Before the Blueprint: Women Who Built Higher Education

March is Women's History Month, and on this last day, we wanted to honor those who shaped higher education. The systems, the institutions, the hard-won access, the insistence on quality and accountability. Many of the opportunities available to students today were fought for and often built from scratch by women who were told, repeatedly and loudly, that this wasn't their space.

They disagreed.

We want to highlight some of the women who changed the landscape of higher education in America. We've also taken the liberty of connecting their work to themes our clients navigate every day, because the more things change, the more the problems of access, quality, and mission stay remarkably similar.

Mary Lyon: The Original Fundraiser (1797–1849)

If you have ever written a grant proposal, put together a case for a new program, or asked your board to take a leap of faith on something you believed in deeply, you owe a small, quiet debt to Mary Lyon.

In the 1830s, Lyon had a vision for a permanent institution of higher education for women; not a finishing school, not a short-term seminary, but a rigorous academic institution with real curriculum, real expectations, and real outcomes. The problem? Nobody was exactly lining up to fund it.

So, she raised the money herself. Door to door. One dollar at a time. And in 1837, Mount Holyoke Female Seminary opened in South Hadley, Massachusetts, the first permanent institution of higher education for women in the United States.

Lyon's approach was also remarkably ahead of its time from an operational standpoint. She built the seminary with a communal work system that reduced costs and kept tuition affordable, because she understood that opening the door meant nothing if students couldn't afford to walk through it.

Mary reminds us that building a mission-driven institution isn't a modern concept. But if you believe deeply enough in what you're building to fundraise door-to-door for it, that's accreditation-worthy conviction, and likely the kind of ambition required to make a real difference.

Mary McLeod Bethune: She Started With $1.50 (1875–1955)

This is the story we tell when someone says their institution doesn't have enough resources to do what they want to do.

In 1904, Mary McLeod Bethune founded the Daytona Educational and Industrial Training School for Negro Girls in Daytona Beach, Florida. She started with five students, a rented house, and $1.50 in cash. She made ink from elderberries. She used charcoal for pencils. She sold sweet potato pies to railroad workers to raise money.

By 1931, the school had merged with the Cookman Institute for Men to become Bethune-Cookman College, a fully accredited four-year institution. Bethune went on to become one of the most influential women in American public life, founding the National Council of Negro Women, advising Franklin D. Roosevelt, and serving as the highest-ranking African American in the federal government at the time.

She built an institution from nothing that demonstrated, rigorously and undeniably, that Black women deserved the same educational opportunities as everyone else.

Mary reminds us that financial viability is critical for operating an institution, but financial constraints have never stopped a sufficiently determined founder from building something extraordinary. Start where you are. Use what you have available. Meet the needs of your population.

Lucy Diggs Slowe: The Dean Who Built Student Affairs (1883–1937)

Here's a name that deserves far more recognition than it typically gets.

Lucy Diggs Slowe was the first African American woman to serve as Dean at any American university. Appointed as Dean of Women at Howard University in 1922, she proceeded to redefine what a dean of students could and should be; not a disciplinary officer or a glorified chaperone, but a student advocate, an educator outside the classroom, and a champion of student development.

Slowe fought consistently and loudly for the academic and personal autonomy of women at Howard, often clashing with the institution's leadership in the process. She insisted that women students deserved the same extracurricular opportunities, academic resources, and institutional respect as their male peers.

Slowe's work helped lay the foundation for what we now call student affairs; the entire infrastructure of advising, wellness, housing, and support services that accreditors ask institutions to demonstrate and document every single cycle.

Lucy reminds us that student support services aren't bureaucratic box-checking. They were hard-fought and hard-won. When you create advising systems, wellness programs, and institutional effectiveness measures, you're carrying forward work Slowe spent her career arguing mattered.

Patsy Takemoto Mink: She Wrote the Law (1927–2002)

Some women changed higher education by building institutions. Patsy Takemoto Mink changed it by changing the law.

Mink was the first woman of color elected to the U.S. Congress, representing Hawaii starting in 1965. She was also a woman who knew firsthand what it felt like to be turned away. She had applied to three medical schools and been rejected by all of them. At the time, women made up only about 4% of medical students nationwide. She went to law school instead, then to Congress, and then she got to work.

In 1972, Mink co-authored and championed what became Title IX of the Education Amendments, the federal law prohibiting sex-based discrimination in any educational program receiving federal funding. The impact on higher education was seismic and is still unfolding. More women enrolled. More women competed in athletics. More women entered graduate and professional programs that had previously been quietly, systematically closed to them.

After her death in 2002, Title IX was officially renamed the Patsy T. Mink Equal Opportunity in Education Act. It is one of the most consequential pieces of legislation in the history of American higher education, and it exists because one woman decided that "this is just how things are" was not an acceptable answer.

Patsy reminds us that the regulations your institution navigates every day were fought for, often, by people who had been personally shut out by the very systems they were trying to fix. Someone had to refuse to accept that this was just how things are. Patsy Mink was one of them.

Hannah Holborn Gray: The Refugee Who Led the Room (1930–Present)

Hannah Holborn Gray was four years old when her family fled Nazi Germany. Her father was a historian; her mother, a classical scholar. Education was, in the Holborn household, quite literally, survival.

Gray went on to earn her PhD from Harvard, build a distinguished academic career, and in 1978 became the first woman to serve as president of a major American research university when she took the helm at the University of Chicago, a position she held for fifteen years. She didn't get there by asking for permission. She got there by being, in every measurable standard, the best person for the job and by refusing to let anyone convince her otherwise.

Her tenure at the University of Chicago was defined by a fierce commitment to academic freedom, institutional integrity, and the idea that an institution’s job is to ask hard questions, not to provide comfortable answers. She was known for making decisions slowly, deliberately, and without apology, and for building an institution that stood for something specific rather than everything at once.

Hannah reminds us that holding the line on what your institution stands for matters more than fitting any particular mold. Academic integrity and a clear, unwavering commitment to the mission are what make an institution excellent.

Ruth Simmons: First at the Ivy League (1945–Present)

In 2001, Ruth J. Simmons became the first African American president of an Ivy League institution when she took the helm at Brown University. The granddaughter of sharecroppers, Simmons grew up in rural Texas, one of twelve children, and built a career that stands as one of the most remarkable in the history of American higher education.

At Brown, she oversaw a dramatic expansion in financial aid and access, led the university through a serious and unflinching historical reckoning with its ties to slavery, and launched a major academic and facilities growth campaign. She later became president of Prairie View A&M University, an HBCU, where she continued her commitment to expanding access for students who have historically been underserved by higher education.

Simmons has spoken often about the responsibility of institutions to reflect on their history honestly, serve their communities authentically, and ensure that access to excellence is not a privilege reserved for the few.

Ruth reminds us that metrics only tell part of the story. The harder question is whether your institution is actually living its mission for all the students it claims to serve. Authentic institutional reflection isn't just good accreditation practice; it's good leadership.

What These Women Built and What We Inherit

There is no version of modern higher education that doesn't trace at least some of its DNA back to the women in this post. The fight for access. The insistence on rigor. The understanding that cost matters, that student support matters, that missions must be more than a marketing slogan; these ideas weren't simply handed down. They were argued for, built from nothing, and in many cases, dragged into existence by people who had no particular reason to believe the institution would ever welcome them.

The women highlighted here also remind us of something accreditors, consultants, and institutional leaders talk about constantly: doing the work isn't enough. You must document it, assess it, improve it, and be honest when the results fall short. Mary Lyon didn't just have a vision; she funded it, built it, and made sure it could sustain itself. Patsy Mink didn't just experience injustice; she turned it into legislation that protected generations of students who came after her. Hannah Holborn Gray didn't just lead; she led with conviction, holding her institution to a standard that didn't bend under pressure.

This Women's History Month, we're grateful to them. And we think the best way to honor that work is to build institutions worthy of it, rigorous, mission-driven, honest about their gaps, and genuinely committed to the students they serve.

That's what we're here to help you do. And as always, if you need a guide on that journey, you know where to find us.