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Neeli Bendapudi is well accustomed to being the first woman, the first person of colour and the first immigrant to be appointed in a role – from previous positions in business and on corporate boards to her leadership posts in academia.

The president of Penn State University – who achieved all those milestones for the institution when she began in the job three years ago – admitted that she “used to really bristle” when such accomplishments were highlighted. But they are labels she has become “a little more comfortable with” over the years.

“I wanted people to know that my identity doesn’t matter to me in one particular way – meaning I got selected as the person to best look out for every single student in my community, whether they share my identity or not,” she reflected to ̽����Ƶ.

“But, over time, when…students in particular…come up to me and say, ‘We’re so happy that you’re in that role’ – and they may not even be the ones who share that identity – I decided that maybe it’s true.

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“It’s not true that you cannot be what you cannot see. Because you would not have the first of anything if you needed to see somebody who looked like you. But I do think it’s much harder to be something that you’ve never seen.”

She is well aware of her position as an outsider: “With a pronounced accent and [the name] Neeli Bendapudi, [people] won’t think I was born here.”

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Born and raised in India, Bendapudi moved to the US in 1986 to attend graduate school at the University of Kansas, where she earned a PhD in marketing and later returned as dean of its business school. 

In 2023, she was  with the Immigrant Achievement Award from the American Immigration Council – an annual award for an individual or organisation that “exhibits a commitment and dedication to America’s heritage as a nation of immigrants and advocacy for humane immigration policy”.

Her journey means she “resonates deeply” with first-generation students, “Because I know what it’s like to be in a foreign country when it seems like everyone else has a map but you don’t”. She also has “great appreciation for the opportunities this country has provided to me and to so many others”, as well as the broader value of higher education.

“Growing up as a woman in South India at my time…getting educated was a big deal, but women having a job after marriage was a bigger deal,” she said.

“One of [my] experiences is how higher education can transform your life. I’m living proof of that. And to me, if this country can change the life of someone halfway across the world through higher education, I’m determined to say, what can we do for students right here and for students who come here from all over the world? How can we make their lives better through higher education?”

Bendapudi’s approach to tackling that question – and leading a university more generally – is informed by her research background. She studied consumer behaviour in service contexts, with a focus on customers’ willingness to maintain long-term relationships with firms and with the brands and employees that represent them.

“What is it that makes us say ‘that’s my doctor’ or ‘that’s my university’, whereas with other relationships…I go there, but I don’t have that affinity, that connection?” she said, with regard to one aspect of her research.

Her view is that “students are customers” – as are academics and university staff – but she likened them more to patients in a healthcare setting than consumers at Burger King. While labelling students in this way evoked concerns from some quarters relating to “the customer is always right” mentality and the idea that there is a direct relationship between price and quality of service – theories she acknowledged do not apply in higher education – for Bendapudi, defining students as customers gets to the heart of the purpose of universities.

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“To me, very simply, the customer is someone to whom you need to provide value to justify your existence. Without them we don’t have universities; the research can happen in institutes, in labs…So, to me, everybody at Penn State should be doing something to help the students directly or to help those who are serving the students indirectly.”

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Penn State

The question of how to maintain long-term relationships between customers and brands is particularly pertinent to Penn State; with more than 775,000 members, its alumni association is the largest of any university in the world.

Bendapudi’s approach starts with creating a sense of belonging and community while students are still at the institution – a tall order given that the university is home to some 88,000 students across 24 campuses.

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“I always say student success anywhere comes down to ABC: A is for academic preparation – we need to not just prepare you for success in the class that you’re taking but for what comes next in your job; C is for cost – we have to do everything to contain our costs, so that students can successfully get a college degree; and B is for belonging – because when people don’t feel that sense of belonging, that’s when they are likely to give up,” she said.

Two key vehicles for fostering a close-knit feel include the 1,000-plus student organisations and clubs at the university, as well as the slogan “We Are. Penn State”, which started at football games in the 1970s but has since become popular beyond the stadium.

“It’s not ‘I am’, it’s ‘we are’. It recognises the wisdom that any of us are only as happy and fulfilled and successful as the families we belong to,” Bendapudi said.

It is only once that sense of belonging and pride has been ignited while at Penn State that the university can attempt to continue fostering the relationship post-graduation, she continued.

“If students have a terrible experience, we don’t respect them, we don’t treat them with empathy, we don’t show value, but the day they graduate we start sending them notes saying, ‘donate to your alma mater’ – that’s not going to happen,” she said.

“The other thing in this area is: just because somebody has…given you money for the past five years as an alumni, you cannot take them for granted. The relationship needs constant nurturing…And maybe the biggest thing for me from my research is when you’re trying to build a relationship with another person you cannot do it sitting across the table from them. You need to do your best to look at the world through their eyes. Not assume exactly what is best for [them], but have true partnership.”

That ethos of establishing true partnerships extends to other aspects of the university, including the research Penn State does in collaboration with local, regional and global communities.

Advancing this sort of work has been one of Bendapudi’s priorities as president and last year it was  that she was leading a new coalition of US university leaders, in collaboration with Pew Charitable Trusts, to “envision the future of public-impact research in the United States that serves the greater good”.

The Presidents and Chancellors Council on Public Impact Research brings together funders, research universities and government agencies to “show the value that the research we produce has in people’s lives”, Bendapudi said.

“It’s distinguished by not coming and saying, ‘We are the experts, we know exactly what you need in your communities,’ because there’s been enough of that and the communities…have knowledge. It’s partnering with them, co-creating a solution that tracks those lives for the better,” she continued.

“I’m very excited about it because I think if we as this consortium can uplift that sort of work that actually makes a difference in people’s lives, in addition to – it’s not an either/or – the traditional research that we provide, that we could all be better off.”

The project directly ties in to another one of Bendapudi’s priorities: accountability. “Higher education has been very good at saying ‘this is what we do’, instead of focusing on ‘so what?’ Yes, you’ve done all this, but what has it actually done for our students, for our faculty, for our staff?”

ellie.bothwell@timeshighereducation.com

This is part of our “Talking leadership” series with the people running the world’s top universities about how they solve common strategic issues and implement change. Follow the series here.

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