“Though the pandemic is taking so much of our energy right now in addressing it, there will be a day after. And institutions, organizations of any sort, have to have a very clear sense of what their mission and goals are in that day after.”

As the 11th Chancellor of the University of California, Berkeley — and the first woman to hold that position — Carol Christ helms what U.S. News and World Report considers the world’s best public university. She sees her role as requiring both the flexibility to adapt to changing circumstances as well as the steadiness to adhere to the university’s core values.

“There's a very moving moment in The Lord of the Rings,” she tells Mike on the podcast, “where Frodo says to Gandalf, ‘I wish I had not lived in these times.’ And Gandalf says back to Frodo, ‘So do we all, but what we need to do, how we'll be judged, is what we do with the moment that's given us.’ And that's what I feel.”