Executive Vice Provost of Finance and Administration Mike Mandl explained how money works at Emory in his March 15 talk, "The Future of Emory University: Dollars and Sense," as part of a series on professional development for women. 
Mandl was the third speaker in "Taking Charge: Women and Leadership at Emory," a program offered by the President's Commission on the Status of Women.
       

Mandl covered a wide fiscal overview, linking Emory's missions and its financial resources. "The main purpose of Emory's vision is to deliver to the fullest extent on Emory's mission of — education, research, health care.

"The risk is that you're going to have difficulty achieving the vision if you don't have the resource flow you had planned," he explained.

Mandl noted that education, research and health care are all under pressure, threatened by "revenue compression."
     

"In the past, the strength has come from pricing power. That's changing."
      

Going forward, he said, "philanthropy will be one key ingredient to resource flow."
      

Mandl sees Emory's preparedness for the future tied to several initiatives on the programmatic front but also on improving the organization's cost effectiveness of administrative services in support of the mission, one element of which is being facilitated by the work being done by through the Business Practice Improvement (BPI) initiative. 
       

"We do need to institutionally look at how we support administrative functions and the division of labor and the responsibilities," he said. "We need to make changes in a thoughtful way to prepare ourselves for the future."

Mandl also discussed the master plan of Emory's buildings and grounds, noting that "facilities are one way in which we support the people and programs behind Emory's vision. They are not done in a vacuum." 


Giving his perspective on leadership, he said, "One very critical element of leadership is you have to hire people who are better than you in some dimensions."
    

He also said, "It's absolutely critical to have a sense of priority every day, every year, and concentrate your effort on those priorities. This is the thing we struggle with most — to control our time and effort and not have it be so diffuse."

The fourth and final "Taking Charge" session is Thursday, April 19. "It Takes a Village: Collaboration and Coalitions" is the topic of the talk by Senior Associate Vice President of Community Affairs Betty Willis.  All sessions are held in the Jones Room of the Woodruff Library at 4:30 p.m.