Serendipity and hard work: Melinda McGee reflects on two decades of managing MS&E
After 20 years with MS&E, retiring Director of Finance & Operations Melinda McGee becomes Staff Emerita this winter.
For McGee, the last two decades cap an intense, varied, and rewarding career. Prior to Stanford, she worked at the National Endowment for the Arts, raised money alongside and for Jane Goodall, had a career as a professional dancer, and more—all the while giving what little free time she had to volunteer work and activism. Little did she know, those varied experiences and proclivity for hard work would become the perfect foundation for the role of Director of Finance & Operations (DFO) in MS&E.
At a retirement celebration honoring McGee, former Chair of MS&E Nicholas Bambos described McGee as having an "unimpeachable integrity" during her time with the department. He was one of 11 speakers from faculty, DFOs of other Stanford Engineering departments, and colleagues from past endeavors who recalled anecdotes illustrating the dedication and sense of ethics McGee brought to her work.
We caught up with McGee as she prepared for retirement to ask about her role as DFO, her favorite accomplishments at Stanford, and the storied journey that brought her to MS&E. The Q&A appears below.
Anatomy of a role
How would you describe your role as Director of Finance & Operations?
The most important thing about the DFO job is that you’re there to support the overall department. To me, that’s always about treating everyone fairly.
To get the job done, you have to be able to wear multiple hats. You wear a finance hat, a communications hat, an HR hat, a staff manager hat, a negotiator hat, a faculty affairs hat, a development hat, a research administrator hat, a facilities hat, and more. You wear the hat of the controller, which is probably my least favorite hat, but it's also probably the most important because it keeps the department from getting in trouble in an audit. You need broad institutional knowledge and collaborative skills.
It’s a lot of work, but the great thing about the job is it never gets boring; there's not a single day that's like any other day. I always said I would leave a job the minute it got boring, and I’ve been here 20 years now.
Some of those hats—particularly manager and controller—seem to lend themselves to being seen as the “bad guy” or a source of friction in the department. How have you dealt with that, when your actual goal is to support and help people?
It’s a challenge. I often experience friction with the higher-ups because of things that seem like petty bureaucracy to me, and at the same time I'm vilified as a petty bureaucrat myself for implementing those friction-laden systems. I think all of the DFOs suffer from this problem. When the university rolls something out, the managers are put in the position to implement it. Sometimes we're implementing things that we've actually fought against or disagree with.
It can be hard, but I try to see the humor in the bureaucracy. It’s something that I totally will not miss, because as a person and an artist I don't really like bureaucracy, except when it makes things run more smoothly and promotes ethical conduct.
How has your role evolved over the last 20 years?
The workload has increased, and the bureaucracy has increased along with it. I've always tried to operate from less of a rules-based approach and more an approach of “what's the right thing to get done and how can we do it?” Finding ways to get things done in an increasingly onerous bureaucracy—and keeping us in compliance with auditors at the same time—is something I'm proud that I’ve been able to effectively navigate for our students and faculty over the years.
Are there skills or takeaways from your arts background that influence how you've managed MS&E?
Definitely. Both the arts and engineering benefit from holding a mindset of creativity, the ability to be flexible and to do what needs to be done in the moment. I also try to be a manager without a sense of hierarchy, because I think there is always something that we can learn from each other as people. Everyone has a different background and skill set, and I've always tried to stay open to learning something new about each person as an individual.
Motivation and proudest moments
What has motivated or inspired you most about your work?
Seeing junior faculty get tenure. They're under tremendous stress, so anything that can be done to help support them and make their lives less stressful is important to me.
It’s also important to see that the department has the resources to support our students and faculty. When I came into MS&E, the department had recently merged from its three legacy departments, and to put it lightly it was a bit of a mess. A big part of my early days in MS&E consisted of just trying to keep the new department organized and make sure it had adequate resources to keep operating. Survival is a great motivator! That’s been the case in most of my jobs. I've typically been hired as a turnaround manager—something's a mess, and I get invited in to clean it up. And there’s always a mess somewhere to clean up, so I've always had a job.
Doing good in the world is important to me as well, so it inspires me to support MS&E faculty and students who are doing research that benefits society.
What are you most proud of, or what is your biggest accomplishment in MS&E?
The first thing that comes to mind is hiring a great staff of people who want to be part of a team, and getting to know their skill sets and interests. We have discovered hidden talents among MS&E staff for event planning, communications, DE&I work, and more. It’s invaluable to work with talented people who are open to iteration and improvement.
Another area that I’m proud of is our communications and alumni outreach work. One of the challenges the department faces is how to define MS&E, how to communicate what it is and what it does. I started the department newsletter, as well as the MS&E Reunion event and other activities, to bring the MS&E community together and highlight the diversity of work that our faculty are doing.
I’m also proud that I've created a department that is very financially stable. MS&E now has 10 fellowship endowments for MS&E graduate students that will last in perpetuity for the department. I also built a department endowment fund, which supports faculty and our operating budget, giving the department long-term stability.
Before MS&E, when I worked in the Music department, I started the Engineers in Music program where engineering students who wanted to take music lessons could receive support from the School of Engineering for their music lessons. That program later expanded into Engineers in the Arts.
Non-linear: The path to MS&E
Can you describe your journey to becoming the DFO at MS&E?
My career has been an incredible mix of lucky opportunities combined with lots of hard work.
I studied English literature and dance in college, then I had a career as a dancer. I danced in the Kremlin in Moscow and toured with a company in the Soviet Union when I was quite young. Later on, I got a master's degree in dance, and was a Fellow at the National Endowment for the Arts. I’ve taught dance and choreography and was, at times, a part-time Lecturer in the Stanford Dance Program. One of my former students is on the Stanford TAPS (Dance) faculty.
After my professional dance career, I got a job at UC Berkeley marketing their performing arts programs. While I was there, I organized an anthropology conference at which Jane Goodall was one of the speakers. At a reception after the conference, I met Jane. The conference was successful; I grew it from a small event of around 150 attendees to a sold-out audience of 1,000. Due to that success, I was subsequently hired as executive director for the Jane Goodall Institute (JGI). With a strong personal interest in anthropology, this was an amazing opportunity for me to meet many anthropologists I admired.
For JGI, one of my main tasks was supporting the release of the film Among the Wild Chimpanzees, which National Geographic was wrapping up. I worked with National Geographic to promote the film and to raise money for Jane and the Institute, through organizing private events with advance screenings of the film.
From JGI, I went to the California Academy of Sciences, the Pacific Science Center in Seattle, and then the Leakey Foundation doing events, development, and grant making. I had the pleasure of meeting and traveling with the late Richard Leakey. When I left the Leakey Foundation, I was hired by the Music department at Stanford. It was a great fit for me because I have a music and dance background, combined with marketing, event management, and fundraising expertise.
There are a few things I did in the Music department that were really important. One is fending off financial pressure to make the music department exclusively for music students. I felt very strongly that, because a huge number of students, particularly engineers, have backgrounds in music, they should have the opportunity to continue to study and play music at Stanford.
Music has about 20 different ensembles and over 50 lecturers teaching everything from harpsichord, voice, strings, taiko, to jazz and more. We presented about 150 concerts a year. There was pressure to cut back on everything. But I took the opposite position and expanded the department while keeping Music open and accessible to the entire Stanford population. And to support that growth, I found ways to reduce expenses, build a broad community and raise money for music, including endowments.
I am also very proud of my role in recruiting and hiring the world-renowned St. Lawrence String Quartet as Stanford’s ensemble-in-residence.
After 11 years in Music, I was head-hunted to work at the David and Lucile Packard Foundation in their conservation program. There, I managed a staff and program that was granting a lot of money—around $100 million per year—to help the environment. I had an environmental background from working with JGI and Leakey Foundation, because one of the biggest challenges for the survival of the great apes is habitat protection. I actually claim some credit for bringing more of an environmental focus to JGI during my time there. Also, some of my environmental interest comes from growing up in New Orleans, a city that's suffering terribly due to climate change.
I enjoyed the mission of saving the planet at the Packard Foundation, and at the same time I discovered that I missed Stanford. I missed being on campus and being around the students, so I came back and got this job in MS&E twenty years ago. I never imagined I would stay this long, but luckily MS&E is an interesting department. It has a little bit of everything—energy, social justice, health policy, and so much more.
And during all of this, I also volunteered for years at a health clinic for people living on the streets in San Francisco. I've always done way more than 40 hours of Stanford work in a week, adding on top of that political activism and non-profit volunteering. I’ve kept busy to say the least!
Looking ahead: An active future
How will you spend your time after Stanford?
I will continue to be politically active, including as an activist for social justice and women's rights. For 20 years, I've been practicing some martial arts, Tai Chi Sword and Tai Chi Fan, so I will be able to do more of that. I always thought I would go back to teaching dance to disadvantaged kids, so I might do that too. I used to play the flute and still have a great flute that I haven't played in years, so I might take that up again. I also have hundreds of books that I haven’t read and more places I’d like to travel to. Learning to tap dance would be fun!
I recently listened to an interview about joy, and they said something about “unmarked time.” That really resonated with me, the idea of time where you don't have to be somewhere, call someone, or do something. I'm hoping to move more into that mode.
The DFO job is quite stressful, and it is a challenge to keep up. I wake up every morning with a player-piano-like roll of things that I have to do, and sometimes when I start to go to bed I remember I need to approve something or complete some task. It's constant. So the idea of waking up in the morning and just being in the present moment is really inviting.
I've also always been a night person, but because of work I've had to be more of a night-and-morning person. In summary, I’ll probably get more sleep, have more fun, and try to avoid bureaucracy as much as possible. As I look back on 31 years of service to Stanford, I am grateful to all who have encouraged and supported me. I will cherish all of the wonderful colleagues and friends I have made at Stanford and look forward to continuing these friendships in the years to come. Stanford has been a great place to work!
