Listening, Discerning, and Leading with Purpose

Dear LMU Community, 

Welcome to the start of a vibrant new academic year. Whether you’re arriving on campus for the first time or returning home to LMU, I’m grateful we are together. I’m especially delighted to welcome the newest members of our Lion family—each of you brings your unique gifts, talents, and dreams. LMU is a place where intellect meets imagination, faith inspires action, and every voice matters. I am confident you will find your home.

Listening with Purpose
As I embark on my first semester as your president, I am listening—with intention, openness, and humility. Since June 1, I have had the privilege of meeting with students, faculty, staff, alumni, donors, and trustees. These conversations have provided valuable opportunities to listen, exchange ideas, and share what I am learning in meaningful and focused ways. This fall, I will continue my summer practice of intentional listening, both formal and impromptu, to learn your hopes, priorities, and creative ideas. Genuine shared leadership begins with attentive listening and discernment, laying the groundwork for meaningful action. In parallel, I will partner with Interim EVP and Provost Kat Weaver and other campus leaders to host Community Conversations, open forums designed to provide transparency, timely updates, and mutual exchange. These gatherings reflect our commitment to inclusion, shared vision, and purpose-driven leadership.

Strengthening Our Leadership Team
Listening also requires acting with purpose. To better align LMU’s structures with our mission and ensure that students remain at the center of our work, I am announcing a targeted realignment of the President’s Executive Leadership Team. These changes are designed to conserve resources and increase our agility and collaboration so we can invest more effectively to advance LMU’s academic excellence, student experience, and institutional resilience. They also reflect extensive conversations, consultations, and feedback I have received from stakeholders and leaders about positioning LMU for long-term success.

Mission Integration: Advancing Belonging, Equity, and Justice
LMU’s enduring commitment to equity, inclusion, belonging, and justice is rooted in our Catholic, Jesuit, and Marymount identity. These values are not parallel to our mission—they are at its heart.  Our commitments remain unequivocal. To advance these goals more authentically, LMU will transition to an embedded model, where vital work in support of all community members—ensuring that everyone feels a sense of belonging and inclusion—is carried out as part of Mission Integration. This approach aligns these functions directly within the organizations that drive progress and outcomes rather than operating in parallel. Under this new structure, new mission integration leaders will serve in Mission, Academic Affairs, Student Affairs, and Human Resources, ensuring greater impact and accountability to advance belonging and inclusion efforts for all students, faculty, and staff. Colleagues currently supporting DEI will transition into these areas, bringing their expertise and relationships to advance mission integration priorities.

As we develop and implement this model, I will engage closely with affinity group leaders and our broader community to shape its priorities together. I will be convening a new President’s Council on Mission Integration to ensure that community voices guide this work and that accountability for progress is shared university-wide. I am asking the council to develop recommendations to me on how we best approach this essential work and accelerate progress by November 1, 2025.

In May, LMU announced that Vice President for Mission and Ministry John Sebastian would conclude his service in that role and return to the faculty. Today, I am pleased to share that VP Sebastian will instead continue his leadership as LMU’s first Senior Vice President for Mission, effective October 1, 2025. His experience as a mission leader, faculty colleague, and thought partner uniquely positions him to guide this model. VP Sebastian has consistently integrated LMU’s mission into the daily life of our community—from faculty formation and student retreats to interfaith partnerships—and his leadership will ensure these enduring commitments are lived more fully.

Please join me in expressing appreciation to Vice President Emelyn dela Peña for her service as she has now concluded her tenure with LMU. Since 2022, Emelyn has been a tireless and passionate advocate for equity and inclusion, bringing wisdom, dedication, and care to this work. She has expanded programs, deepened partnerships, and enriched the LMU experience for students, faculty, and staff. Beyond campus, she is a recognized leader in her field, serving as president of the Southern California chapter of the National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education, where she advanced collaboration and innovation across institutions. She has also been active within the Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities (AJCU) and co-founded the Chief Diversity Officers network as part of her Ignatian Colleagues Program project, further extending her impact nationally. Emelyn’s contributions have laid the necessary groundwork for the mission integration model, and her legacy will continue to shape LMU’s progress in this next chapter. We are grateful for her leadership and wish her well in her future endeavors.

Finally, I will be exploring opportunities to share more about how I believe this vision will strengthen LMU’s commitments to belonging, equity, justice, and inclusion and how we shape this work together. I invite you to submit your questions, and I will formulate the best way to share my answers with the community in the days and weeks ahead.

Administration Leadership
Following the announcement of EVP Rae’s resignation, I am delighted to announce that I have appointed Senior Vice President John Kiralla as LMU’s next Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer, effective October 1, 2025. Currently our longest-serving executive leader, SVP Kiralla has held multiple Cabinet posts and has served in nearly every division of the university, guiding some of LMU’s most complex and visible initiatives with successful outcomes that have shaped the institution and moved us forward. This restructuring builds on his current role and will consolidate administration, operations, marketing, communications, and external relations into a cohesive portfolio that strengthens how we serve and support LMU internally and externally. This also reduces the number of executive positions, allowing us to direct resources toward our highest priorities in an era of increasingly competing demands.

Student and Institutional Well-Being
To strengthen LMU’s responsiveness and align leadership more closely with our most essential priorities, Senior Vice President for Student Affairs Kawanna Leggett and Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer Aimee Uen will now report directly to me. This realignment restores the historic reporting structure for these roles and reflects my conviction that both student well-being and financial stewardship must be engaged at the presidential level. By streamlining reporting lines, we enhance coordination and ensure that the student experience and institutional vitality remain at the center of LMU’s decision-making.

Expanded and More Inclusive Leadership
Vice President for Human Resources Nancy Pluzdrak, who will continue reporting to the Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer, and Vice Provost for Enrollment Management Maureen Weatherall, who will continue reporting to the Executive Vice President and Provost, will join the President’s Cabinet, strengthening LMU’s talent and enrollment strategies. Additional context for the reorganization has been posted to the President’s Website.

Mass of the Holy Spirit: Our Annual Tradition
On September 18 at noon, our community will gather for one of LMU’s most cherished traditions, the Mass of the Holy Spirit, a liturgical celebration that marks the start of the academic year. Rooted in 16th century Jesuit origins and observed at Jesuit institutions worldwide, the Mass invites us to call upon the Spirit’s gifts of wisdom, understanding, right judgment, courage, knowledge, reverence, and awe as we begin this year’s journey together. At LMU, this tradition grounds us in faith, solidarity, and purpose. It reminds us that we are not only scholars and colleagues but companions working toward the common good, honoring the dignity and diversity of all whom we encounter.

I encourage all community members to attend. I also ask faculty and supervisors to consider excusing their students and colleagues, where possible, to accommodate class and work schedules so they may attend this sacred celebration. Lunch will be offered following the Mass, and a community invitation will follow. I hope to see you there.

Inauguration and Beyond
Looking further ahead, I hope you will join us on Tuesday, December 9, 2025, for my presidential inauguration. While inaugurations are formal investitures, steeped in academic tradition, they are not merely a celebration of one individual. Rather, they are a collective celebration of the university itself: a time when delegates and distinguished guests from across the country join our community to affirm LMU’s role within the broader world of higher education.

For us, this moment will be a platform to showcase the best of LMU—our creativity, our scholarship, our values, and our bold vision for society and the world. As your president, I see myself not as the focus but as the conduit for channeling LMU’s gifts, aspirations, and thought leadership to a wider stage. Grounded in our mission, I look forward to sharing how we will co-create our future together, animated by our shared hopes.

Let us listen. Let us discern. And let us lead—together, with purpose.

Welcome to the fall semester. Welcome home.

With gratitude,
Tom

Thomas Poon, Ph.D.
President and Professor of Chemistry