Staff Spotlight: Five questions with Will Carroll. Get to know our Managing Director of Strategic Finance and Student Success
Today, get to know Will Carroll: A Managing Director with HCM Strategists.
Will has over a decade of federal education policy experience and is a skilled policy analyst and strategic advisor dedicated to helping policymakers and institutions identify the best ways to use their resources to ensure all students succeed. His expertise is in the financing of higher education at the institutional, state, and federal levels. He has worked on state funding formulas, affordability proposals, college transfer, and strategic planning to provide equitable opportunities and improve student outcomes and systems. Will has been a pivotal part of HCM’s postsecondary policy team since 2022. In that time has contributed to the strategic planning and finance systems change initiatives for a variety of clients and state systems including in Illinois, Pennsylvania, Virginia and, most recently, Nevada, where he is part of a team evaluating the state’s higher education funding formula.
To learn more about Will, please visit his LinkedIn.
We’re lucky to have a team with diverse lived experiences. Tell us about your background and how you found your way to this work
→ I come from a family of public servants, broadly speaking; my parents and grandparents were a public defender, social worker, nurse, NIH researcher, minister. So I’m not surprised I was drawn to a career in education. I started out at a direct service organization that helped low-income students in Philadelphia become the first in their family to attend college. I then pursued a Masters in Public Policy to be able to address the barriers my students faced at a more systemic level. After grad school, I worked on education policy and finance in the federal government for over a decade, spanning K-12 and higher education. I was fortunate enough to get an opportunity to do a six month developmental assignment with the Aspen Institute’s College Excellence Program. I was drawn to the direct engagement with states and institutions, where I could design and help implement more specific solutions to the barriers their students face. I collaborated on a project with HCM during that time, so was thrilled to find an opportunity to bring the skills and knowledge I built in the federal government to the work here.
HCM is dedicated to making educational systems more accessible, affordable, accountable, and equitable. What drives you to do this work?
→ Postsecondary education is a huge crossroads for learners and their social and economic mobility. Earn a bachelor’s degree and you could be earning $1,000,000 more over your lifetime. But drop out – for reasons like affordability, quality, or life circumstances – and you may be saddled with debt and unable to pay it down. So there’s the macro-level importance of why I work in this field. But there’s the student-level motivation as well. I draw inspiration every day from my students at Philadelphia Futures. While at OMB, my team visited Northern Virginia Community College and sat in on new student orientation. The faces in that audience were an incredible cross-section of America. Different backgrounds, life experiences, and goals. But all full of promise. I’m driven to help build an education system that ensures everyone has the chance to be in that audience, and one that delivers on that promise.
One of our core values is collaboration. Who are you partnering with and what are you working on right now that has you excited?
→ HCM supported Texas’ recent community college funding formula reform, which includes innovative components around credentials of value and data-driven equity components. We are now partnering with the Texas Association of Community Colleges (TACC) to evaluate what types of support and assistance would help colleges succeed under the new formula. We’ll be learning from partners at the colleges and collaborating with the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board (THECB) to match up needs with the right resources. We do a lot of work to design state funding formulas, but it’s particularly exciting – and critical – to support the roll out and implementation of those formulas. For funding formulas to effectively advance state goals, the institutions should be equipped with knowledge and tools to help them make strategic decisions aligned with those goals.
What type of client work and impact do you want to see HCM make over the next five years/in the future?
When not working, what can people find you doing?
→ I love to get outdoors, whether it’s mowing or raking my lawn, hiking in National Parks, or biking around Washington, D.C. I’ve got two young kids, so I’m often at soccer and baseball practice or playing board games with them. And about once a week, you’ll find me baking a pie!
