Appendix B-7.
Joe Testani: Implementing Innovation in Higher Education Career Services
Ava Gervan – UNC Charlotte, Center for Entrepreneurship (2026)
Background information
Joe Testani has over 20 years of experience in higher education, with a focus on career education. He is currently the Deputy to the President at the University of Rochester. In this role, he supports President Mangelsdorf and the rest of the Office of the President while primarily focusing on the university’s strategic plan. Before becoming the Deputy to the President, Testani was the Executive Director for the Gwen M. Greene Center for Career Education + Connections at the University of Rochester. At the Greene Center, Testani transformed the way the university views educating students for careers after graduation during his 6-year tenure. His efforts didn’t go unnoticed when he was promoted to the Assistant Vice Provost for Career Education Initiatives in his last three years at the Greene Center. With this new title, Testani was able to impact University of Rochester students even more through larger-scale programming and career education while connecting these students with intentional alumni interaction. Before his tenure at the University of Rochester, he worked at many notable institutions, including the University of Richmond and Yale University.
Like many higher education professionals, Testani hadn’t realized that his career path would lead to higher education until his undergraduate experience exposed him to the field. As a first-generation college student, he didn’t know what he was meant to do after graduation and struggled to find what was right for him. However, he believes that his entrepreneurial mindset originates from his father, who created his business from scratch and pursued it until it was successful. Although Testani knows this has shaped his life into who he is, he also knows that he wanted a more structured organization that would allow him to create impactful innovations without the higher risk that comes with starting your own business. This led him into the field of higher education.
Key innovations and their value-added
Testani is considered an entrepreneurial educator, implementing new initiatives and ideas to improve the various environments and institutions he has been a part of. The following are just a few innovations that he implemented or is currently implementing.
Boundless Possibility – Strategic Plan – University of Rochester. Testani is currently spearheading the implementation of the University of Rochester’s strategic plan, Boundless Possibility. This is the overarching strategic plan for the entire University of Rochester community, aiming to achieve these goals by 2030. This strategic plan focuses on showcasing the university’s strengths, grounded in our values of Meliora. This means focusing on our areas of excellence and building upon them to cultivate even more success. The value added by a strategic plan such as this is that it focuses on promoting the combined achievements of students, faculty, staff, and the medical center, ultimately benefiting the entire university community.
Greene Center Transformation – University of Rochester. During his six years as Executive Director of the Gwen M. Greene Career Center at the University of Rochester, Joe transformed the office and its culture to cultivate a focus on meeting the needs of all university students, emphasizing the importance of working with the career center in some capacity during their undergraduate career. He completely transformed the office and established a work environment centered around the students and their career needs first. The value added was substantial, as University of Rochester students were exposed to good practices for career education throughout their entire time at the university, setting them up for success after graduation. The office itself also benefited from these changes, as it saw an overall increase in service usage, making it a pivotal office serving the University of Rochester community.
Yale in Hollywood Summer Internship Program – Yale University. When Testani was the Assistant Director for Undergraduate Career Services at Yale University, he planned and managed a summer internship program that connected Yale alumni in the entertainment industry with current students interested in pursuing careers in Hollywood. This program was beneficial for the students, as there was no official major that encompassed the different areas of Hollywood, and it also provided these students with direct contact and exposure to industry professionals before they graduated from college. This was also beneficial for the university, as it strengthened the relationships with its alumni. Alumni also benefited, as they were able to secure interns for their projects from a pool of students they knew would excel, having graduated from their alma mater.
In-depth story of an innovation: Yale in Hollywood Summer Internship Program
How the idea came about and was evaluated/refined
Testani explained that this was his first job after graduating from graduate school. He was fortunate enough to be working at Yale, which, at the time, in 2002, and even today, has numerous resources and an extensive global alumni base to help with projects and ensure success. When he stepped into this role, there were a few internships that were already established, but there was a desire from a group of alumni in the entertainment industry to expose and connect current Yale students to the different areas of Hollywood, including directing, producing, writing, and everything in between. With the existing framework of other summer internship programs, Testani was able to obtain approval to pilot the program for a handful of Yale students in the summer of 2003. Alumni who were passionate about the connections this program could create with the current students interested in their industry were critical to securing the project’s approval, since they were seeking Yale out to start the program.
Planning and gathering the needed resources
While it wasn’t very difficult for Testani to get the approval to start this new initiative, he had to create the entire program from scratch, as no other program at the time resembled this type of internship. He first had to conduct extensive research, including connecting with and vetting the alumni who would be working with the students during their internship. He also needed to see how the conditions of sending students on this program would pan out, including accommodations, funding for the program, and various safety measures that needed to be considered when the students were on the program. He achieved this by not only having numerous conversations with the alumni who agreed to participate in the program, but also by visiting Los Angeles to see everything firsthand. Within the first few iterations of this initiative, they secured funding from Yale and some alumni to cover expenses such as airfare, housing, and meal stipends.
Once Testani knew he had the proper placements and the alumni connections in place, he had to switch gears and focus on the students. He had to create the entire application process, including job descriptions for each of the placements where students could intern, outline how the selection committee would make their decisions, and determine how the internship would count towards the students’ program. This became a bit more challenging since there was no direct major related to the entertainment industry at Yale at the time. This meant that not only was there no exact group of students that they could pinpoint for this internship, but they also had to get creative in how each of the placements could be related to the students’ majors. They did, however, have a few clubs and organizations that they could advertise the program to, including the Yale Film Society. This proved to be the right move as they were able to get the attention needed for around 10 to 15 students to participate in the pilot Yale in Hollywood summer internship program.
Implementing and monitoring the initiative
With the program approved, the alumni selected and trained to serve as the primary contact for students during the program, along with a high level of student interest in the internships, the pilot program was set to run. The alumni running the operations on the ground at the sites in Hollywood would check in with Testani on the progress and successes of the students in the program. Testani encountered one minor issue after the initial iteration of the program.
Although he vetted every alumnus and reviewed all of the roles these students would be helping with, one slipped through the cracks of misrepresentation. One placement was within a sex-positive web series. A few of the students had their internship there, seeing how directing and managing a smaller set could look like. When fall arrived, the Yale newspaper wrote an article highlighting the Yale in Hollywood program, which centered on this specific internship placement, revealing it as an explicit sex show, rather than a sex-positive psychologist show. Testani felt the panic set in when he realized he hadn’t researched that specific placement enough. Although he didn’t get into too much trouble from this article, since it blew over pretty quickly, he learned the lesson of really paying attention to detail instead of only focusing on the big picture.
Ensuring long-term sustainability and/or increased impact
As the pilot program came to a close and evaluation began to determine the program’s longevity, Testani emphasized the importance of both qualitative and quantitative data in ensuring its success. When working with students and alumni, a satisfaction evaluation is necessary. Are the students learning something about the industry or about themselves? Are the alumni getting the value out of it that they thought they would when signing up for the collaboration? He evaluated this by speaking with the alumni and students after their internships concluded. There was overwhelmingly positive feedback, which led to the program’s continuation. Contributing to the positive feedback was also the student’s disclosure of their insight into the entertainment industry. Many revealed later that they chose to pursue a career in the entertainment industry because of the exposure they gained during this internship. Many went on to obtain graduate degrees in various disciplines, such as screenwriting or directing, or even leaned more towards the business side of the industry. All of these experiences contributed to the expansion of the Yale alumni community in Hollywood, one of the goals being to create a direct pipeline from Yale to the industry. This, in turn, gave more students opportunities to connect not only with more alumni in Hollywood as the years passed, but also alumni who were a part of the program during these early iterations. The program is still around today and it has grown to become a more established program where alumni apply to look for students to partake in their internship positions. It currently looks like it has become an even more popular program than when it was first started by Testani.
Insights gained from this initiative
Testani learned a great deal from this initiative, along with some of his other key innovations that he has implemented throughout his career in higher education. For one thing, he valued the idea of prototyping and not needing everything to be exactly perfect or correct the first time around. He disclosed to me that he knows he is a perfectionist, but after implementing ideas like the Yale in Hollywood program, he was given the grace to not have everything perfect, especially during that prototype/pilot phase. This also gave him the ability and confidence to take specific risks if he believed they would pay off.
One of the last lessons Testani shared with me that had a significant impact was his shift in mindset when it came to building initiatives that would last. He used to view the ideas almost as if he were leaving a legacy or something that would make him known within that office or department even after he left. However, as time passed, he realized that it was more about the customer, or in this case, the students, and whether or not his innovations lasted was irrelevant. Testani encourages us all to evaluate whether this initiative remains a relevant educational tool for the current student population over time. If it is no longer effective, it needs to be changed. He believes that there is little room for your ego in educational entrepreneurship.
Observations and lessons learned
From conducting this interview with Testani, I gained valuable insights into how to successfully implement innovations that add value to an organization. For one thing, you need to know your strengths. If you are good at communicating the big picture idea, but need help with data or the details, don’t hesitate to ask for assistance. You need to surround yourself with others who have the strengths that complement your weaknesses. The more people who help with your innovations, the better chances you have of getting the approval to do so, since a collective idea is more appealing to approvers instead of an individual idea.
Testani also gave me some good advice when it comes to implementing any innovation or idea. He said, “You can control a lot about the initiatives you want to implement, but the one thing that you can’t control is people’s time.” He went further into saying that this directly correlates with tailoring your ideas to the person you are proposing the ideas to and making it so that the people you need to buy in see your idea as worth spending their time on. This really stuck with me because all of the entrepreneurs we’ve discussed in this course had shown that they had the passion and persistence to implement their ideas, but in order to get others on board with their idea they needed to show their approvers why those individuals too should be passionate and spend their time on the innovation. That can take some time and effort to perfect, but it’s an essential step in any innovation process.
Testani is a perfect example of an entrepreneurial educator, always finding ways to make a process easier or more beneficial for the stakeholders. His strengths lie in ideation, being more of a change maker who passes the initiative on to someone else to sustain it over time. For someone who has created some impactful innovations over his career, he really does leave his ego at the door, focusing on the priorities of the collective and admitting that if his ideas don’t stand the test of time, then they deserve to be changed. After this conversation and many others I have had with him, he consistently inspires me to push the limits and not become too comfortable with doing the same things day in and day out. He’s a risk taker, but when he takes those risks, he does so knowing that they are going to benefit others more than if he didn’t take the risk in the first place. I strive to be more like him when it comes to having the confidence to propose my innovative ideas.
