Navigating Institutional Changes. Communicating the value of well-being to Leaders.
October 20, 2026
9:00 am PST/12:00 EST to 1:00 PST/4:00 EST A Virtual EventThe University Summit 2026 brings together university well-being practitioners to focus on sustaining, advancing, and rearticulating the value of well-being during periods of change. As institutions welcome new presidents, provosts, chancellors, and senior leaders, well-being teams face both disruption and opportunity—needing to rebuild trust, reframe impact, and clearly communicate value in ways that resonate with new priorities and decision-makers.
This session will explore practical strategies for positioning well-being as a strategic institutional asset, not a discretionary program. Participants will examine how to use data and benchmarks, including the HERO Health and Well-Being Best Practices Scorecard in collaboration with Mercer©, to establish clear goals and demonstrate progress; how to integrate AI thoughtfully into well-being strategies, programming, and assessment; and how to engage leadership support through compelling narratives, outcomes, and alignment with institutional missions.
Through peer learning and applied examples, the summit will also address how to rebuild after change, move forward with clarity, and strengthen the case for well-being using storytelling, personas, and evidence-based messaging that connects human impact to organizational performance.
Learning Objectives
At the conclusion of this virtual summit, participants will be able to implement strategies to successfully navigate institutional change by:
- Communicating the institutional value of well-being.
- Translating well-being into executive-level value by connecting it to institutional priorities such as retention, engagement, performance, risk mitigation, and culture—using data, benchmarks, and storytelling to demonstrate the human impact of well-being strategies that drive decision-making.
- Measuring, aligning, and demonstrating impact by applying the HERO Scorecard and other benchmarks to assess well-being maturity, set measurable goals, and align well-being metrics with broader university KPIs for evidence-based planning and leadership reporting.
- Designing forward-looking, sustainable well-being strategies that adapt to institutional and leadership transitions, explore applications of AI, and secure long-term leadership buy-in.