”

~ Bruce Frayne, Dean, Faculty of Environment, University of Waterloo
(Participant, Dean’s Resilience Summit, 2025, contributor to the Strategy for the 2.5%)

About The Strategy Circle

This is a high-trust strategy circle for deans working where institutional strategy meets lived reality.

You’ll bring current challenges from your role into a shared working space. Alongside peers and two strategists, you’ll engage directly with the questions you’re holding, without performance, posturing, or abstraction.

The pace is deliberate.
The conversations are candid.
The work is held collectively.

How the Work is Held

Across the Summit, every session draws on a small set of strategic tools—practiced across contexts—so they become part of how you lead.

Over two days, you’ll engage in:

• Peer case work on live institutional challenges

• Structured sense-making and reframing

• Decision practice under constraint

• One-to-one strategic advisory to clarify your path forward

The Peer Strategy Case

A former participant brings a real institutional situation they navigated as it unfolded.

Not as a model to replicate, but as material to work with.

Together, the circle examines:

• How the situation was framed

• What constraints were present

• How risk and responsibility were held

• How the dean used the role when there were no clean options

This is collective learning at its most honest.

“A rare opportunity to work through big, complex issues with an amazing group of leaders.

The day was facilitated brilliantly.”

~Miles Turnbull, Dean of Education, University of Prince Edward Island
(Participant, Dean’s Resilience Summit, 2025, contributor to the Strategy for the 2.5%)

WHO THIS IS FOR

This room is for deans ready to name what’s real: constraints, fears, tensions… and to work with them openly.

It’s for leaders willing to define risk and opportunity for themselves, and to practice a more shared, grounded way of leading.

WHAT YOU CARRY FORWARD

Greater clarity in how you use the dean’s role

• Practical tools for working with resistance and complexity

• Language for decisions that need to hold

• A trusted peer circle you can return to

• Space to reset and move forward with intention

Because resilience isn’t about carrying more.
And progress doesn’t come from reactivity.

WHY UPEI

The University of Prince Edward Island sits where land meets sea.

Charlottetown offers space to walk, think, and gather—supported by calm, distance, and the rhythm of island life. It’s a setting that invites reflection and steady conversation, and that holds strategic work requiring clarity, care, and focus.