When Dr. Kenyatta N. Shamburger first heard about the Higher Education Leadership Foundation, the recommendation came from colleagues who had already completed the program. Their message was straightforward: this is something you should consider.
The timing proved fortunate. Shamburger was working at a predominantly white institution then and weighing a career change. What he wanted most was a return to historically Black colleges and universities, the community where he had begun his career before spending several years elsewhere.
"H.E.L.F came along at a really great time," he said. "It came at a time when I wanted to be back in the HBCU ecosystem, and it allowed me to connect with new people and reconnect with the space I had worked in initially."
He was selected for the Lambda cohort shortly before COVID-19 closed campuses nationwide. The pandemic postponed the program, and by the time the fellows finally met in person, the country was only beginning to reopen. That long wait shaped much of what followed.
The program also arrived while he was writing a dissertation on leadership at HBCUs. Sitting across from presidents and senior administrators gave him something the literature could not.
"It helped me, as I got to the writing part of my dissertation, to really be able to talk about some personal experiences," he said, "and not just the theoretical."
Two Cohorts, One Sound
A few days into the program, the fellows realized they actually belonged to two separate groups, Lambda and Mu, convened together because of the delay caused by the pandemic. By then it hardly mattered. They had attended every session side by side, and when the time came to choose a name, they decided to keep it that way.
Shamburger borrowed a phrase from the drumline to describe it: one band, one sound.
"We came into this experience together, and we are going to continue to share this experience together," he said. "We didn't want to be the Lambda cohort and the Mu cohort. We are Lambda Mu. We are forever together."
That commitment went beyond a name. Members pooled their own money to fund a scholarship for fellows in the class that followed.
"We were in a space of regaining our footing, regaining our sea legs," he said. "Wanting to pour into those who came after us was really important for us in a very tangible way. Not just in word, but in deed."
Mentors and Sponsors
Today, Shamburger works at Chief Operating Officer at Grambling State University. Before that, he served as vice president and Chief Operating Officer at Talladega College in Alabama. The lessons he carries from H.E.L.F, center on preparedness and on the difference between a mentor and a sponsor.
The Lambda Mu roster included directors, deans, assistant vice presidents and vice presidents, and he considers each of them a leader in their own right. Years later, the group still checks in. Some members are his fraternity brothers. Others co-present with him at conferences. They have seen one another through promotions, dissertation defenses, the births of children, lost jobs and the death of family members.
"Being able to support one another through grief, through all of it," he said. "For me, it's building that community and those relationships, and the opportunities for mentorship and sponsorship that come from H.E.L.F."
That focus, he said, sets H.E.L.F apart from many leadership programs, which tend to groom participants for the presidency. Some H.E.L.F alumni do reach that office. Dr. Jeffery W. Norfleet, a Lambda Mu classmate, now leads Shorter College. But the program is built to strengthen leadership at every level of an institution, and Shamburger believes that breadth is its point.
Beyond Homecoming
Asked why this work matters for the future of HBCUs, Shamburger pointed to what the public rarely sees.
"So often when we talk about the work at HBCUs, we easily celebrate Homecoming. We celebrate the band, the exuberance of commencement, the rituals of new student orientation," he said. "Those all have their place. But that's not what happens every day."
The daily reality for so many HBCUs, he said, can mean wondering whether payroll will be met, whether enrollment targets will hold, or how a state's shift toward performance-based funding might affect a campus that has been underfunded for decades. At H.E.L.F, he said, presidents and senior administrators were willing to "take the mask off and tell the good, the bad and the ugly."
The harder question comes afterward: how fellows turn those candid conversations into resolve, and how they bring others along.
Shamburger serves as a senior advisor to POLIHIRE, an executive search firm, and when someone in the H.E.L.F network struggles to fill a position, he can make the connection. Even without a president's title, he said, anyone can speak a colleague's name into a room where it matters.
"HBCUs were created for a reason, and that reason has not changed," he said. "We have survived for centuries. How do we prepare ourselves to continue into the next century? Not forgetting where we've been, but continuing to look ahead."
