With a mission to inform, empower, celebrate and advocate for British Columbia's current and aspiring business leaders, BCBusiness go behind the headlines and bring readers face to face with the key issues and people driving business in B.C.
Issue link: http://digital.canadawide.com/i/740454
30 BCBUSINESS NOVEMBER 2016 And finally, Ono does speak—in his low, soothing voice— reaching out to one delighted listener after another and offering support for whatever they're doing. "Tell me about you guys," he says to one group of young science students. "Are you work- ing in a laboratory yet? I'll help you, I'll connect you." To the man from the campus Hillel organization: "I used to go to Hillel at Emory and Cincinnati regularly." To a woman from the medi- cal faculty asking about a new initiative: "I think there will be a big push for that this year. I'll make sure I'm directly involved." To a clutch of university IT employees: "So does it need a brand refresh or what? Who's your head?" There are hugs, there are promises to play his cello with a music group—there is even a special reach-out to the animal-rights activists who have come to picket and hand out literature protesting the use of animals in experiments at UBC. Onyinye Ofulue, a third-year chemical engineering student from Nigeria, is enthralled after speaking with him briefly. "I think he's very humble and he makes the effort to interact with everyone," says the ball-capped young woman, who has been following Ono on Twitter ever since his presidency was announced in mid-June. Ono is a university president the likes of which B.C. hasn't seen before. As provincial universities try to fight their way up national and international rankings, cope with ongoing finan- cial crunches and push to expand their schools, they've tended to hire sombre academics with a flair for institutional organiz- ing, fundraising and empire-building. They haven't looked for people whose vivid, unusual and charismatic personalities are a force in themselves—strong enough to reshape the emotional perception of the institution. But this 53-year-old father of two (Juliana, an 18-year-old spending a gap year in Vancouver, and Sarah, an 11-year-old attending UBC's public elementary school) is, by contrast, a devout Christian who believes fervently in the idea of being a servant leader; a scientist who believes equally fervently in the power of data to improve education and uni- versity organization; a top bureaucrat who has talked about his suicide attempts as a young man; and a seeming introvert who has become a social-media star in the academic world. He has arrived, with his particular set of skills, at a crucial time. UBC—a power hitter in the city and country that's regularly ranked one of the top 20 public universities in the world—has struggled the last two years with a series of headline-generating crises. The board of governors chose a new university president two years ago, only to see that man, Arvind Gupta, abruptly resign after just one year—and after Gupta had gotten rid of several key managers around him. Amid the fog of explana- tions, Gupta's departure appeared to be the result, in part, of conflict between him and the board. The resignation triggered a cascading series of mini-dramas. A professor who wrote a blog post speculating about the reason for his departure (he wasn't masculine enough for UBC's alpha males) generated more con- troversy. The chair of the board of governors resigned after an inquiry found that he had breached the professor's academic freedom by calling her to complain about the post. The faculty association voted several months later that it had no confidence in the board. Along with that, UBC has been criticized for its handling of sexual assaults on campus, by students and random intruders, and for the firing of its high-profile head of creative writing, Steven Galloway. All of that has left the institution more than a little bruised— and ready for a different kind of leader. "I don't think any observer would have expected UBC to pick a conventional can- didate," says David Mitchell, a former senior administrator at three Canadian universities, including SFU, and currently vice- president at Bow Valley College in Alberta. "It requires a leader who doesn't fit into the conventional mould." Now it has one, uniquely suited to the time. " UBC definitely needs a healer, and he's that," says Lynn Newman, a former assistant dean at UBC now doing a doctoral dissertation on university management. "His personality is one that invites buy-in." EVERYONE WHO KNOWS THE POST-SECONDARY WORLD KNOWS THAT ALL UNIVERSITIES ARE PAUL JOSEPH MEETING THE MASSES Santa Ono chats with students, faculty, staff and others who have gathered at a mid- August event held at UBC to welcome the new president