(Full-length) Shanna Hocking: Invest in Leaders, the Results Will Follow

Advancement is great at building expert fundraisers. It's far worse at building leaders. That gap is the heart of my Keynote conversation with Shanna Hocking, leadership coach, speaker, and author of One Bold Move a Day. Shanna found development at 18, knew at 19 she wanted to be a director of major gifts, and spent more than 20 years across public, private, and Ivy League universities and academic medicine before leaving a VP track to start her own firm, Hocking Leadership. Today she coaches senior advancement leaders on the human-centered side of the work: how they show up, how they support their teams, and how they advocate for their own value without apologizing for it. We get into networking as service rather than transaction, professional visibility and the discomfort so many of us feel about self-promotion, the story behind One Bold Move a Day (including the rejections, the daily podcast, and quitting her job the same day she turned in the manuscript), her Bold Blueprint research on women chief advancement executives, and why the organizations that invest in their people, not just their metrics, are the ones whose results follow. Chapters: 00:00 — Welcome 00:46 — Finding development at 18, and the road to her own firm 02:39 — Networking as a human act, not a transaction 04:06 — The relationship-building "superpower" (and cold-calling Duke) 06:39 — How careers actually develop: don't over-define yourself 08:51 — The donor event that changed everything 10:22 — Professional visibility: opportunities are created by you 11:26 — The attention economy and the fear of self-promotion 14:28 — Being "too much," and how she coaches LinkedIn 17:05 — Posting without applause: affirmation and the algorithm 19:28 — One Bold Move a Day: rejection, a podcast, and a leap 22:13 — What actually counts as a bold move 23:31 — Inside Hocking Leadership: managing in all directions 25:31 — Mentorship and peer communities for VPs 26:56 — Writing for women, and the Bold Blueprint research 30:22 — What orgs get wrong: invest in leaders, the results follow 32:00 — AI, re-skilling, and the future of career development 35:08 — Coaching young professionals in an unstable higher ed 37:44 — Quickfire: networking mistakes, self-advocacy, and hope