Building a Higher Ed Career Through Reinvention
Sean Clayton, associate vice president for business services and controller at Salt Lake Community College (SLCC) in Salt Lake City, Utah, took a non-traditional path to higher education. After co-founding and selling a housewares company, Clayton worked briefly in private equity before the recession revealed a hard truth: entrepreneurial experience alone couldn’t land him a comparable role without a degree. He returned to school in his late 30s, completed a bachelor’s and a master’s in taxation, and landed an internship with the Utah State Auditor’s Office—his first real exposure to higher ed.
Clayton joined SLCC in 2021 after auditing the institution and connecting with its team. Drawing on his operations background, he tackled food service auxiliaries that had been losing $500,000 annually, ultimately replacing a costly vendor with local restaurants, bringing auxiliaries into the black while better serving a diverse student population. He has since risen to his current role and now sits on SLCC’s Cabinet Team, bringing a finance and strategy lens to institution-wide decisions.
A 360 evaluation early in his business career forced a reckoning with an authoritarian leadership style he hadn’t recognized in himself. The experience prompted emotional intelligence training and a lasting shift toward collaboration—one later affirmed through a second 360 during NACUBO’s Emerging Leaders program. His advice to listeners: be innovative, let your people fail, and make empathy a practice.
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