Attain Partners

👏 Congratulations to Dr. Susan Wyatt Sedwick, 2025 winner of the Herbert B. Chermside Lifetime Achievement Award for Distinguished Contribution to Research Administration. The Herbert B. Chermside Lifetime Achievement Award recognizes distinguished and substantial contributions to the development of research administration as a profession. 💬 Susan shared: “I am honored and humbled to be recognized for lifetime achievement in research administration. Herb Chermside was dedicated to professional development who sought expertise and generously sharing that knowledge with others. Achievement on any level is not solely a reflection of my accomplishments as an individual but recognizes those who supported, empowered, and collaborated with me along the way. While I get to accept the accolade, it is on behalf of all my colleagues who have helped me be a better research administrator, educator, leader, and human being. Thank you to everyone who has supported my journey in this profession and to my respected colleagues who nominated me. This is the pinnacle of my career in research administration. I will always be grateful for the welcoming inclusivity that SRAI has extended to me personally and the colleagues whom I have encouraged to join SRAI.” Susan accepts this award at the upcoming SRAI Annual Meeting. Join us in celebrating excellence across the profession ➡️ https://brnw.ch/21wWBPb

Yesterday I had the opportunity to watch the main Salesforce keynote at #Dreamforce 2025, where Marc Benioff and team shared their vision for creating an Agentic Enterprise, emphasizing the power of Agentforce to elevate every team, with agents working alongside teams to deliver value for customers. One of my key takeaways across the customer stories and demos was how little we saw of the traditional CRM interface, instead almost all employee interactions with customer data where happening with Agentforce and Slack. This is super interesting as we see the need for traditional CRM UX disappear or at the very least be drastically reduced in favor of conversational employee experiences that are far more engaging, accessible, and dynamic. Suddenly custom views and page layouts seem antiquated when looking at where Salesforce is going with Slack and Agentforce. I also really loved the Dell Technologies story toward the end of the keynote. Their supplier onboarding process was transformed by AI, and it’s worth taking a look and thinking about processes you may have across the student experience, like student onboarding, and imagining how they might be elevated through the use of new technologies that have given us the space to dream big about what’s possible. Lastly, as part of the Dell presentation, Michael Dell talked about their process for innovation, saying “Start with the things that really move the needle. Start with the big things. Simplify, Standardize, Reimagine, and THEN apply the technology.” It was refreshing to hear him talk about transformation in this way, focusing on the business problem to be solved and taking a deliberate approach (such as design thinking) to reimagine the business well in advance of solutioning with technology. Great advice for all of us as we are energized and inspired by the opportunities brought to us by this new technology but need to stay grounded by our customers, business needs, and values to think through the right ways to apply new ideas against these new tools. Check out the keynote on Salesforce+ https://lnkd.in/dGPJShQ3 I look forward to bringing these ideas into our work at Attain Partners as we continue our work supporting higher education! #DF25 #TeamAttain