Simmons College of Kentucky

Myra Rock is an executive leader and institution-builder with over two decades of experience advancing organizations, building strategic partnerships, and translating ambitious ideas into measurable progress. Her career spans higher education leadership, enrollment management, campus and academic operations, and health equity, giving her a cross-sector perspective on how institutions can expand opportunity and strengthen communities.

As Chief of Staff to the President at Simmons College of Kentucky, Louisville's historically Black college, Rock works across the institution to align people, priorities, partnerships, and resources behind the college's vision. Her work is ultimately about building capacity, helping turn presidential vision into institutional progress designed to endure.

Building What Comes Next

For Rock, leadership is ultimately about making things possible.

As Chief of Staff to the President, she works at the intersection of presidential vision and institutional execution, connecting strategy, people, partnerships, resources, and accountability around priorities that can shape Simmons for years to come.

Her perspective is informed by more than two decades in higher education, progressing from enrollment management to campus and academic leadership and executive administration. Her career also includes leadership in health equity, which deepened her understanding of how education, health, economic opportunity, and community well-being intersect.

“A chief of staff has to be willing to take responsibility for the overlooked duties that stand between a vision and its completion whenever needed.”

That breadth of experience enables Rock to see an institution both as a collection of individual functions and as an interconnected whole. On any given day, she may move between a long-range institutional priority, partnership opportunity, capital project, executive decision, or immediate operational issue. The subject may change, but the responsibility remains: help determine what is needed, connect the right people and resources, and keep the institution moving forward.

Rock has come to understand the Chief of Staff role not primarily as a position of proximity to leadership, but as a position of responsibility. She measures success by two questions: What became possible because she was there, and what is possible today because she is?

Strategy and the Details

Executing a president's vision requires what Rock describes as having “two eyes.”

One remains at 30,000 feet, focused on where the institution is going and what must be built today to support its future. The other stays close to the ground, attentive to details and unresolved responsibilities that can determine whether a strategy succeeds.

Rock describes the Chief of Staff role as that of a “gap filler:” someone willing to step into responsibilities that fall between organizational functions.

“A chief of staff has to be willing to take responsibility for the overlooked duties that stand between a vision and its completion whenever needed,” Rock says.

For Rock, this requires humility as much as authority. It also requires accountability. Vision must become strategy, strategy must become goals, and goals require ownership, timelines, resources, and measures of success. Her approach to follow-through reflects a principle she calls “inspect what you expect”, ensuring that work meets standards of quality, compliance, time, and budget.

For Rock, the details matter because the mission matters.

Advancing Institutional Transformation

At Simmons, Rock's responsibilities intersect with several initiatives shaping the college's future, with particular emphasis on helping build the structures, assets, and resources necessary for long-term strength.

Rock co-led efforts to establish the college's first endowment, helping create a permanent source of financial support for its mission. She also co-led the formation of the William J. Simmons Foundation, an affiliated philanthropic organization established to expand the college's capacity to secure transformative support for endowment and capital priorities.

Additionally, she helped lead the acquisition and renovation of Pittman Hall, Simmons' first residence hall, an institutional milestone that expanded the college beyond its historic commuter model and created new possibilities for enrollment growth, student life, and residential learning.

Another significant initiative is the transformation of the historic Christ the King property into the Westover Campus, envisioned to expand opportunities in science, technology, engineering, arts, math, and medicine while connecting education, workforce development, and neighborhood revitalization in Louisville's West End.

Together, these initiatives demonstrate the breadth of institutional transformation Rock helps advance, from strengthening financial and philanthropic capacity to expanding the college's physical footprint and creating new environments for learning and community impact.

 Each is the product of collective leadership. Rock's role is to help maintain alignment among the people, resources, decisions, and priorities necessary to move the work from vision to reality.

The Power of Collaboration

Rock's previous work in health equity reinforced a lesson that continues to shape her leadership: the barriers affecting communities rarely exist within a single institution or sector.

Educational opportunity intersects with healthcare, employment, economic mobility, and access to resources. Addressing those challenges requires organizations to work across traditional boundaries.

Through executive leadership, board service, and community engagement, Rock collaborates with educational institutions, healthcare organizations, corporations, government agencies, fellow HBCUs, K–12 schools, and community partners. She views these collaborations through Simmons' philosophy of “lifting as we climb.” Workforce development is not simply about preparing an individual for a career; meaningful employment can strengthen families, expand economic opportunity, and create possibilities for future generations.

Leadership as Stewardship

Ultimately, Rock's approach to institution-building comes down to stewardship.

She has become less interested in what a title communicates and more interested in what a leader makes possible with the responsibility entrusted to them. That distinction is particularly important in the Chief of Staff role, where influence often operates behind the scenes and success is reflected in the institution's accomplishments rather than the individual's visibility.

Sometimes leadership means convening the right people. Sometimes it means creating structure around an ambitious idea, resolving an overlooked problem, cultivating a relationship, or maintaining momentum. And sometimes it means helping build something whose greatest impact will not be realized for years.

That is stewardship.

At Simmons, the results of that philosophy are increasingly visible: an inaugural endowment designed to support future generations; a philanthropic foundation created to strengthen institutional capacity; a first residence hall expanding the collegiate experience; and an emerging STEAM campus creating new educational and community possibilities.

None belongs to one individual. Each reflects leaders, trustees, partners, supporters, and communities working toward a shared vision.

Rock's contribution within that collective effort is to help make the vision executable, to connect ideas with people, priorities with resources, and institutional ambition with the disciplined work required to turn possibility into progress.

Underlying it all is a life motto she keeps close: Go into the world and do well, but more importantly, go into the world and do good.

And when titles and recognitions are set aside, Rock's measure of leadership remains remarkably simple:

What became possible because she was there?

At Simmons College of Kentucky, the answer is still being built.