Joan Gabel on Competitiveness, Entrepreneurship and Reinvention
When University of Pittsburgh Chancellor Joan Gabel describes her roles across university leadership, corporate boards and national policy, she does not treat them as separate lanes. In her words, they are similar conversations happening in different rooms.
Last month, Forbes named her to its 50 Over 50 list, which recognizes women who have reached the top of their careers or reinvented themselves after 50. For Gabel, the two go together: "The second half of a career doesn't have to be about applying what you already know to increasingly familiar problems. Experience can give you the judgment and confidence to take on entirely new ones."
The first woman to lead Pitt since its founding in 1787, Gabel has guided the university through the Plan for Pitt, a metrics-driven strategy that has produced records in enrollment, graduation rates, research expenditures and post-graduation placement. Pitt's annual economic contribution to Pennsylvania now exceeds $5 billion.
She previously served as president of the University of Minnesota and provost at the University of South Carolina, and is Academic Vice Chair of the Council on Competitiveness. Last year, the GFCC presented her with a Global Competitiveness Award for her leadership in cultivating the talent, technology and infrastructure shaping the future innovation economy.
In this exclusive interview for the GFCC, she reflects on what each leadership role prepared her for, how a common yardstick changes decision-making at a decentralized university, why she sees entrepreneurship as a way of approaching problems rather than a program, and what experience makes possible in the second half of a career.
How do your board and advisory roles inform your university leadership, and vice versa?
They are not separate lanes so much as similar conversations happening in different rooms. Serving on boards at the intersection of emerging technologies, such as Ambitious Bio, which works at the frontier of biology and artificial intelligence, gives me a direct view into how quickly science, technology and commercialization are changing. That perspective is particularly relevant at Pitt, given the scale of our health sciences and research enterprise and our ambition to translate more discovery into impact.
Similarly, as Academic Vice Chair of the Council on Competitiveness, I work closely with leaders from industry, labor and government on questions of national competitiveness, productivity and workforce needs. Those conversations inform how I think about preparing Pitt graduates for an economy that is changing very quickly. And it works in the other direction, too. Leading a five-campus research university gives me something concrete to bring to conversations about talent, research, innovation and the role universities can play in economic growth.
What did each role — provost at South Carolina, president at Minnesota, chancellor at Pitt — teach you that the next one required?
Each provided a different building block. As provost at South Carolina, I learned the academic enterprise from the inside, including faculty governance, curriculum, research and the full pipeline of education. Minnesota taught me to lead at a different scale. I was president of both a system and a flagship campus, which required thinking simultaneously about the needs of individual campuses and of the institution as a whole. It was also where we developed the university’s first comprehensive, system-wide strategic plan, which reinforced for me the value of pairing ambition with clear goals and measurable outcomes.
Pitt requires both perspectives, plus a third. I stepped into an institution that already had immense strength and momentum, and challenged us to be even more ambitious, in part because the reality of Pitt is even better than its reputation.
What has being the first woman chancellor of Pitt changed — for you, or for how people engage with the position?
I've never not had this identity, so it's difficult for me to separate it from how I experience the role. What I can observe is what other people tell me. I hear from students, faculty, staff and alumni, whether they share my identities or not, that the progression represents optimism for them personally or professionally, and for the institution. I'm honored and humbled by that.
But ultimately, I think how people engage with the position is more easily answered by those engaging with it. I’m just doing the work, as we all do, bringing all of who we are with us.
How has the Plan for Pitt changed decision-making on campus, and how does it connect to your leadership across all areas?
The biggest change is that we now have a common yardstick. At a large, decentralized university, there will always be many good ideas and many legitimate priorities competing for resources. The Plan for Pitt gives us shared outcomes and metrics against which we can evaluate those decisions and measure our progress.
That carries through the institution since each of our campuses, schools and colleges has a strategic plan aligned with the Plan for Pitt. So, we can be clear about what we’re trying to accomplish, what we’re doing to get there and, importantly, whether it’s working. It also gives us a better way to tell Pitt’s story, not simply through what we say we value, but through what we can demonstrate we’re accomplishing.
Where does entrepreneurial thinking show up in how you run Pitt, and what lessons about entrepreneurship in higher ed could help other university leaders?
My academic background is in corporate governance, ethics, risk management and international business law, and as business dean at the University of Missouri, we launched programs in entrepreneurship and angel investing. So, this way of thinking has been a throughline in my career.
At Pitt, it shows up clearly in research and commercialization. We’ve reached record levels in research expenditures, startups, invention disclosures and patents. But I think entrepreneurship in higher education is broader than startups and technology transfer. It’s also a way of approaching problems.
The Pitt Finish Line Grants are a good example. We launched them on my 100th day to help students who were close to completing their degrees but facing relatively small financial barriers. We identified a specific problem and designed a targeted response. That same instinct, identifying a problem, trying something, measuring it and adjusting, can be applied to affordability, student success, research translation and many of the other challenges universities face.
What does being on the Forbes 50 Over 50 list, alongside leaders from very different fields, say about how the criteria for influence are shifting?
What struck me about the list was how little the sector mattered. It included entrepreneurs, nonprofit leaders, former Fortune 500 executives and a university chancellor. The common thread was what people had built, changed or made possible.
I also think there’s something important in recognizing experience and reinvention at the same time. The second half of a career doesn't have to be about applying what you already know to increasingly familiar problems. Experience can give you the judgment and confidence to take on entirely new ones. My own work now includes questions around artificial intelligence, biotechnology, commercialization and national competitiveness that look very different today than they did when I began my career. That combination of accumulated judgment and continued reinvention is particularly meaningful to me.
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