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Clint Betts

Andrew, thank you so much for coming on the show. Great to have you here. You are the executive director of the San Jose State University Research Foundation. Let's start there. How did you get to be that?

Andrew Exner

Yeah. That's a good question. It's not a typical career path. You don't angle yourself into this position at a research foundation. Most people would come at it from research administration. They would come up through the university ranks as a professor, and they'd get tenure. They'd have some sort of terminal degree and would be an expert in their field. They'd get on the administration side, as a lot of university faculty do, and then they would find their way into research administration.

I came in the side door, so to speak. I have a very generalist background; I've done lots of different things in my career. I really got the job because I knew the person hiring. When I was looking for a different step in my career and a career change, I reached out to him from a network perspective. He said, "Great, I've got a job for you." I think he knew the skillset, in terms of what he wanted and what he needed, and knew I had it. I, like I said, came in the side door, where most people would work up through their ranks in the university setting.

But I came at it from a general management perspective. My boss needed someone who could run a large organization, solve some outstanding problems that were there, and make it more efficient. It was a lot of learning involved, but all the transferable skills that I'd learned through my career were really applicable in terms of what I do today.

Clint Betts

What do you do? What is the foundation?

Andrew Exner

Yeah. The foundation is a large organization, it's a 501(c)(3). We're a nonprofit in the state of California, that's known as what they call an auxiliary to the university. But we only exist for the university's purpose. We manage all of the external funding that is received from the university, primarily for research and grants. We actually apply, on behalf of faculty, to the funding agencies. When those grants are awarded, we manage the grants and allow faculty and principal investigators to hire staff, buy equipment, find space, and do everything they need to do to perform research. It's really an administrative function.

In addition to external funding, we also manage the IP portfolio. As the university's delegated source to own and manage IP, we manage all the protection of the IP generated through research. Any revenue, disbursements, or licensing that happens also happens through our shop.

Then we do agreements. Any signed document where the university is working, again, related to research the creative activity, so that faculty can get access to data, sign agreements with other institutions, and the government, and the funders. We manage all those agreements.

We do that all on behalf of the university. We have about 1000 people on payroll. There's a lot of research activity at San Jose State University. A couple of months, when we cut paychecks for everyone based on the work they've done on research, we have a large staff of people doing research. So, a lot of it is just the management of a large nonprofit organization with a lot of human resource administration and IT needs, so we manage all those areas on behalf of the university.

It's a separate organization, but we do try to operate like a department within the university. We try to make it seamless for our stakeholders, our customers, so to speak, who access our services. We just want to make their lives as easy as possible and take all the administrative needs of performing research off their plates. We try to integrate as much as possible, but there are legal and liability reasons why we're structured as a separate entity from the university.

Clint Betts

What would say to people who are like, "Hey, what's the difference between running a large 501(c)(3) versus running a large company?"

Andrew Exner

That's a good question. There's more like than dislike is what I would say. There's a lot more similarities than there are differences. It's interesting, all the things that you learn through your career that are applicable to just managing a large organization are very much the same. I've had positions in large and small for-profits, large and small nonprofits. Yeah. There's a lot of overlap.

There are core legal differences, and core differences related to what the mission, and vision, and execution are. But the planning cadence, the execution, the efficiency, all of the day-to-day things that a leader is responsible for ensuring are very similar. Again, I think I was given an opportunity to get into this role because someone understood that those skills were very transferable.

Not only that, there was a need, I think, as there probably is in a lot of large nonprofits, to run it a bit more like a business. To apply some of those lessons, to try to apply some of the same structure and urgency, goal-oriented behavior. It's not always the case, but a lot of those stereotypical views around how you think nonprofits work versus how you think nonprofits. I think a lot of the nonprofit traits could be used by nonprofit organizations.

Clint Betts

What does a typical day look like for you?

Andrew Exner

Like a lot of people would say, there is no typical day. I spend a lot of time in meetings with my leadership team. Talking about progress on major programs and initiatives. There's a lot of fighting fires. The organization is big, and complex, and changing. There's always something different every day to deal with.

In addition to our core functions, the research foundation specifically has a lot of what I would call secondary operations for the university. We own some property. We're heavily invested in a marine lab out in Moss Landing. We have a partnership with NASA. There's a variety of roles that I can take on. A lot of it, quite frankly, too, is escalation management. Things that people haven't seen before, things that need to be dealt with. Processes that need to be created.

But yeah, typically, I spend a lot of time in meetings and working with colleagues. Both in the research foundation at the university, working with researchers, trying to find creative new ways of doing things, and leveraging the resources that we have to benefit the university. No day is the same. But again, we have a great hybrid work environment, too. I have found since COVID, and since the structure that we have, in terms of our hybrid work, we spend two days in the office together as a team, so everybody is together in the office, and then three days a week, we're apart.

It does change the cadence and structure of how I spend my week. When you think about our in-office days, they are very collaborative and meeting-heavy. There is more time for individual work on those three days when you're not together. Although the tools we have now make communication so seamless that it's just as easy to get a hold of someone over chat, on a text message, or by email. Quite frankly, it's probably easier to get a hold of someone than it would have been to try to track them down in an office.

Clint Betts

How are you thinking about AI? How is that changing fundraising? How is it changing the way you manage the organization? How is that changing, even maybe the grants that you're applying for?

Andrew Exner

Yeah, that's an excellent question. It's something a select group of us are consciously spending time thinking about.  The university is an interesting place. It is the oldest public university in the West. It is geographically centered right in the middle of Silicon Valley. Traditionally, it's been known more as a workforce development engine. A lot of graduates from San Jose State end up working for the technology industry in the Silicon Valley. But more and more, people are starting to recognize the research and leadership that San Jose State has in a lot of areas that affect AI.

Two years ago, maybe even 18 months ago, when people really started talking about AI in earnest, products came out, and people started to realize the impact that this could have on a number of industries. San Jose State understood that we were well positioned to really be a player in shaping how AI impacts the economy, the workforce, and the different industries that we're involved in. From an academic perspective, there's a leadership team at the university that looks at AI from the perspective of curriculum. What do we need to teach our students to be literate and functional, given that AI is going to have such an outsized influence on the economy going forward? We have a lot of expertise related to the hardware, the software, all the elements that makeup AI and machine learning, and really the supporting infrastructure that's going to be required for that.

San Jose State also has a really interesting history in terms of social justice and ethical studies. I think we're uniquely positioned where we are, but also with our expertise in those areas, to have a real impact on how AI is developed and implemented in different industries.

Lastly, we have a really interesting interdisciplinary approach to research. Where most people would just assume that this work happens in a college of science, in terms of computer science or maybe engineering, we bring humanities and the arts. We bring all sorts of different social sciences, psychology, and health sciences. A really interdisciplinary and holistic look at how AI can be implemented. From an institutional perspective, I think there are some areas of strength that San Jose State will have going for it. As a result, we're going to have more and more research happening in that area.

For me, in terms of the execution of that research, we think of all sorts of things. In terms of infrastructure, how do we get access to the amount of computing that's going to be required for some of this research, data security? Working with other universities and international universities in terms of getting this done. There's a lot of just detail that has to happen for this to happen securely. The CHIPS Act is a huge opportunity for a lot of universities, and people are starting to understand how to divert some of that activity and attention towards AI and machine learning specifically. There's a cascading. There's the high-level strategy; then there's the implementation of how we do this and how we're effective at it, how we leverage our strengths.

Then, personally, each one of us has to think about, "Okay, how does this impact the work that I do?" Like you said, on a typical day in my life, how does AI impact what I do and where I spend my time? Then I think naturally, a lot of us think of our kids, too. How are they going to grow up, and what kind of opportunities are they going to have? What do they need to understand about these sorts of things to be successful in whatever careers they choose? Because much like the internet impacted just about every corner of the economy, I think it's pretty obvious now that people will understand that AI is going to have that similar impact, in terms of leaving no stone unturned to how it can change how we work.

Clint Betts

I have to ask you. It seems like universities and college campuses, in particular, have become very political. It's become political whether or not you choose to even go to college. I don't know, that might be overstating it. What is your sense for that? As somebody who's on the ground every day, who's going to these universities every day. How does it actually feel on campus?

Andrew Exner

Yeah. It feels the same to me, to be perfectly honest. Monday to Friday, you've got young adults going to school. The main tenets of going to university, in terms of being in those formative years and exploring your intellectual and social interests, is that universities are still very effective place at that. I think there is this kind of perfect storm. For a number of years, people have been questioning the relevance of a higher education degree. Is it worth what it used to, given that costs have escalated so much?

Most of what I've read indicates that, still, economically, it's the best way to get a leg up. It's a transformative experience, especially for underrepresented populations in the United States. San Jose State is a minority-serving institution, a Hispanic-serving institution, and has been rated consistently as one of the most transformative institutions. It's because first-generation college students getting a college degree still have an outsized impact on earning potential and social mobility going forward.

That table stakes of getting a college degree to make it into the middle class in the US still exists. Now, does the relevance of the degree you take in college, from an academic perspective, determine the outcome of your career? I think that's where people start to have relevant questions about what that course and that book teach you that you take from it.

But when you think of the experience, in terms of, again, four years going to school, however, that looks, and being part of the social fabric. Having access to things like research opportunities, where you learn critical thinking skills. It's really hard to quantify what part of your college experience leads to that future success.

I think the politicization of what's happening on college campuses is just a net product of whose there. Again, you've got young, interested, political people in a political environment that's pretty divided and antagonistic in the US right now. It's not really a surprise. I think college campus protests, again, a means of trying to call out social justice on behalf of society has always been a part of the college experience.

Yeah, I think day-to-day, college administrators are struggling. Clearly, mostly with how we balance free speech with the right of every student to safely show up to school and have the experience that they want. But I think it's something that'll sort itself out. I don't think it threatens the mission or purpose of higher education, in terms of where we are right now.

Clint Betts

What do you read? What reading recommendations would you have for us?

Andrew Exner

I read a lot of short-format stuff, and I guess that is the best way to say it. I don't read a lot of books. I've never been a fan of getting deep into books. I joke with the people around me. Once every couple of years, I'll find a book that I really have to get into, and I won't be satisfied until I finish it and put it down. But those are pretty rare. I'm really picky about that kind of stuff in terms of what will hold my attention.

I read a lot of the news. I read CBC. I'm from Canada, so I still read CBC News each morning, and New York Times, those are my news sources. I love magazines. I used to travel a lot, so my routine was always to hit the magazine stand at an airport, and grab a couple personal interest or business interest magazines. I like the short format, compressed information. I think that is why I like podcasts, too. Podcasts are now a big replacement for me in terms of how I consume relevant information. Whether it's personal interest stuff or just analysis on a day-to-day basis in terms of how that affects our lives and how we make decisions. Again, I'm really picky about podcasts. Options. It's not that I don't have an attention span, but I'm just really picky about how things are presented-

Clint Betts

For sure.

Andrew Exner

And the format of things. For podcasts, I love The Daily. That's how I get a lot of news information. I do find myself actively avoiding political analysis. It's kind of like sports analysis, they don't know what's going to happen, but they're happy to talk for an hour about all the potential outcomes. All of which I don't really care about. Until they happen, people's conjectures on what might happen, and what poll says what, and the potential of if this person gets into office, I just find it all a little bit wasteful.

But yeah, for the most part, if it's not a political topic that's been rehashed a bunch of times, The Daily is great content. Yeah. There's some good society and tech podcasts. Stratechery is a great one, from Ben Thompson. He's someone I found reading his newsletter years ago, and I find him just super intelligent and has an interesting way of breaking down the tech industry. Pivot is interesting, for a lot of the stuff that they cover.

Then I cycle through all kinds of stuff. I have a pretty wide and big breadth of topics and information that I'm interested in. But I'll consume it in small chunks, as I have time and ability.

Clint Betts

What are the three most important leadership traits that you've found over the course of your career?

Andrew Exner

Yeah. A big one, I think, is just building and leading teams. I think some definitions of leadership are really, again, building teams for the things that an individual can't perform on their own. It's not a technical challenge, but it's an adaptive challenge. The things that we don't necessarily know right off the bat how to solve require lots of perspectives. Again, I think people who have a natural tendency to bring people together, gain consensus, and rally a team around a shared problem is a big leadership trait.

The other one is hiring well. Again, it's related to that one. I think one of the things that I do well and that I've honed in over the years is just figuring out which people fit into roles and hiring based on quality and capability. It's a huge part. Again, the team that you have amplifies your abilities, and it amplifies your reach. To have the right people in the right roles and just be able to hire. That goes everything from how you recruit, to how you interview, to how you make selections and offers, and all those sorts of things. I think just managing that process is really important for leaders and something that really shouldn't be offloaded, so to speak.

I firmly believe that people have to be invested in making hiring decisions. It's a struggle, as organizations get larger, to still have a hand in that. But it's one of the things, I still meet all the people that join our organization. Because again, I want to have a hand and have some opinion into how people will fit, and how their experience matches what we need in terms of work.

I think the last one I'd say is that I learned early on in product management by doing a lot of work that was super valuable for my career. Being able to do that early on is the ability to build frameworks. When you have a nasty, difficult problem with a lot of variables, some of the people that I really enjoyed working with and whom I learned the most from had a unique ability to cut it down into chunks and build frameworks for that decision-making. It's a lot of discussion and testing, and does it fit, or does it not fit? What are the exceptions? Working through problems in a way where you could put structure around them and gain consensus on how you would make decisions based on the data that you have and the data that you don't have.

Likewise, I had a role at a tech company back in Canada where I was responsible for communicating a solutions offering. The company was moving from being really a single-product-focused company to a solutions company that had a portfolio of products. Again, I think the ability to build frameworks and organize information is just really important, so that you communicate sometimes complex information. But again, it's the efficiency of how you put things together so people can digest it. Building those frameworks, structures, and information is really important, not just from a marketing perspective but also from a positioning perspective. How is it that you deliver value? How do these things fit together? Again, it's about testing and trying to poke holes in it.

Clint Betts

Yeah.

Andrew Exner

Some of the most interesting meetings were just a few people sitting down and saying, "What if we put it together like that?" And having smart people poke holes in it and say, "Does it work? Why doesn't it work? How can we make it stronger?" Again, I boil that down to building frameworks and organizing information in ways that's both useful for communicating and making decisions.

Clint Betts

What do you think about the current macroeconomic environment or the current environment we're in with a presidential election happening? Obviously, in our country, but throughout the world, there are a number of these elections happening. What do you think ... Where are we going? What does 2025 look like?

Andrew Exner

Generally speaking, I'm optimistic. I like to think that things will sort themselves out. It's hard to be optimistic these days, to be perfectly frank. Yeah.

From a political and economic perspective, I think a lot of the problems and their root cause right now have to do with things that people just aren't looking at. I think income inequality is a huge one. I think a lot of the economic and political angst that's going on in the country stems from people talking about it, such as the idea that they've been left behind or that their lives aren't as good as they want. People are searching for ways just to get ahead and be happy. However, I think some structural changes need to be made to address income inequality. It just keeps getting worse and worse. I don't really understand how that doesn't have a relatively difficult end or some correction if it's not dealt with.

Yeah. From a general economic perspective, again, I'm not a political expert. I'm an immigrant from Canada who moved to the US. I think my upbringing, my idea of political discourse, and how politics shapes day-to-day life are a little bit different from those of someone who grew up in the US. I'm a US citizen now, so I'm conscious to recognize that I'm a part of it. I don't get to just observe, necessarily. I am a part of it through more than just my vote. But that perspective does change how I look at the lens of what's happening in US politics. I would love to see things settle out a bit. I just don't know how that happens without addressing some of the root causes of, again, just people's feelings like the country's going in two directions. "Either it benefits me, or it doesn't." I think until a group, party, or system comes along that can start to speak to and address that root cause, there's going to be a lot of conflict and tension within the political system.

Economically speaking, again, I think they're clearly tied. Most of the economic indicators, at least in the US right now, are pretty positive. There's a good argument to be made that the economy is doing well. How you would measure that by stock market indices, or the housing market, or average wages, all those sorts of things, you can cherry pick what data you want to say that the economy is doing well, and there's this huge gap between how people are feeling. No one feels like the economy is working for them. At least, the majority of the population doesn't. Again, I think people have identified this big gap in terms of growth and earnings, and there is a huge wage gap that has only grown over the last 20 years. Again, I think that a big part of it is just making sure that everyone feels like they're part of the success of that economy and trying to deal with some of the root cause issues. They're tied.

We don't do a lot of outlook or forecasting based on the macroeconomic conditions of the country. Research, for us, is certainly driven largely by federal funders. There is a certain element that we look into related to how the federal government is going to be funding research. That's largely a factor of how much money they have and also how much they want to prioritize putting the resources they have into research. I think that's one of the amazing strengths of the US economy. It really goes back to the days of World War II and the Cold War. However, the federal funding of university research that has now expanded to tackle all sorts of interesting problems is a uniquely American, or at least an American-led construct.

We look at it from that perspective in terms of how it'll impact our organization. But on a, again, personal view of politics, I do wish there would be more focus and structure related to how we just make sure that everyone feels like they're part of what we're trying to build.

Clint Betts

Finally, we ask everybody the same question at the end of every interview. That is, at CEO.com, we believe the chances one gives is just as important as the chances one takes. When you hear that, who give you a chance to get you to where you are today?

Andrew Exner

Oh, like most people, I think, who get in leadership positions, it's probably multiple. I can identify a couple. Again, when I was working back in Canada in one of my first jobs, I was doing public relations, which is what I took in college. I was convinced I wanted to do sports PR. It was exciting. I had an athletic background. I loved the people I worked with, and I loved working with amateur athletes, and I thought that would be the way. I learned quickly that I might want to try something else.

I got into a tech company doing copyediting and press release work through my PR background. That company was taking on a huge product launch. They realized that they didn't have enough resources behind this product launch, which was critical to the company as they really could be at that point, and they needed some help. I had a colleague at work who, I think, picked up on the fact that I ask a lot of questions and that I understood the business well enough, and he gave me a shot at helping out as a product launch coordinator. That was really my stepping stone into product management.

I credit a growing company. For anyone who has ever worked at a growing company, it just provides an opportunity for people who are ambitious and want to try different things. We had two founders of a company called Smart Technologies. I'm sure they had a hand or knew what was going on and would have had to bless the idea of me stepping up into other roles. But yeah, they had confidence in me trying out product management. For me, that was a huge learning ground in terms of all aspects of a business and getting all the perspectives on running a product, essentially. I learned more than I ever thought I would in that role.

The second big opportunity was what brought me down to the US. I took a job in international sales for an education technology company here in California. That's what brought me to the US. I had never done sales before. I worked with salespeople a lot. In product management, I was knee-deep with our salesforce and with our distributors all over the world. But someone basically put me in charge of a quota and a sales team, a global sales team all over the world, even though I had never actually gone in front of a customer and had to close a sale before.

Again, I think people had faith again. And saw, much like I got the job that I have today, saw a skillset, saw an ability. But had to go out on a limb and essentially give me a chance to sink or swim. There's been a few of those people throughout my career who have really allowed me to try things out and see if I could make it work. I credit that diversity of experience with getting where I am today.

Clint Betts

Andrew, it means the world to have you here. Thank you so much for sharing your experience with us. Best of luck in everything you're doing. You're running an incredible organization. An incredibly large organization. You've got $84 million of external revenue, you've got 1000 university researchers on the payroll. It's pretty impressive, what you're working on there. Congratulations, and best of luck in the future.

Andrew Exner

Thanks, Clint. I enjoyed the chat.

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