16 minute read
Ready to lead
Into the LIGHT
Kyle Farmbry doesn’t demand the spotlight. Which is why so many people think he’s the perfect leader for Guilford College.
Guilford President Kyle Farmbry will have a lot to say about the future of the College, but first he's listening.
Photo: Lynn Hey
BY ROBERT BELL ’11
Kyle Farmbry enters his office in Founders Hall without a hint of a flourish. It’s a modestly sized, almost Spartan room. The walls are empty of diplomas or art. Only a few books on shelves. It’s a room made all the more plain because
Guilford College’s President is still new to the job and, given the challenges he’s inherited, interior decorating isn’t exactly a priority. Besides, if an office is supposed to reflect its occupant, you could easily envision revisiting this one a year from now and finding the same unadorned space. The man chosen to turn around
Guilford College is just shy of 52. Kyle
Farmbry is not imposing. He does not suck the oxygen from a room like more ego-driven leaders. Just the opposite.
For now he is content to listen, not talk.
No less an authority than Kyle himself acknowledges the silent treatment. “From a Myers-Briggs aspect I would be the classic introvert,” he says.
“I’ve always been more comfortable listening than talking.” That’s just fine with Guilford’s
Board of Trustees, who hired Kyle last fall to be the College’s 10th
President. Students and faculty who’ve encountered their new leader around campus are equally content. They’re less concerned with what Kyle says than does. Kyle understands this. “In the end I’m no different than any other
President who has come through here,” he says. “I’m going to be measured on what I can do to grow Guilford.”
Here you should know there’s not a whiff of uncertainty in those words. Kyle has a faraway look in his eyes. It’s a look not of resignation, but rather anticipation. He understands what he’s stepping into: A college struggling with a revenue shortfall exasperated by sagging enrollment, with a smaller faculty and staff to support fewer students. That’s just on campus. Beyond the corner of Friendly and New Garden, parents want a return on investment in their child’s liberal arts education.
It’s enough to make anyone turn and run, yet Kyle’s not going anywhere. Since accepting the position, he’s been moving full speed toward — and these days all around — Guilford. Maybe that’s because he’s spent the past 30-something years living and working toward this moment, this College and everything both represent.
In high school he was a trained firebreather, entertaining kids and adults at private parties with his dragon’s breath. These days that fire is internal. Friends and colleagues say he is neither cocky nor arrogant. What he is, they say, is confident he is equipped for this time in Guilford’s 185-year history. Just don’t expect him to say as much.
Instead, for a glimpse into what Guilford has gotten itself into, look at Kyle’s past. Bret Caldwell and Kyle have been friends since the two were freshmen at The George Washington University. Bret has seen the quiet side of Kyle. He’s also seen the side the board and others are expecting.
“It’s easy to see Kyle the first few times and think this guy’s a bit reserved,” says Bret. “But I’m telling you he’s that way for a reason. He’s listening and he’s listening, and then he listens some more. Except he’s not just listening, he’s processing everything he hears. When he finally moves Guilford’s going to move with him so get ready.”
A village in Philadelphia
From the start, the odds of Kyle Farmbry even attending college, let alone leading one, were long. Deidre and Larry Farmbry were 18 and 19 respectively when their only child was born. Fewer than 2 percent of teenage mothers graduate college by the time they turn 30, according to Department of Education figures. Their children fare only slightly better. But those are dense numbers on the crisp paper of a government report. They don’t begin to measure the impact Kyle's parents and their extended family had on him.
Deirdre spent most of her working life in education, starting as a teacher in the Philadelphia School District. By the time she retired she was the city’s acting superintendent of schools. Larry was a Marine Corps reservist before segueing into financial planning. Kyle remembers his mother paying former students to watch him while she tutored others. There were grandparents and aunts and neighbors pitching in when needed. A village, indeed. “I was the typical latchkey kid,” says Kyle, “but it always felt like I was around family.”
Not that he needed supervision. “Kyle was born a grown up,” says Larry. “He was always mature.”
KYLE'S (FAR RIGHT) PASSION FOR HELPING OTHERS STARTED AT GERMANTOWN FRIENDS SCHOOL IN PHILADELPHIA.
Family photo
In Their Footsteps Quaker archivist Gwen Erickson looks at the nine presidents who preceeded Kyle Farmbry at Guilford College.
Lewis Lyndon Hobbs 1888–1915 A classical scholar, Lewis’ leadership set the model for Guilford as a college, including overseeing the construction of much of the physical campus today. Thomas Newlin 1915–1917 Thomas's short presidency was fraught with controversy, including an inherited deficit budget, wartime inflation, declining enrollment and revolts by faculty and students. Raymond Binford 1918–1934 Raymond built an innovative curriculum, recruited top faculty (many of whom remained until the 1970s), and stabilized finances with endowment campaigns.
GUILFORD MIGHT LAY CLAIM TO THE ONLY FIRE-BREATHING COLLEGE PRESIDENT.
Family photo
That maturity served him well. He was 11 when he asked his parents if he could spend a Saturday painting faces at a local street fair. Ten hours later he came home tired but $280 richer.
When it came time for middle school, the Farmbrys enrolled Kyle in Germantown Friends, a Quaker school in their neighborhood. Kyle is not a Quaker, though he says the faith’s tenets still resonate with him. Attending a Friends meeting wasn’t easy for a seventhgrader. “Forty-five minutes sitting there in silence seemed like a long time,” he says, “but I managed to do it and I learned a lot about myself.”
Those lessons lasted a lifetime. The winds of change were swirling across Africa in the early 1980s eventually making their way to Germantown. Classrooms were filled with discussions of Apartheid. The school brought in speakers from South Africa, Ghana and Nigeria. With every new speaker Kyle’s world was expanding beyond Philadelphia.
“The school alerted Kyle to the needs of others,” says Deidre. “It taught him about fairness and equity and how disenfranchised people are often left out of those conversations.”
Looking back, Germantown forged the notion of who Kyle is today. "You know how when you’re in middle school you're going to find out if soccer is your game or if theater is your passion? That was the case for me only instead of soccer it was social justice and well-being. Sometimes the passions you find inside you in middle school carry through to high school.”
In Kyle’s case, even further.
A rare gift
Here’s what Leilani Martinez wants you to know about her fiance. Kyle is funny. Maybe not Chappelle or Gaffigan funny, but funny enough to make Leilani and her 14-year-old daughter Eva smile.
Like the time the three of them were shopping before Christmas and Kyle found a toy that made — how can this be expressed in an esteemed college magazine? — fart sounds. “Here’s this college president who could not stop laughing in the store over these silly noises,” says Leilani. “But you know what? He had us laughing, too. That’s what I love about Kyle. He’s very serious and intentional about his work, but he can have a good time, too.”
Leilani and Kyle met at GW almost 25 years ago. They dated briefly before life took them their separate ways, Kyle into academia and Leilani into communications. She’s now a digital communications and content strategist for the federal government. They stayed in touch but it wasn’t until two years ago they started dating again
Clyde Milner 1934–1965 Over the course of Clyde’s 30 years, enrollment grew with both traditional students and a new downtown campus for working adults. Grimsley Hobbs '47 1965–1980 Grimsley increased faculty in decision making and created a campus culture for students more in line with the expectations of a late 20th-century education. William R. Rogers 1980–1996 Under Bill’s leadership, the college expanded its recruitment and added programs to place Guilford on a national radar with greater visibility.
after, as Kyle puts it, “I stopped being as much of a nerd… I think.”
Besides, Kyle wasn’t looking for love — not in college, at least. He had other matters on his mind. In the summer of 1988, he was a freshman when he ran into another freshman of sorts. Stephen Trachtenberg was a few months into his job as GW’s new president.
Kyle made an impact on Stephen early. Like the time Kyle organized classmates to surround the World Bank with $3,000 in quarters for the United Nations Children’s Fund to raise awareness for global child poverty. And the book Kyle edited and published at 18. The String Bracelet, is a collection of essays from Vietnamese, Cambodian and Laotian students adapting to their new lives in America. Stephen formed two early impressions about Kyle. The first was that he didn’t think the skinny freshman from Philly would last long in college. Not because he thought Kyle couldn’t handle the school’s academic rigor. “I thought, ‘this guy’s too good-looking for GWU. He’s going to Hollywood for movies or a career in modeling,” Stephen recalls. “That wasn’t just me saying that. It was coming from who mattered — the girls loved him.”
Kyle did leave George Washington but only after earning a bachelor’s in International Affairs, a master’s in Public Administration, and a Doctorate of Philosophy in Public Administration there. (In 2013, Farmbry earned his Juris Doctorate from the Rutgers University School of Law.)
Stephen’s second impression of Kyle was a little deeper. The two became mutual admirers, an admiration that has grown into a close friendship all these years later. Stephen says Kyle has the rare gift to see all the moving parts to a problem because he knows when to talk and when to shut up and listen.
“That’s Kyle,” says Stephen. “Always asking questions, always getting input from others before acting.
“Look,” says Stephen, “what Guilford College is going through isn’t a problem unique to Guilford. There are a lot of liberal arts schools hurting. But if there's a guy who can turn Guilford around, it’s going to be Kyle and he’s not going to do it alone. He doesn’t want to do it alone. He doesn’t need it to be about him. Watch him build consensus with faculty and alumni, with the city, with stakeholders. And when he gets that consensus, watch him grow Guilford.”
Kyle's first official day on the job was Jan. 3, but his first night on the job was Oct. 6, when his hiring was announced. From that day on he taught at Rutgers University-Newark by day and studied up on Guilford after the sun’s retreat.
In truth, Kyle had a working knowledge of Guilford even earlier. In 2017, he met Guilford English Professor Diya Abdo at a conference on refugees and at-risk migrants. Diya runs Guilford’s Every Campus A Refuge initiative that helps refugees with housing and community support as they begin planting roots in their new country. With the support of a Fulbright fellowship — his second in eight years — Kyle had just spent four months in Malta assessing the global refugee crisis. That affinity for refugees kept them in touch.
Last summer when Farmbry learned Guilford was in the market for a president, he sent Diya a cryptic onesentence email: Can we talk? Even before calling, Diya had an inkling of the subject. She thought Kyle would be the perfect president for Guilford.
“He’s not like a lot of higher ed people,” says Diya. “Typically there’s one person with the power in a room and they take up that space. That’s not Kyle. He’s the most student-centric teacher I’ve ever met. He always wants his students or colleagues to shine in the spotlight. He’s comfortable in the spotlight, but he enjoys shining light on others.”
— Kyle Farmbry
Donald McNemar 1996–2002 Don championed a comprehensive curriculum revision and increased focus on racial justice issues and recruitment of faculty and students of color. Kent John Chabotar 2002–2014 Guilford’s first nonQuaker president, Kent brought skilled experience in higher education finance and saw an explosive growth in enrollment in his presidency. Jane K. Fernandes 2014–2020 Jane was Guilford’s first woman president, and the first deaf woman to lead an American college or university, She introduced the Guilford Edge to the College.
IN THE WEEKS BEFORE STARTING AT GUILFORD, KYLE MET WITH STUDENTS AND FACULTY, INCLUDING JAY MONTAGUE '22, TO LEARN MORE ABOUT GUILFORD.
Photo: Robert Bell
What’s next?
Going all the way back to Germantown Friends, Kyle has felt a connection to Africa, South Africa in particular. As part of his work at Rutgers-Newark, Kyle made several trips to South Africa, trying to boost the number of PhDs among local universities’ faculty by strengthening existing ties and fostering new, entrepreneurial collaboration with American universities.
He’s convinced he can replicate similar entrepreneurial endeavors at Guilford. Indeed, he asks, what’s stopping the College from generating revenue, albeit on a smaller scale, the way larger state and private research universities monetize their work?
Kyle likes to talk business: about Guilford’s investments — or lack thereof — in research and where they should be heading; about using existing assets on campus such as the farm, the emerging makerspace in Hege Library, the collective intelligence of faculty for bringing in revenue streams.
“There are a lot of wonderful ideas that come out of smaller colleges like Guilford,” he says. “Sometimes those ideas can turn into entrepreneurial ventures. There are some opportunities that would benefit not just the College but businesses (in the North Carolina Triad), too. If we can take some of those ideas and work with businesses to make them profitable, that’s money for Guilford and Greensboro that might ultimately employ more Guilford grads and bring more jobs to the area.”
Here, it should be noted, is where Kyle, the self-proclaimed introvert, is most animated. He has spent the first 57 minutes of an interview guardedly talking about himself and his upbringing. Not now. Now he’s talking about Guilford’s untapped opportunities. A big reason he made the came to Greensboro is because he sees similarities between Guilford and those emerging universities in South Africa. That is to say, Kyle sees opportunity for Guilford to grow.
He’s on a roll. He wants more faculty to explore federal funding for projects related to their discipline. “Those resources are out there and we can bring them in,” he says. “That also gives us more to talk about with Guilford. We can go to parents and potential students and say there's all this additional work and research we're doing at Guilford. And here's why you should think about joining us. When more students show an interest in Guilford, more money comes in and the cycle continues.
“By no means do I want Guilford turned into a research university, but we do need to identify additional revenue streams, and some of those revenue streams are going to come from building new or different opportunities,” he says. “Some will be research money, some partnerships with state entities or foundations and some is going to come from increasing contributions from donors. I get excited just talking about it.”
It’s understandable if Guilfordians can’t see all the moving parts to their College’s transformation. Kyle can’t either. Not yet, anyway. It’s understandable to be suspicious, too. Kyle Farmbry is hardly the first President to try and reverse Guilford’s fortunes. But he sees Guilford in the long view and sees the problems of the moment as surmountable. Kyle has that faraway look again. Farther than ever.
“This is a great College,” he says. “A great College with great students and an even greater mission. I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.” •
In their Footsteps
Quaker archivist Gwen Erickson looks at the nine presidents who preceded Kyle Farmbry at Guilford College.
Lewis Lyndon Hobbs 1888–1915 A classical scholar, Lewis’ leadership set the model for Guilford as a college, including overseeing the construction of much of the physical campus today.
Thomas Newlin 1915–1917 Thomas's short presidency was fraught with controversy, including an inherited deficit budget, wartime inflation, declining enrollment and revolts by faculty and students.
Raymond Binford 1918–1934 Raymond built an innovative curriculum, recruited top faculty (many of whom remained until the 1970s), and stabilized finances with endowment campaigns.
Clyde Milner 1934–1965 Over the course of Clyde’s 30 years, enrollment grew with both traditional students and a new downtown campus for working adults.
Grimsley Hobbs '47 1965–1980 Grimsley increased faculty in decision making and created a campus culture for students more in line with the expectations of a late 20th-century education.
William R. Rogers 1980–1996 Under Bill’s leadership, the college expanded its recruitment and added programs to place Guilford on a national radar with greater visibility.
Donald McNemar 1996–2002 Don championed a comprehensive curriculum revision and increased focus on racial justice issues and recruitment of faculty and students of color.
Kent John Chabotar 2002–2014 Guilford’s first non- Quaker president, Kent brought skilled experience in higher education finance and saw an explosive growth in enrollment in his presidency.
Jane K. Fernandes 2014–2020 Jane was Guilford’s first woman president, and the first deaf woman to lead an American college or university, She introduced the Guilford Edge to the College.
