The podcast Guiding Growth: Conversations with Community Leaders from the Gilbert Chamber of Commerce, event and meeting venue Modern Moments and the Gilbert Independent/yourvalley.net explores the human journey of leaders. There are stories of humility, triumph, roadblocks, and lessons learned. This partial transcript of the most recent podcast with Maria Hesse  has been edited for brevity and clarity.       

Dr. Maria Hesse serves as a professor of practice in the higher education program at Arizona State University. She was Vice Provost for Academic Partnerships at Arizona State University for a decade. Prior to joining the ASU administration in 2009, Hesse served as president and CEO for Chandler-Gilbert Community College, one of the Maricopa County Community Colleges. Before her 25 years in the Maricopa Community Colleges system, she was a high school principal and teacher. Hesse holds Master of Business Administration and Bachelor of Science degrees from Arizona State University. She has master and doctoral degrees in educational leadership from Northern Arizona University and is a graduate of the Harvard Institute for Educational Management.  

Hesse has lived in Gilbert for more than 30 years. Nowadays, she spends a considerable amount of time serving as a board member or volunteer for nonprofit organizations such as Positive Paths, Boost a Foster Family, Assistance League of the East Valley, 100+ Women Who Care, and others. 

You come from a military family and you've lived all over the world. So, tell us a little bit about your childhood and what that looked like for you. We had five children in the family. My mom's mother, my grandmother, lived with us and the eight of us kind of bounced around all over the U.S. and in Europe and various military bases. My parents, when I think back on it, it's just extraordinary to think about how they set such a strong foundation when we just moved constantly, all different states, all different countries, you know, different currencies and languages and, you know, with all these little kids around, but they kept us involved in extracurricular activities, and all of my siblings have done really well. My oldest sister, Katherine, is a well-known attorney in Boston. My brother Dan was the CEO and president of AT&T Wireless and then was CEO of Sprint. I was the middle child. I ended up in education.  

Being in education tends to come from some inspiration somewhere. And so as you look at your parents, as you look at other influences, where do you suppose that came from? I didn't plan on going into education. It was one of those flukes. I was actually doing a master's in business administration, kind of following in my brother's footsteps. He had just finished his. He went out into the business world, was immediately making six figures, doing really well. And I thought who wouldn't want to do that? I'll do that. And he encouraged me. 

He was like, “Hurry and get it done. Come on out, we'll do some things,” and I started working in a school, as you mentioned. It was just a fluke that I started running out of money in graduate school. I went over to Career Services, found this part time job at a school and began working there and found myself kind of sucked into the environment where I realized, “Oh, you know, I actually enjoy working with the students.” I loved working with the faculty and staff. They were very smart, very hard working, very dedicated, you know, kind of caring people, the kind of people you could be friends with that you actually would enjoy as colleagues. 

It was a bit of a risk to totally change course. And I'm wondering, where did you find that courage? Well, it was not easy because even my own father, who was always so supportive, he was like, “Oh my gosh. Are you crazy? You know, people don't respect teachers, you know, education. You can't make money in education.” … I wanted to also find happiness during the bulk of my day because I am a workaholic by nature. I just like spending a lot of time at work, and I wanted to be doing something I loved.  

How do you get into the community college system? Another bit of a complete fluke in one's life. So I was beginning to look out-of-state for jobs and a friend of mine who was working for the local community-college system said you really need to come over and see the community colleges. She introduced me to the president of Mesa Community College. And here was this smart, articulate, passionate person who showed me around. 

And he said, “You know, I'd really love to hire you as a consultant for the college because I need help with strategic planning. I need help connecting to the high schools, which I was part of the local principals group. I need help putting in new technology systems.” I was really interested in doing all of that. And what I found over time is that the mission and vision of community colleges offering opportunity and access literally to anybody who's willing to go and work hard regardless of how they start out was very aligned with my own values. And so it was just a good fit for me.  

What are some of the highlights of your time spent in our community colleges? I started at Mesa Community College, went to South Mountain Community College for a little bit, down to the district office for a little bit. But I spent the bulk of my years there 22 years at Chandler Gilbert Community College right here in this community. 

I think one of my most fun experiences there was building a college from the ground up. I mean, who gets to do something cool like that? You know, where you're involved in every aspect, establishing the culture of an organization, deciding upon facilities, making decisions with the community about which programs and services to offer. We were growing with this community. And when I left 22 years later, we had three campuses, more than 18,000 students, a vibrant array of different programs.  

So you transitioned out of that into (ASU). It was just a fluke. The university administration invited me to go to lunch. I made the assumption that they wanted to talk about our shared locations at what was the former Williams Air Force Base. They had just begun their polytechnic campus out there. We had a portion of acres out there that we had been given for the Chandler Gilbert Williams campus. We were both offering aviation. And so I thought, well, maybe it has to do with our shared lands or programs we have in common that could feed into each other. 

And to my great surprise, just on the spot, they offered me a job, and normally you have to apply for jobs. At least that's always the way it worked in other jobs I applied for. So I was really surprised that the president and the provost were basically saying, “No, we've, we've looked at this and we want you because we want to dramatically change the way things are working for transfer students for students who begin at a community college, but who still want to finish a baccalaureate degree. And we need to do better, and we want to do better and we believe you're the person to put in charge of this for us.”  

I spent 10 years as the vice provost. We nearly tripled transfer student enrollment in that time. We did a lot of good things. I, during that time, was also teaching graduate classes and doing a few other things. And that actually led me into the transition of what I'm doing now at the university. So after 10 years as vice provost, I kind of semi-retired. This time, I didn't announce that I was going to really retire. I just announced that I was going try to slow it down just a little bit. So now I'm in a kind of a half-time capacity. I teach graduate courses. 

You've spent 30 years in our community. Tell me what makes you proud to live here in Gilbert? And also what is it as you look to the future that you hope our community can do better? Gilbert was tiny and it has grown, but you still have this kind of hometown community feel here, which I wouldn't trade for anything. A lot of people don't even know their neighbors. We know all of our neighbors, and they know us, and we feel good about that. It feels like home to me, and I don't think we'll be moving. This will be where we'll end up.