Blazing a trail
By Andrew J. Concatelli
Collage by Ryan Olbrysh
The new Trinity Plus curriculum; a reshaping of the admissions process and increased financial aid; committing to diversity, equity, and inclusion to build a stronger Trinity community; strengthening connections in Hartford; the College’s largest capital campaign; the Bicentennial; a pandemic.
In her nearly 11 years as president of Trinity College, Joanne Berger-Sweeney has led through times of challenges, achievements, and changes.
“Leadership necessarily involves managing change,” says Larry Bacow, former president of Harvard University. “If you’re not managing change, you’re not leading; you are presiding.”
While it may be difficult to measure the success of a college president, Bacow suggests looking at the impact a leader has had on people and on the institution itself. “The question about legacy can be fraught,” he says, “but I think you just need to ask, has the leader left the place better off than they found it?”
Bacow has known Berger-Sweeney since 2010, when he hired the then-Wellesley College neuroscience professor as dean of the School of Arts and Sciences at Tufts University, where he was president at the time.
“What you want in a leader is somebody who is both analytic and empathetic,” says Bacow. His address at Berger-Sweeney’s 2014 Inauguration as Trinity’s 22nd president described her as having a “hard head and soft heart.”
Looking back at her tenure at Trinity, Bacow says, “Joanne doesn’t shy away from a hard decision, but she always considers how it affects people. To be an effective president, you need to engage lots of different constituencies: students, faculty, alumni, staff, the board, neighboring public officials. The fact that she has served with distinction for 11 years suggests to me that she has done that well and that she is very well respected.”
Lisa G. Bisaccia ’78, chair of Trinity’s Board of Trustees, says Berger-Sweeney has led by example through her thoughtful and generous interactions in any situation. “She inspires people to follow her when she lays out a path,” Bisaccia says. “You want people to follow you not because you tell them to, but because they want to and because they feel that they’re a part of something bigger than themselves. That is the hallmark of a good leader, and it has been characteristic of Joanne’s presidency from the very beginning. Anyone can manage; few people can inspire.”
Bisaccia cites among Berger-Sweeney’s top successes the Trinity Plus curriculum, which emphasizes co-curricular and experiential opportunities including internships, and an evolved admissions and financial aid strategy. “This has made Trinity more visible and more accessible outside of our traditional markets. This means that we get superior students with different experiences and from different backgrounds, which adds to and benefits our entire community,” she says.
Cornelia “Cornie” Thornburgh ’80, H’22, former chair of Trinity’s Board of Trustees, describes Berger-Sweeney as a “student first” president who built the student environment into one that is highly attractive to applicants through initiatives such as the Bantam Network. “Joanne can proudly point to the fact that she has attracted the kind of student that is very different from 15 years ago,” she says. “We’ve expanded geographically, of course, but the students are now more curious—both academically and socially. We’ve revived a sense of joy in learning.”
Thornburgh, who served as chair of the Presidential Search Committee when Berger-Sweeney was hired, says Berger-Sweeney spoke during her initial interviews about her belief that educational institutions should create a sense of community. “Any community has differing points of views . . . but in the end they come together around unified purposes of who they are and what they hope to achieve together,” Thornburgh says.
The entire Trinity community was put to the test during the COVID-19 pandemic, beginning in spring 2020. “The amount of organizational change during COVID was staggering,” Bisaccia says. “We needed Trinity to keep going and to provide students with the best educational experience possible, so Joanne and her team designed a model for both hybrid and remote teaching and learning that we would follow for a year and a half.”
Thornburgh adds, “Joanne asked the trustees and other alumni to write letters to 2020 graduates to let them know they were not the forgotten class. The sense of building community, for her, was always palpable.”
High points of the past 11 years include the yearlong celebration of Trinity’s Bicentennial and the launch of the College’s largest fundraising effort in its history, the All In comprehensive campaign. Bisaccia says, “A hallmark of Joanne’s legacy within the All In campaign is expanding the reach and resources of the Ferris Athletic Center to all students, through the addition of the Wellness and Recreation Center, while still making sure our athletes have access to world-class facilities.”
Strengthening connections with Hartford is another important achievement during Berger-Sweeney’s time at Trinity, according to Paul H. Mounds Jr. ’07, a College trustee who grew up in Hartford. “Joanne had a vision upon her arrival about how Trinity can be not only a partner but also a leading voice to support the growth and vitality of the city and the state,” Mounds says.
To that end, Berger-Sweeney oversaw the creation of Trinity’s Center for Hartford Engagement and Research (CHER), which coordinates five core academic and co-curricular partnerships between Hartford’s diverse communities and the students, staff, and faculty at Trinity. “This incorporates Hartford into the curriculum, particularly for first-year students, and expands internship opportunities in the city,” Mounds notes.
Trinity in recent years also opened its Innovation Hub downtown at Constitution Plaza, housing the partnership with tech giant Infosys and programming for the College’s new Entrepreneurship Center.
Mounds, vice president of community and corporate alliances at Yale New Haven Health System and previously chief of staff to Connecticut Governor Ned Lamont, has witnessed Berger-Sweeney become one of most powerful civic leaders in the state. “She’s a person who can call the governor of the State of Connecticut, and he picks up the phone,” Mounds says. “I know because I’ve been in that office and I’ve seen it.”
Off campus, Berger-Sweeney has been a longtime member of the Capital Region Development Authority, which focuses on the economic development and growth of Greater Hartford, and is chair of the Board of Directors of Hartford HealthCare, the city’s largest health care provider.
In addition to fostering relationships in Hartford, Berger-Sweeney also has helped reconnect generations of alumni around the world with their alma mater. “There’s been a reengagement with an alumni base that is extremely vast, diverse, and influential,” Mounds says. “She’s found ways to help them understand what the school has done for them in their lives and to see the importance of giving back in an impactful and present manner. Like them, I’m proud to dedicate my time to Trinity because of the vision she has provided for the College.”
Bisaccia and Thornburgh both note that Berger-Sweeney’s commitment to liberal arts education will leave a tremendous impact on Trinity. “It’s a great gift to have a college president stay for 11 years,” Bisaccia says. “Joanne was able to shepherd changes and innovations from their inception as ideas to becoming reality.”
Thornburgh adds, “Trinity has gained so much from Joanne’s forward-looking optimism and her desire to find the best people—from the educators and administrators to the students themselves—and bring them to campus. She’s built a terrific framework as Trinity goes into its next 100 years. Still, we’re really going to miss her.”
And Mounds, for one, has a clear answer to Bacow’s question about Berger-Sweeney’s legacy.
“If there were a Mount Rushmore of Trinity College presidents, we need to start etching her face on it,” Mounds says. “She has prepared Trinity—and the next leader of Trinity—to take on challenges and to continue in an impactful manner for years to come. She is a transformational leader who was important and necessary at the time of her arrival. She will leave this place much better positioned than anyone would have ever thought.”
The College’s ‘best self’
“When you have a job as complex as being the president of a college, you need to create and develop a highly networked team. You have to inspire people, empower them, and give them enough autonomy to do the work well. Leadership is not what a single person can do but what a team and a community can do collectively. When I think of the improvements that we’ve made in campus climate, for example, those positive changes happen because people feel included and engaged, focused on a common mission.
“When I started as president, Cornie Thornburgh told me that Trinity had really good bones, but there were some current challenges. What I saw in her and in other Bantams I met was real passion about this place but some frustration that the College wasn’t living up to their remembered experiences. I thought if Trinity had never had a woman president, it probably needed somebody with a different perspective to help it be its best self. What I’ve tried to do is highlight and elevate the incredibly positive things going on here and add some new positive things so that stronger, more engaged students, staff, and faculty are making an active choice to be part of the Trinity community.
“Instead of looking to the past for Trinity’s glory days, I wanted to create a bright future so people would be proud to say they’re a part of today’s Trinity College. I worked hard to a create a community that felt better about itself, a community that could see all of the incredible potential that I saw. My job was to help Trinity’s light shine a little bit brighter for the world.”
—President Joanne Berger-Sweeney
