Melissa Gilliam, BU president-elect, says she grew up with a “strong humanitarian focus.”

Administration

Fun Facts about BU’s Next President, Melissa L. Gilliam—Gamer, Ceramicist, Keyboard Novice…

Her children, her parents, her husband have all helped shape the leader she’s become. Watch a video as she talks about her favorite music and sport, her first job, and the superpower she’d like to have

Boston University President-elect Melissa L. Gilliam has had an esteemed, public-facing career in academic leadership, most recently as executive vice president and provost of The Ohio State University. But did you know that in her quieter moments she loves making pottery or that she helped develop a video game or that her mother blazed trails in journalism and her father was a celebrated artist or that she’s been friends since childhood with a certain iconic jurist’s son? We’ve compiled some fun facts about her to help you get to know BU’s 11th president a little better.

Her parents are important cultural figures

Gilliam’s mother, Dorothy Butler Gilliam, was the first Black woman reporter hired by the Washington Post (in 1961), graduating from the city desk to a popular column on politics, education, and race that ran 19 years (and occasionally mentioned her three daughters). Her father, Sam Gilliam, who died last year, was an acclaimed abstract painter. Global art gallery Pace says this of him: “Widely recognized as one of the boldest innovators of postwar American painting, Gilliam produced hard-edge abstractions that energized the Washington, D.C., scene in the mid-1960s.” Pace is exhibiting a retrospective of work from Sam Gilliam’s last five years at its New York location through October 28.

She was raised to always be thinking of helping others

“We grew up with a very strong humanitarian focus,” Gilliam tells BU Today, “and a huge focus on the impact that one could have in the world. So even as my father was an artist, he was always thinking about…making possibility and opportunity for other people, in the arts and through art.” Similarly, her mother helped start the Oakland-based Maynard Institute, which promotes diversity in news media hiring and coverage.

She saw her first concert with Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s son

Gilliam and James Ginsburg were seventh-grade classmates in Washington, D.C., when they went to the Kennedy Center for a performance of the orchestral suite The Planets. “My mom drops me off at Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s house,” she recalls for BU Today. “I remember getting dropped off at the Watergate. We sat on the couch, and then the mom said goodbye and we walked across to the Kennedy Center. He’s still a friend of mine.” (James Ginsburg’s love of music led him to a career as a record company founder and president.)

She does ceramics—and sees it as part of her scientific career

“I have a ceramics practice,” she tells BU Today. “I am always making art as well. The more I learn about ceramics, the more I have to read about chemistry and what temperatures you’re using and thinking, This was also very true of my father. He [understood] materials. You can paint something in 1970, and it’s still around 50 years later. Science and art as a dichotomous relationship. And I actually think they’re quite related.”

She helped develop a video game for teens at risk for sexual violence…

Gilliam cofounded the University of Chicago’s Game Changer Program, which developed the game Bystander. She explained the concept to Chicago Magazine: “The game is laid out in a comic-book style, and the player has to take on interactive challenges and make decisions. We filmed youth from our communities on the South Side as the characters. Students will play [at the Game Changer lab] as a high school student facing a series of interactions linked to sexual violence and harassment. For example, one male student gathers resources for a friend who’s been sexually assaulted. It teaches behaviors you need to be a good intervener. It’s very real.”

…and a card game for those at risk for sexual diseases

Also at the University of Chicago, Gilliam founded the Center for Interdisciplinary Inquiry and Innovation in Sexual and Reproductive Health, which partners with community organizations to innovate approaches to address sexual and reproductive health. One, the card game, “is about sexually transmitted infections, but it’s also about how do we communicate and deal with all of the things that are involved in sexually transmitted infection?” she told the Chicago Tribune. “There’s a role-play part where you have to take on these challenges: The thing that you’re fighting against could be shame, and all the players have to think, OK, we have four traits: (say,) humor, resilience—whatever those traits are. And each person has to say, ‘How would I use humor to deal with shame?’ They sort of work through that as a group.”

A driven leader knows how to compromise

Gilliam, after growing up in Washington, D.C., told the Tribune that she wound up in Chicago because her husband, also a doctor, zeroed in on his medical residency there: “You can do something called couples matching [for residency], where you tie your options to another person, and it limits your options. So my husband loved Northwestern, and it was my very first time saying, ‘I’m not going to do what I want; I’m going to do what you want.’ It was my very first time compromising.”

While coming to BU returns her to the East Coast, where she grew up, Gilliam appreciates Midwestern living

“The Midwest is calmer in many ways. It does not have the intensity of the East Coast, the rush, rush, rush all the time, and yet you can still be part of [many] things.”

Her two (now-adult) children have inspired her all their lives during challenging times

She described the dynamic to the Tribune 10 years ago: “My kids are without drama—they’re so grounded and comfortable in their skin. And that’s one really important source of strength. With all of my jobs, I spend a lot of time helping other people be resilient, and when I look at my kids, I have such hopefulness. They’re just so unfazed by it all. Very little school drama, friend drama. So I get a lot of (strength) from there.”

Music and sports have helped her decompress during her high-powered career

She played soccer with her kids while they were young. She also competed with them (gently) at piano playing. But she knew when she was beaten at the keyboard: “At first, by willpower alone, I leapfrogged over my kids, but my son has since just trounced me. He looks at me in the rearview mirror. He’s good, you know? I’m like, how do you move your fingers so quickly? How do you do this?”