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Public leadership is complex. You don’t have to navigate it alone.
Public colleges and universities operate in environments shaped by political realities, public accountability, and diverse stakeholder expectations. Boards must balance competing priorities while maintaining focus on mission and institutional success.
AGB Consulting helps your board make better decisions, operate more strategically, partner effectively with your leadership team, and move your institution forward with confidence, even in moments of uncertainty and change. Grounded in deep experience working with public institutions, our experts—former presidents, chancellors, trustees, and higher education leaders—work alongside your board to navigate complexity, align leadership, and move from discussion to action.
Strengthen Governance and Leadership→
Find opportunities to strengthen structure, culture, or leadership relationships and improve how your board operates.
Build Capability→
Equip your board and leaders with the knowledge, alignment, and confidence to lead effectively.
Drive Strategy→
Guide your institution through complex decisions about strategy, sustainability, and the future.
Strengthen governance and leadership.
When governance challenges are complicated by external pressures, unclear roles, and competing priorities, AGB helps you diagnose what’s getting in the way and strengthen how your board functions.
Boards work with AGB to evaluate and assess.
Conduct a comprehensive board assessment: Identify strengths and gaps, resulting in a board development roadmap designed for the complexity appointed and elected boards face.
Use the Board Performance Survey: Complete your complimentary annual check-in. Understand short-term board needs with a brief self-assessment, best conducted between comprehensive board assessments.
Evaluate your president’s performance: Ensure their ability to lead into the future through an impartial 360-degree assessment. Prepare for contract negotiations, identify ways to support your president, and build on leadership strengths.
Plan for future leaders: Assess your cabinet’s and other leaders’ readiness to step into more advanced roles. If they’re not quite ready, build a plan to help them rise to the moment.
We also help boards address foundational governance issues.
Review governance practice: Not sure what’s wrong, but know something isn’t right? Conduct a structured, neutral third-party evaluation to improve overall governance and respond to governance crises.
Prepare for leadership transition and change: Ensure the board understands its role in offboarding and onboarding a new leader. Assess the institution’s current strategic reality and align the board and new president on roles, priorities, and stakeholder engagement.
Strengthen shared governance: Foster academic innovation and build mutual trust between the board and faculty by defining roles, understanding the employment context, and leveraging each other’s unique expertise.
Foster effective committees: Evaluate whether you have the right committees doing the right work to achieve the institution’s goals.
Update your governing documents: Get expert advice to improve your foundational documents, including bylaws, committee charters, affiliate memoranda of understanding, and more.
Governance crisis response: Rebuild confidence in governance after a crisis. As a respected and neutral third party, we help diagnose the root causes of a crisis and develop a roadmap that strengthens stakeholders’ belief in institutional leadership.
Build capability.
When trustees need a clear understanding of governance in a public context—including roles, responsibilities, and external pressures—AGB helps your board get aligned and prepared to act.
Boards often start here:
Design a Retreat: AGB tailors retreats that support your goals and cover the topics you need, led by a facilitator with just the right expertise.
Plan a Principles of Trusteeship Workshop: Strengthen fiduciary understanding and board engagement in a public governance environment.
Conduct a Higher Education Landscape Workshop: Connect institutional strategy with state priorities, regional or national dynamics, and financial realities.
Ongoing advisory support includes:
One-Hour Governance Consultation: Complimentary, once per year. Seek outside perspective on a governance challenge from one of AGB’s experts.
President or Board Chair Advisory Services: Regular advisory sessions with a board chair or president who has led a public community college, college, or university.
President–Board Chair Alignment: Strategic, data-driven planning designed to foster a common vision between the president and board chair.
Drive strategy.
When public institutions face critical decisions, AGB helps boards navigate competing priorities, align stakeholders, and move forward with clarity.
Boards partner with AGB to lead institutional success…
Host a Strategic Retreat: Engage the board as a partner in strategy. Understand your current business model and role in the state, envision a future model, and conduct scenario plans.
Engage in Strategic Planning: Achieve your mission while supporting financial sustainability.
Measure Institutional Performance: Align the board on key performance indicators, engage state-level partners, set goals for the institution’s leadership, and monitor success.
…and maximize the value of external engagement.
Create a Merger and Partnership Strategy: All colleges and universities need a data-driven partnership strategy to identify and act on opportunities. Prepare with a national or international scan for best-fit partners and uncover new ways to work with other local colleges and universities.
Align Institution, Foundation, and Auxiliary Strategies and Operations: Ensure the institution, its foundations, and its related entities share a strategy, maximize outcomes, and minimize risk.
Align Real Estate to Strategy: Understand how to leverage your real estate to help achieve your strategic goals.
Engage Your Stakeholders: Develop a plan to engage stakeholder groups and build support for future initiatives.
Start a conversation with us.
Talk with an AGB expert about what your board is facing and what steps could help you move forward.
Complete this form to get started.
Or begin with tools included with AGB membership.
Many boards start here before engaging in deeper consulting work.
One-Hour Governance Consultation
Get an outside perspective on a governance, leadership, or strategy challenge. In a focused, one-on-one conversation, an AGB expert will help you clarify the issue, share relevant leading practices, and identify practical next steps.Learn more →
Board Performance Survey
Understand how your board is performing today. This short assessment highlights strengths, surfaces areas for improvement, and provides a starting point for conversations about your board’s effectiveness.Learn more →