Blending Head and Heart: Betty Chu’s Michigan Leadership Story
As part of the Sanger Leadership Center’s 10-year anniversary, we’re spotlighting alumni and donors whose passion and support have shaped our mission. Dr. Betty Chu is a three-time Michigan graduate (BS ’92, MD ’95, MBA ’13) and currently serves as the senior vice president and chief medical officer at Advocate Health, the nation’s third-largest health system, serving six million lives across six states.
A nationally recognized leader in clinical quality, safety, and patient care, Dr. Chu has held executive roles at Advocate Health and Henry Ford Health, chaired statewide initiatives, and earned numerous awards for her professional and civic leadership. Beyond her distinguished career, she is also a proud Wolverine parent and an active member of the Sanger Advisory Board.
Betty brings a unique perspective to the future of leadership development at Michigan; blending her professional expertise, her Michigan pride, and her belief in the power of Sanger to shape leaders who truly embody the “Leaders and Best.”
As we celebrate Sanger’s 10-year anniversary, what excites you about the next 10 years of leadership development at Michigan?
I think Sanger being able to incorporate leadership development into other schools and expand the scope and breadth of its impact throughout the entire University of Michigan ecosystem; that’s really exciting to me.
I think it’s the ability to really look into the Leaders and Best at Michigan. Externally, the way the University of Michigan is viewed is largely dependent on how our leadership shows up. If Sanger can help with the brand of leadership, help Michigan really lean into the Leaders and Best, then Sanger will play a huge role in defining how exceptional we are at leadership as a University.
Why do you give your time and philanthropy to Sanger? Why would you encourage others to do the same?
I’m energized by the other people on the board. They’re super amazing, and I really love hearing how they’re thinking about leadership more holistically and their thoughts on programmatic development.
The Sanger Leadership Center, in general, aligns with my philosophy around the importance of leadership and leadership development, and being deliberate about that work. So I think that’s the biggest thing, it aligns personally with my own morals and values.
How would you say the intersection of your identities (alum, board member, donor, parent of U-M students) impacts your involvement with UofM, Ross School of Business, and the Sanger Leadership Center?
Like all of you, I wear the Block M proudly. I really do believe that what makes Sanger unique is that it’s part of a public university with a diversity of thought and a history of advocacy in so many different spheres. That makes me incredibly proud as an alum.
Michigan serves in a unique space where we’re not an Ivy, but we act like an Ivy. Yet we’re still a public university, so we get this massive student body, an incredible amount of diversity we can leverage, and this huge alumni base that has real affinity and love for the University.
All those things intersect and make Sanger tangible for me; it ties to both my heart and my head. In my head, I know leadership is important, and in my heart, I know Michigan is something I love. Sanger blends those two things together.
As a parent of two students at Michigan, I can say: wow, this is something specific and meaningful to get engaged in. I know if you start with Sanger and go through your leadership journey, you’re going to develop as a leader in an intentional way.
If you could give one piece of advice to a current U-M student about leadership, what would it be?
My biggest piece of advice for leadership is always: remember the audience. That’s a very simple statement, but it actually has a lot of complexity and depth to it.
For instance, my son leads a club, and his audience is the rest of the members. He has to deeply understand what they care about. He has to go out and ask them what’s important to them. He has to understand the audience to a level of depth where he can actually create a strategy and get them to follow.
Leadership, to me, is about knowing your audience so they’ll follow you, and knowing them 360 degrees; understanding what they care about, what they value, what keeps them up at night, and how they want to be communicated with.
And in today’s world, people expect that you won’t treat them as a mass of people, but as individuals. That makes leadership even more complex. If I’m leading 10 people, I have to know what those 10 people want individually, and then I have to create a message and a vision that’s simplified enough for all 10 to see themselves in it. That’s super hard to do. And then if you multiply that by hundreds, it becomes even harder.
That’s what leadership is about. The best leaders, in my view, are the ones who can simplify a message so it resonates with everyone, but is grounded in really understanding their audience.
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