Sarah founded and leads the University of Virginia’s Organizational Excellence initiative – a University-wide planning, improvement, and change program. She describes this work as simply “helping the University be better.”
In her role as Associate Vice President, Sarah partners with the University community to develop strategy, implement improvements, facilitate complex collaborations, design for high-performance, and lead successful change. Organizational Excellence serves as a resource to enable core missions and advance the University’s strategic plan.
Sarah’s more than 30-year career in higher education spans diverse administrative and academic positions at several different universities. Her experiences include instruction and research, academic program leadership, and central operations. Prior to her current appointment, she served as UVA’s Assistant Vice President for Management and Budget/Director of State Governmental Relations.
Sarah employs a variety of methodologies and tools in her work, including Liberating Structures, Strategic Doing, and Design Thinking. One of her core principles for organizational excellence is leveraging and unleashing the collective wisdom of groups for organizational learning.
Sarah contributes to a broader higher education agenda through professional service and engagement. She has a long-term affiliation with the Network for Change and Continuous Innovation (NCCI). She is a former NCCI board member, a member of the advisory council, a regular presenter at the annual conference, and a mentor for other higher education programs. Sarah also advises higher education institutions on their change and improvement journey. Recently, she published Include, Unleash, Excel: Embed Collaborative Practices in Planning in the Society of College and University Planning (SCUP) Planning for Higher Education Journal.
In 2023, Sarah received the Dr. Brent D. Ruben Award in appreciation for her leadership in sustaining NCCI to advance excellence in higher education. In 2020, Sarah along with her OE colleagues, Mary Brackett and Reid Thompson, received a Gold Facilitation Impact Award from the International Association of Facilitators (IAF) for their contributions to Project Rebound, a Charlottesville regional partnership to build economic resiliency and restore the local economy in the wake of COVID-19. In 2015, she was honored with the NCCI Leader of Change Award that celebrates individuals who have advanced major change resulting in significant impact.
Sarah holds a Ph.D. in higher education with a focus on organizational change from UVA’s School of Education, where she is a frequent lecturer, intern sponsor, and mentor. Outside of UVA, she enjoys assisting other non-profit organizations by enhancing their effectiveness through volunteer board service and consulting. She currently serves on the Board of Trustees at Averett University.