March 5, 2025 The Art of Organizational Development: Envisioning a New Future for UCLA Student Affairs
In 2007, Jenny Byrd started a job as an Event Manager for UCLA Residential Life. An artist at heart, she was unsure that an administrative career in higher education could ever be a viable path for her. However, during her nearly two decades working at UCLA, Jenny found new creative outlets in research and assessment, student programming and organizational development. What began as just a day job supporting her moonlight career as a theater producer slowly became her calling.
Now, she is stepping into a new position as the Assistant Director of Organizational Development for Student Affairs, where she hopes to support others like herself create their dream career — right here on campus.
In a first-of-its-kind role that’s equal parts creative, strategic and collaborative, Jenny is hard at work tackling some of the most complex challenges of Student Affairs. At its core, organizational development aims to invest in people and improve processes, from ensuring that employees have their professional needs met, to removing technological and bureaucratic obstacles that impede work. Organizational development initiatives may also focus on creating professional development programs, building strong career pathways or improving onboarding experiences for new hires, to name a few. Ultimately, the goal of organizational development is simple but ambitious: to make UCLA Student Affairs the best place to work.
Organizational development leaders like Jenny believe investing in staff is a win-win scenario. Strengthening staff members’ skills and improving organizational culture, in turn, increase educators’ capacity to contribute back to the organization and our students. At UCLA Student Affairs, we are already championing this principle through programs like the Illuminate Conference, New Staff Welcome, People Management series, Organizational Effectiveness initiative and more. However, these programs are only the beginning of a transformative new period of employee engagement and development.
Jenny is already meeting with directors across Student Affairs to understand their departmental strengths, needs and opportunities for growth. Upon completion of her assessment in mid-April, Jenny hopes to find best practices from each department and proliferate them org-wide, sharing this wealth of knowledge to break down silos and strengthen communication across the organization. She will then create new programs and improve existing processes based on the feedback from the assessment, collaborating with departments like the Student Affairs Information and Research Office (SAIRO), Communications, Human Resources and Finance to implement changes. Using a data-driven approach, Jenny will also advise senior leadership on how to direct the priorities of future organizational development initiatives for Student Affairs.
Jenny’s artistic roots fuel her strategic vision, and she has already developed many ideas to guide the growth of Student Affairs over the next few years. Through this role, she will work with departments across the organization to build meaningful training and development programs for all staff. Jenny wishes to support educators across the employee life cycle, streamlining and improving processes related to onboarding, retention, and career progression. By investing in new staff and creating meaningful opportunities to engage across the organization, Jenny also believes that her role will build community and foster connection.
For many Student Affairs educators and directors, organizational development efforts get sidelined amid heavy workloads and the emotional toll of their work. However, investing in people and improving processes is key to combat burnout and helping our teams thrive. With this in mind, Jenny hopes to be an approachable resource for all departments (a “Post-it note on every org chart”), to prioritize developing our educators and organization. The success of our mission starts with our staff, and we are excited to expand organizational development efforts to elevate the employee and student experience at UCLA.