Building a Strong Community

Gilbert Rojas, Senior Manager, Special Projects and Board Liaison at Western Governors University located in Salt Lake City, UT is this month’s ascender spotlight. Gilbert joined WGU in 2015.  

Western Governors University has been using ascend since 2019. They had a very quick implementation and are active in the user community often providing feedback for great enhancements and new features. 

Gilbert and the WGU team are excellent consumers of ascend, leveraging all the tools they can to become more efficient day by day. 

What is your favorite ascend feature?  

I like the Contact Reports and that it allows the user to capture both an abstract of the interaction as well as detail. The fact that it can be related to an Org, Constituent and a Proposal makes the relating simple and allows us to see how the interactions move the needle on the proposal and allows the view from multiple points of entry.

What is the best career advice you have ever received?

Don’t respond emotionally. Whether it’s in an email, phone or in person, take a deep breath, think about your response and don’t get emotional. You’ll be better able to address the business problem when you remove your emotions from the situation.

What’s your favorite PODCAST?

I like to listen to The Moth Radio Hour-such interesting and compelling stories. I like it because it’s not hosted and the content is from the storyteller vs. the host.

What are your hobbies?

I love to snowboard, golf, travel and I am a youth soccer coach (takes most of my free time). I coach both club soccer and am the Freshman/Sophomore (Frosh) coach at Hillcrest High School in Midvale, UT. We serve a very diverse community and I like that I can be part of a program that helps give our boys a sense of belonging to the school. While very few may play at the next level, we create a community within the school and the boys take care of each other and we hope to be the “carrot” that helps them drive and strive towards graduation.

Some other fun facts:

Gilbert enjoys traveling with his wife Jenny.  

They share two boys, 18 and 15. Their oldest is currently working in health care as a CNA and is enrolled at the local community college working on his general education requirements. He currently works in Cardiothoracic ICU in one of SLC’s largest hospital systems and is loving every minute. He’s looking forward to taking advantage of the internal pathways for training and development to really test the waters of healthcare as a potential career. Their youngest just finished his sophomore year in high school, plays JV soccer and golf and is really into snowboarding and cars.  

They also share two golden doodles Fernando and Paco.

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The Kindsight Team