The Signal

What happens when your website's most important visitor isn't a person—but an AI agent? In this episode, host Jeff Dillon sits down with Kyle Fondren, Executive Director of University Web Strategy at the University of Alabama, where he leads UA's global web presence, its institutional design system, and AI enablement across the Division of Strategic Communications. Kyle built UA's web strategy fun...

What does a historian trained in medieval manuscripts know about SEO and generative engine optimization? More than you might think. In this episode, host Jeff Dillon sits down with Matt Russell, Director of SEO and Content at Inspira Education Group, an edtech company helping students navigate the road to medical school and college. Matt took a less traditional route into search—he earned a BA in...

 Jeff Dillon welcomes back Eytan Wurman, founder and CEO of CommonTime Pathways—the recruiting platform built on a simple, disruptive idea: creatives deserve the same recruiting pipelines athletes get. When Eytan and Jeff first talked about a year ago, CommonTime was just getting off the ground. Since then, the company raised $1 million from Yamaha and Reach Capital, expanded beyond music into the...

In this episode, host Jeff Dillon welcomes Melanie Moran, Vice President and Senior Strategist at Mackey Strategies, who spent nearly two decades at Vanderbilt University—rising to Associate Vice Chancellor for University Relations—and recently completed an 18‑month stint as interim head of athletic communications. She's seen campus and athletics communications from every angle: as a writer, a str...

What if the reason your enrollment strategy keeps stalling has nothing to do with the plan—and everything to do with the culture? In this episode, host Jeff Dillon sits down with Austin Blair, Dean of Admissions and Marketing for both St. Francis Medical Center College of Nursing and St. Anthony College of Nursing, part of OSF Healthcare. Austin also coaches high school football, and that experien...

What if the biggest problem in higher ed marketing isn't technology, budget, or even strategy—but the fact that we assume students make rational decisions when they're actually driven by emotion, bias, and the simple need to feel like they belong? In this episode, host Jeff Dillon welcomes Si Elliott, founder of Fabrics, a customer experience consultancy that applies behavioral science to how orga...

What happens when a veteran TV writer—whose credits include The Wonder Years , Dawson's Creek , and Disney's Tarzan —decides to build a film school inside North America's largest soundstage complex? You get a model that challenges nearly every assumption higher ed has about where learning happens, who should teach it, and what students actually need to succeed. In this episode, host Jeff Dillon si...

What if the real crisis AI has exposed in higher education isn't student dishonesty, but the fact that we've been treating final papers as evidence of thinking—when AI can now simulate that thinking in seconds? In this episode, host Jeff Dillon sits down with Michael Leggs, who has taught English at St. Paul College for 21 years and is the founder of Smartlby, an AI‑powered revision tutor designed...

Jeff talks to Raffi DerSimonian, VP and Chief Strategy Officer at ERI, a digital agency that has been building for colleges and universities since 2005. Raffi came up on the institutional side—alumni relations at Becker College, then marketing and communications at Maine College of Art—before moving to the agency side. He brings a rare combination: deep empathy for campus dynamics and a strategist...

Jeff Dillon talks to Jenny Petty, Vice President of Industry Relations and Advisory Services at Simpson Scarborough, who has spent over a decade inside higher ed—most recently as VP of Marketing Communications at the University of Montana, where she helped reverse a decade‑long enrollment decline. Jenny brings a rare combination of private‑sector marketing experience (including growing a Facebook...

What if the best measure of an insurance company's success isn't how many claims it denies, but how many it pays—and how many of those students re-enroll? In this episode, host Jeff Dillon sits down with John Fees, co-founder and CEO of GradGuard, a fintech company that has protected more than two million students across 750 colleges and universities. John brings a rare perspective: he's a founder...

In a world drowning in AI hype, how do you separate what's actually useful from what's just shiny? And what happens when the people building AI can't even agree on where it's going?  Jeff Dillon sits down with Jeff Wilser, a journalist-turned-AI-strategist who has written for The New York Times, Wired, and GQ, hosted the AI Curious podcast (named by Inc. as one of the best ways to get AI savvy), a...

In this episode—the 100th recording of The Signal—host Jeff Dillon sits down with Wendy Wong, Director of Enterprise Support and Client Engagement at Florida Atlantic University, who has spent 24 years transforming IT from a back‑office function into a driver of student and employee experience. Wendy shares the story behind OwlOne (FAU's branded version of Nebula One), a no‑code AI agent platform...

What happens when an enrollment marketing agency that's been at it for 20 years looks back and realizes their biggest lesson wasn't about campaigns—it was about finding the right partners? In this episode, host Jeff Dillon sits down with Brian Hartnack, CEO of Archer Education, which just celebrated its 20th anniversary and was named Enrollment Management Solutions Provider of the Year. Brian shar...

What happens when a prospective student asks ChatGPT for the best computer science program in the Midwest—and gets a complete answer without ever clicking on your website? For higher ed marketers who've spent 15 years optimizing for clicks, that shift changes everything. In this episode, host Jeff Dillon sits down with Andy Crestodina, co-founder and CMO of Orbit Media and author of Content Chemis...

Every CIO I talk to wants to know how to get AI ready. But according to Russell Long, co-founder and CEO of Authentica Solutions, most institutions are asking the wrong question. The real bottleneck isn't choosing the right AI model—it's unifying the data that feeds it.  In this episode, host Jeff Dillon sits down with Russell, who has spent two decades building the data infrastructure that sits q...

Transfer credit is one of higher ed's most persistent headaches. Students lose credits, take longer to graduate, and navigate a labyrinth of institutional policies that often feel designed to frustrate rather than help. But according to Troy Holaday, president of CollegeSource, the narrative that "transfer is broken" is outdated—and it's getting in the way of real progress. In this episode, host J...

What if a college degree required not just passing classes—but launching a real business? In this episode, host Jeff Dillon sits down with Jeff Meade, Founding Director of Entrepreneurship at Paul Quinn College, where "Every Quinnite Is an Entrepreneur" isn't a slogan—it's a graduation requirement. Every student, regardless of major, must start and launch a venture before they leave campus. Jeff b...

What if the biggest barrier to enrollment growth isn't your marketing budget—but your program portfolio itself? In this episode, host Jeff Dillon sits down with Elysia Labita, Executive Director of Portfolio Strategy and Marketing at EdPlus at Arizona State University. Over the past decade, Elysia has helped scale ASU Online from roughly four programs to more than 400, serving over 118,000 student...

What if the biggest barrier to student success isn't ability—but the belief that effort is even worth it? In this episode, host Jeff Dillon sits down with Dave Tucker, founder and CEO of Genio, a learning technology company that's been quietly transforming how students study, learn, and persist for nearly two decades. What started as an assistive note-taking tool for students with dyslexia has evo...

Your traffic is down. Your inquiries are flattening. But your applications haven't dropped. What's happening? The front door just moved—and most higher ed marketers haven't noticed. In this episode, Jeff Dillon welcomes Paula French, Director of Sales and Marketing at Search Influence, a digital marketing agency with more than 16 years of experience helping institutions stay visible online. Paula...

After nearly 20 years watching colleges pour millions into sameness—the same viewbooks, the same home page videos, the same taglines—Mallory Willsea has a message for higher ed: stop mistaking activity for strategy. In this episode, Jeff Dillon sits down with Mallory, a strategist and consultant who has been shaping digital marketing in higher ed since the early days of social media. From her earl...

What happens when a recent college graduate who grew up with smartphones, social media, and the chaos of modern college applications becomes a chief marketing officer? You get a perspective that most higher ed leaders desperately need but rarely hear. In this episode, host Jeff Dillon welcomes Haley Platt, Chief Marketing Officer at Síembra Mobile—a company building technology to connect first-gen...

Every month, nearly half a million people type questions into your university's search bar. They're telling you exactly what they want to know—about deadlines, transfer credits, program fit. And yet, 31% of higher ed digital teams have no access to that data at all. In this episode, Jeff Dillon welcomes Leslie Weller, Director of Product Marketing at SearchStax, a site search platform helping coll...

What happens when a prestigious art and design school has over a hundred siloed websites, each with its own content management system, hosting arrangement, and visual identity—many of them orphaned and unmaintained? You get a digital governance nightmare. But you also get a rare opportunity to rebuild from first principles. In this episode, Jeff Dillon welcomes Brian Clark, Senior Director of Digi...