Lessons in Leadership, Partnership and Generosity from NACRO's 2026 Annual Conference
Lessons in Leadership, Partnership and Generosity from NACRO’s 2026 Annual Conference
By: Doug Barton, MBA
Thank you NACRO (Network of Academic Corporate Relations Officers) for hosting a wonderful 2026 Annual Conference in Salt Lake City.
Indeed, it's now the 20th anniversary of NACRO – an organization the University of Wisconsin-Madison helped found (our own Charles Hoslet and Bill Swisher are NACRO’s founding Co-Presidents). I felt right at home.
At this year’s conference, what was remarkable was the generosity. People whose work I've admired from a distance for years spent three days handing out their playbooks: here's what worked, here's what didn't, here's my email.
A few standouts from the sessions I attended:
Mark Nolan (Georgia Institute of Technology) and our own Chelsy Cegielski showed what it takes to move corporate engagement from transactional to transformational ("gifts are not a form of engagement" - M. Nolan).
The University of Georgia and Penn State University shared programs — UGA's Industry Forward, PSU's industryXchange — that turn "industry engagement" from an office into a campuswide habit.
Carnegie Mellon University reminded us that great stewardship means sending relevance, not reminders. And Vanderbilt University made the case that a university can anchor an entire region's innovation future — chancellor and mayor, side by side.
I left more convinced than ever: engagement is how we meet the future ready instead of rattled. And the people doing this work are responsible for compounding the results through their sharing and generosity.
I’m grateful to every speaker who shared, and every hallway conversation that turned into a plan. See you next July (2027) in Baltimore with a success story (or ten).
To my friends and partners at UW-Madison Office of Business Engagement, UW–Madison College of Computing & Artificial Intelligence, and UW-Madison College of Engineering - John Garnetti, Justin Hines, and Chelsy Cegielski, my thanks for including me.
Doug Barton, MBA, is Director of UWEBC (University of Wisconsin E-Business Consortium)