One of the things I appreciate most about Mallory Willsea is that she has spent years thinking deeply about how institutions build trust, community, and visibility in a rapidly changing world. Long before podcasts became mainstream in higher education, Mallory was helping build digital communities through projects like Higher Ed Live and Ed Universe. In many ways, those early experiments shaped how a lot of us think about content, thought leadership, and professional community today.
(Watch the full-length version on YouTube)
In this week’s Keynote conversation, we talk about her recent argument that marketing and communications teams are increasingly “carrying institutional survival.” That sounds dramatic until you unpack what marcom teams are actually being asked to do in 2026. Enrollment pressure, shrinking demographics, declining public trust, fragmented audiences, AI disruption, retention concerns, and pressure to prove ROI are all colliding at once. As Mallory points out in the conversation, communications teams are often expected to solve problems rooted in student experience, operations, or institutional strategy, despite not fully owning those areas themselves.
What I found most compelling in the conversation was her distinction between communications and engagement. Communications, she argues, is what you send. Engagement is what people feel. That idea sits at the center of many of the conversations we are trying to have on Speaking Engagement. Institutions can produce more campaigns, more emails, and more content than ever before, but if the experience itself is broken, no amount of messaging can fully compensate for it.
Week 3 - Learning Guide - Key Themes - Questions to ask your teams
Themes
Marketing and communications teams are increasingly being asked to carry institutional survival through enrollment, retention, trust-building, and brand positioning.
Communications cannot fix a broken student or alumni experience, even if marcomm teams are often the first to recognize the problem.
Engagement should be measured by how people feel about the institution, not simply by activity metrics like opens, clicks, attendance, or impressions.
Community-building requires discipline, consistency, and strategic subtraction rather than constantly adding new initiatives and platforms.
Advancement and marcomm teams need better ways to identify emotional connection, belonging, and relational drift before disengagement shows up in traditional dashboards.
Questions
Are our marketing and engagement teams being asked to solve problems they do not actually control?
Where are the biggest disconnects between institutional messaging and lived experience at our institution?
If our marcomm team is the “canary in the coal mine,” are we listening closely enough to what they are seeing?
Do our dashboards measure activity, or do they measure relationship strength?
How would we know if alumni no longer felt emotionally connected to the institution?
Are we trying to build too many communities, initiatives, or programs at once?
What parts of our alumni journey currently create friction, disappointment, or distrust?
