Welcome to Executive Edge, the video series that delivers sharp insights and real-world perspectives on the technology trends transforming today’s industries.
In this episode of Executive Edge, we explore how higher education institutions and nonprofit organizations are responding to a perfect storm of economic pressure, shifting federal priorities, and increasing demands for transparency and impact. With traditional funding sources tightening, leaders are being challenged to make faster, smarter decisions—and to do more with less.
Host Lauren Langer, Director of Marketing at Hartman Executive Advisors, is joined by two of Hartman’s seasoned experts:
- Gregg Albacete, Executive Advisor, who partners with higher ed and nonprofit leaders to align technology and operations with long-term strategic goals.
- Juan Ortiz, Executive Advisor for Business Intelligence and Analytics, who helps organizations harness data, automation, and analytics to drive performance and unlock new revenue streams.
Together, they unpack how leaders can navigate funding shortfalls, adapt research strategies, and make the most of their technology investments.
Lauren Langer 00:00
Hello and welcome to Executive Edge. I’m Lauren Langer, the Director of Marketing here at Hartman Executive Advisors. Today we’re exploring how higher education institutions and nonprofits are.
Responding to a perfect storm of economic pressure, shifting federal priorities, and evolving expectations around the transparency and impact. The big questions today is how can these mission-driven organizations adapt and even thrive by rethinking how they’re using data, automation and strategy?
As traditional funding sources tighten and operational demands grow, leaders are being challenged to make smart, fast decisions. That means leveraging data in ways that they may have not before and automating where it counts, and then finding new innovative paths to financial stability.
Joining me today are two of my colleagues who work closely with institutions navigating these very challenges. Gregg is one of our Executive Advisors here at Hartman. Gregg helps higher eds and non-profit leaders align technology and operations with long-term strategy, especially in times of uncertainty.
Juan is our executive advisor for Business Intelligence and Analytics at Hartman Executive Advisors, and he brings a deep expertise in data strategy, automation, and performance optimization, helping organizations turn information into action and impact. So let’s get the conversation started.
Welcome both of you. My first questions to you guys. What are the key challenges that higher education institutions face due to the shifts that are going on today? And how can they adapt their research funding strategies to remain competitive?
Juan Ortiz 01:22
Sure.
Gregg Albacete 01:25
Thank you.
Gregg Albacete 01:39
Yeah, I think everybody’s familiar with the legislative changes that are happening of late and I I think there’s still more to learn about really what is going to happen, but higher education institutions and and nonprofits and frankly.
Industries.
You know, across the spectrum are trying to figure out what all this legislation could mean to them personally with regard to higher Ed. You know, they’re talking about cutting funding for institutions that that, that.
Get a lot of their revenue from research. So that is causing research institutions to scramble a little bit to figure out how they react to that. There’s also even changes in student loan, the student loan program and what majors may be funded as part of a student loan and what others may not or at what.
Level will they be funded? So there’s more scrutiny over the the monies that the government is giving out relative to student loans. And there’s an emphasis now emerging on promoting more vocational education for people.
So there’s a lot going on. Nobody really has all the answers yet as we film this or tape this. You know, we’re just coming out of the week where the the big beautiful bill, so to speak, has been signed. So over the coming days we’ll find out more, but.
It is causing a lot of concern for educational institutions and nonprofits appropriately. There’s a lot of uncertainty.
Juan Ortiz 03:20
Yeah. So let let me just add a little bit to that. And and you know, it’s hard for institutions to to to cut staff, right. I mean, a lot of the private institutions, they have a large number of faculty who are also researchers, right. So they do research part of the time and then they teach classes.
Right. So, you know, finding the right balance between teaching and research has always been there, right? It’s just that cutting one side leaves you kind of hanging dry on the other one, right? So cutting stuff is difficult plus.
You know, new enrollments aren’t are not growing a lot, right? So, so they cannot raise tuition because in some of these private institutions, you know, tuition is already pretty high. So you know, Gregg was talking about, you know, how can they increase loans?
Gregg Albacete 04:00
Mhm.
Juan Ortiz 04:12
And what I have seen also is that they’re starting to add more scholarships and and and in fact tapping into their endowment to fund some of those scholarships for students, right. So they can keep, you know, at least some some level of growth on enrollment and try to solve that equation of, you know, less funding on the research.
Search and and and without having to let people go.
Gregg Albacete 04:38
And Juan, you you talked about, you know, determining how maybe to cut some staff or make other changes within the organization. Often we see that this is kind of a new challenge for many of these higher education.
Institutions. And so they don’t have the data, they don’t have the knowledge, they don’t have the system to even help them from a data perspective navigate through this challenge.
Juan Ortiz 05:05
I think that’s a good point. I think, yeah, I mean that’s, yeah, technology has always been there, right. Data silos are still there, right. So how do they solve that and how can they have a better view into, you know, how, you know, the different operations, different programs, different departments?
And and really understand where where perhaps they can cut costs, right. So I think one of the challenges challenges, Gregg, is the fact that they don’t control all of their own systems, right. They depend sometimes on the.
University-wide IT department and and and some of their systems are managed by the university and and the schools themselves don’t have much control over them, right? So even getting the information that they need is difficult because.
They don’t control it, right? And then bringing their own systems and the data from those systems together with the data from the university, it’s also a challenge, right? So yeah, I agree with you. They’re facing difficult challenges on the technology side as well.
Lauren Langer 06:16
That’s a great point, you guys talking about, you know, data silos and not necessarily having access to all of their data. But at the same time, we kind of know that one of the things that they’re currently trying to balance right now is the need to take the data that they do have and balance, you know, the need for open data sharing with the.
Monetization of that data and how to turn that data into more revenue streams. So as we’re talking about funding, so like that. So you know, like can you tell me a little bit more about that and you know like what that must be like for them today and what can they do to try to, you know, use their data when they finally can’t get it together too much?
Monetize it and create new revenue streams, but at the same time, that challenge that they’re experiencing with, you know, not necessarily having access to the data that they need.
Juan Ortiz 07:04
Yes. No, that’s definitely a challenge, right. And and and keep in mind that both in the non-profit side and on on the education side, a lot of the content, right, or a lot of the research that is being done is shared publicly, right, because.
You know, and that makes sense because the federal government government is funding some of this research, right? So it’s for the benefit of all. And that makes a lot of sense, right? But at the same time, these researchers and even nonprofits develop.
New tools or new technologies that they also share in an open source model, right? And that’s been the norm for a long time. But now given this new, the new environment on less response, less.
Grants, they are rethinking about whether they should perhaps monetize some of those assets. You know, one of our clients has a data product and they’ve been trying to monetize this data product for several years and this is really a great tool for other schools.
And and one of the challenges that they’ve been facing is that some of these other universities, they they’re interested in using these data products, but they don’t want to pay for it, right, because that legacy mindset, right. So and and and so we’re trying to find the right model for that. We’re working with this particular client and find the right.
Model in order to get that monetization on the nonprofits. They also need to monetize their data by having a 360 view of their of their members, right? So they they need to better understand.
What they need, you know, certifications, right? Or new or webinars, right? Who are the different audiences that require certain skills and how can we engage them and and and you know, bring them into this, you know, certificate paths that can bring additional revenue. So, so I I just gave you 2 examples.
Learning on how they can use data and information or proprietary technology to monetize those assets.
Gregg Albacete 09:22
Yeah, you know, you key to thought for me there, Juan, you know, and we talk about this a lot with with all of our clients, but data really is an asset and it needs to be viewed, viewed as such, right. And often we run into clients that don’t really understand that concept until we we.
Juan Ortiz 09:56
Yeah.
Gregg Albacete 09:57
You know that they have kept relatively internal, but now there is there exists an opportunity to share that and share that for a fee with other universities and other research agencies to help to monetize that to help because it’s very expensive to to create curate.
You know, and have this data and run it on a on a platform that supports the research. So to be able to recoup some of those costs at least will help the organization. On the non-profit side, it really is, you know, the typical funding for a non-profit, at least the trend I’m seeing is you know.
People that that provide funding to non-profits, they’re kind of stuck right now too. They’re trying to figure out the future of the economic situations and you know, they may have limited funding to invest. You know, they want to see how this time plays out. So the non-profit being able to do more outreach.
More awareness of who who has given to them in the past and what kind of projects are important to them, and even going as far as specifically defining projects, whether they be their own outreach projects or internal to help the nonprofit.
Gregg Albacete 11:14
Kind of weather this storm, automation projects, efficiency projects, but naming those, defining those and then going out and seeking specific funding for a specific project rather than shooting more with, you know, with a wider net.
And we’re starting to see some successes that way. There’s plenty of money to be given, but it has to be given to a targeted, a targeted opportunity.
Juan Ortiz 11:40
Yeah. And and Gregg, I mean, you’re talking about increasing outreach, right. But in order to do that, they need to have their data clean, centralized, right. They need to break those silos, be able to identify the audiences that they need to do outreach with, right and and and and.
Gregg Albacete 11:46
You have to have.
More awareness, yeah.
Mhm.
Juan Ortiz 11:59
Honestly, many nonprofits are still behind in their data maturity, right? So that that that’s why we’re working with them to help them increase that data maturity.
Gregg Albacete 12:01
Yeah.
Lauren Langer 12:07
You’ve made a really good point. Let’s zoom out a bit a bit and you talk a little bit about these trevor troves of data that the team people seem to have.
Given the fact that they have this an enormous amount of like great Intel that they probably don’t realize what insights that they could get out of it, what’s their first step if they’ve gotten to the point that they realize, OK, we need, we need to turn our revenue, you know, our data into, we need to monetize it and turn it into.
To new services, we need to turn it into, you know, new revenue sources. We in general need to know what we can learn from our data and they know that there is information there to to be had, information to kind of glean from things.
Juan Ortiz 12:56
Yeah.
Gregg Albacete 12:57
Yeah.
Lauren Langer 12:58
What’s their first step and where when you guys are talking to people, where’s the where are they typically at right now?
Gregg Albacete 13:00
More.
Lauren, I would add, I would add another item to your list there. The data can prove very valuable to the organization itself as it’s trying to figure out how to find opportunities to reduce cost or become more effective, more efficient, right?
I think the first step is kind of what I alluded to earlier is understanding that your data is an asset. It’s not just operational helping you, you know, process transactions throughout the day, but over a period of time, data collected provides intelligence, you know.
That can then be assimilated and used to help drive decisions. And so maybe, Juan, you could talk to how to do that. But I think the first step is a recognition that the data can be used to help leverage their way out of the circumstances they find themselves in today.
Juan Ortiz 13:56
Yeah and I think yeah that recognition is key because many, many clients, many organizations they they’ve been doing one offs, right. You know let’s bring this data, let’s pull this, but they don’t have a a strategy right. You know a a a practical way to to where where where is the the the biggest.
Value that we can derive from data and how can we marshal our resources towards that goal, right. So they haven’t done that. I I I think at the tactical level, Lauren also one of the first steps is is eliminating manual work. I mean it sounds a little bit.
Incredulous that, you know, in 2025, we’re still talking about eliminating manual data processing and manual data analysis, right? If I am a CEO, I’m like, you know, I’ve been investing on technology all these years and you’re telling me that we still spend hours or days?
Doing manual Excel sheets right? Working manual in Excel. So how can we eliminate that redundant low value a spreadsheet mania load?
And and and really free up some of these resources and people to do more analysis, more you know, you know identifying trends and and doing some of the stuff that that Gregg Gregg was talking about.
Lauren Langer 15:20
When you’re talking to clients, both of you, like when you’re starting to have this conversation for the first time, where do you typically find people are in that like that journey when they begin the conversation with us, are they typically, do they realize that they have a potential asset already or are they typically at the point where?
They’re like you said Juan, they’re doing manual processes. They may not realize like this data is actually could make a huge difference in how I run my organization, but also this data could bring new revenue sources towards my organization. Where are they in that kind of?
Um, pendulum, typically.
Gregg Albacete 16:02
I think generally, broadly speaking, I mean certainly we interact with clients that that get this from the start, right. But I found that the sort of economic challenges that these particular industries face right now.
Kind of spawns, uh.
A desire to look at things differently than they have in the past, right? And so while intuitively they may know we’ve got to get more efficient, you know, we know about these spreadsheet.
Spreadsheet managed workloads and all these things. They don’t really know that by fixing that stuff it can help create new revenue, more efficiency. I mean, let’s let’s, you know, we’ve seen efficiency gains that are just crazy, you know, the effort to go out and raise $1,000,000 versus.
Versus an efficiency that recoups $1,000,000 in expense. I mean the the expense reduction might be easier in the end, right? So I think it’s the challenge always spawns a new fresh look at things.
And I think some business leaders that haven’t had to deal with this in the past are now becoming open to it. But even then, when you say it, well, you got to get more efficient, you got to use your data, you know, you got to have a KPI, you got to measure to things. They go, yeah, but how?
You know, OK, I get it now. It’s important to do that now. I never had to do that before, but now I do. But tell me how to do it.
Juan Ortiz 17:39
Yeah.
Lauren Langer 17:42
Great point. You know, I very often we are having a lot of conversations where it is, it comes down to the how. My last question to you both would be what if someone’s listening today and it’s like that’s exactly where I am, what was the what’s the next step for them like the first thing that they should do like you know?
Outside of call someone to to help you out. Like what is what’s the first thing you would say to them? Like well, first step is you need to do X. What would that be for you guys?
Juan Ortiz 18:14
Well, I I will repeat something that I’ve heard Gregg say before, right. This is not the time to cut on technology. This is the time to double down on your technology investments, right. They need to keep that in mind that technology is not.
It’s not really a cost center. It can be a force for growth for for new opportunities of revenue, right. So to me that that would be the first thing, Gregg.
Gregg Albacete 18:40
Yeah, that’s become one of my recent mantras as I talk to people. I had a CEO recently. We’ve been going through this process of identifying potential, call them automation projects and we were revealing to him the cost of this project and it was going to be somewhere around 100,000.
Which, in his world, will be the most expensive IT project he’s ever he’s ever thought it considered, right? It’s a big number. And so we’re going to throw it around and around. He’s like, you got to be kidding me. Where am I going to find $100,000?
And I said, OK, let’s flip to the other side of the coin. Our conservative estimates are that you will get close to $1,000,000 of value creation out of this project, increased revenue, increase a decreased expense, more actionable data hits all those kinds of things.
And I said, wouldn’t it be true if I could find more of these $100,000 investments that would yield $1,000,000 to each or half a million, whatever your number is, you’d want to do more of them, not less, right? And he’s like, Oh my gosh, yes, absolutely. And so I think sometimes there’s a mindset, Juan alluded to it, that IT is this expense bucket.
I had a CEO years ago tell me it was a black hole. You know, you put money into it and nothing that ever comes out. Well, that’s just not true. IT can really create that that business value and really help an organization weather through some uncertain times and I would say the ones that do it now.
Juan Ortiz 20:08
So.
Gregg Albacete 20:12
Are going to be ahead of their competition a year from now. One of the other questions I like to ask is when I have clients that are faced with similar challenges, what are you going to wish a year from now you would have done today? Like think about it with that that filter on.
And that seems to kind of break the ice too. But tactically sometimes we have to find little things to test the water, show there’s value and then and then build on it. But I think Juan, I think you would agree once we can articulate and help a business leader understand.
These concepts fully, we don’t meet any resistance.
Juan Ortiz 20:51
Yeah. And and Lauren, I think at the end of the day, you know how we help our clients is OK, where are the pain points, right? We really go to into each business unit, each department, each functional area, understand what they do, how they add value and what are the current pain points. It could be.
Juan Ortiz 21:10
It could be data, it could be automating some processes, right? It could be replacing an old system, right? But what are those pain points? Identifying those opportunities to improve and then prioritize them, right? And so that leads to Gregg and I have.
Working with a client where we implemented a new IT governance process and this was completely new to their leadership and they were blown away by it, right? It’s like this is just great. This gives us all the visibility that we needed in order to.
Understand where the priorities are and how we need to invest not only our time but also resources, right? So I think those are key things that that that we can help with.
Lauren Langer 22:01
It’s so much you’ve given me a lot to think about and I I would imagine our listeners a lot to think about as well. So big thank you, Gregg and Juan, for sharing your insights on how higher education and nonprofit leaders can navigate today’s funding challenges with clarity and confidence. You know, whether it’s adapting research strategies, embracing automation, balancing.
Transparency and diversifying revenue streams and how to make the most out of their data. You know, it’s clear the resilience and really requires innovation and intentionality. So anyways, if you found today’s conversation helpful, be sure to like, share and subscribe to Executive Edge for more.
Executive level insights on the trend shaping mission-driven organizations. Again, thank you, Gregg. Thank you, Juan, for your time today. And until next time, I’m Lauren Langer and this has been Executive Edge.
Gregg Albacete 22:48
Thank you.
Juan Ortiz 22:55
Thank you, Lauren. Thanks.
