An insider moves front & center

Black Issues in Higher Education, Sept 9, 2004 by Ronald Roach

Lezli Baskerville is no stranger to the ways of Washington. As the fifth president and the first woman to head the National Association for Equal Opportunity in Higher Education (NAFEO), Baskerville brings more than two decades of Washington-based advocacy and legal experience to the task of representing the organization's base of 118 historically and predominantly Black colleges and universities before the U.S. Congress, the federal judiciary and the Executive branch.

For Baskerville, the presidential job provides a fitting capstone to her career, which began when she was a Howard University law school student working with NAFEO as a legal research associate. Work with NAFEO continued in various capacities that included a stint on the legal team that negotiated the consent decree in the landmark higher education institutional equalization case of Adams v. Califano; as a member of the NAFEO brief writing teams in the landmark Supreme Court affirmative action cases of Bakke, Weber, and Fullilove; as a program director; and as outside counsel.

Baskerville has also served as vice president for government relations of the College Board, and was the founder of The Baskerville Group, a legal and legislative services firm in Washington.

"We need a zealous advocate who understands how to get our issues heard in a crowded field, but who also has honed the art of compromise ... Attorney Baskerville brings all of these strengths to NAFEO," proclaimed NAFEO board chairman and Hampton University president Dr. William R. Harvey in June when the NAFEO board approved Baskerville's appointment.

In late August, Black Issues sat down with Baskerville to learn about her vision for the organization.

BI: How would you describe your vision for leading NAFEO as an advocacy organization?

LB: NAFEO can offer our members a strong unified voice around public policy issues of concern to them, things that have to do with need-based financial aid, things that have to do with infrastructure development, infrastructure enhancement, capacity-building, those types of things. But also NAFEO can work to generate a political climate that is conducive to, and receptive to and understands the importance of historic and predominantly Black colleges and universities. And we can do it working solo and we can do it working in tandem with partners.

As you know, and anybody who's been in the advocacy or in the public affairs business, the best approach to realizing your return is to get other opinion makers, opinion shakers to join you. And that means that in trying to serve as a powerful, accurate, resourceful voice for historically, predominantly Black colleges, l have to have a team of in-house seasoned professionals who understand the issues and who have the skills to effectively communicate them to build and meld relationships that will allow us to be heard in a crowded field.

Washington is perhaps the most crowded with lobbyists and those who have issues of importance that they want to get heard. They have to have internal capacity. And then I have to have external relationships--some that I bring to the table based on my years of experience and those of my many members, each one of our 118 members. The presidents and chancellors themselves have relationships that are invaluable. Their administrative teams, their faculty have them. Our alumni--they all bring to bear relationships that are essential to getting our voice heard and getting our positions advanced.

So, I have to bring all of those pieces together. And then bring them together with the UNCF, HACU, which is the Hispanic-serving colleges and universities, and AIHEC, the American Indian Higher Education Council, with leadership coming from Leadership Conference on Civil Rights on some issues, with the coalition for education funding, with a wide range of stakeholders that share some of our issues in common.

BI: How would you describe how that vision improves Washington-based representation as well as membership services?

LB: First thing that NAFEO has to do is to develop the infrastructure and put in place the systems that will allow us to serve our members. And in serving our members, I'm going back to your question about the representation because we are an advocacy group, our goal is to serve as a potent and reliable voice for Blacks in higher education and for HBCUs.

So, once our house is in order, my vision is that we will more narrowly focus our work. We will work strategically in two primary areas. One is on the advocacy. We will serve as a voice for our member institutions and for Blacks in higher education in courts, before administrative bodies, regulatory bodies, before corporations, foundations and others. We want to be a strong voice across the gamut where our members need a strong relationship in order to realize their goals.

And the second thing is stepping up membership services. In offering members services, we're initially going to look at a couple of areas. One is in the area of governance. There are a lot of changes to governance, regulations and laws that were wrought by some of the challenges in corporate America, but they pertain to nonprofits as well. We're looking at what those changes actually mean in terms of governance, not only of the board here, but of our members. Each one of our members has a governing board.