Cara Neth recently retired from her role as director of executive communications for the CSU System. During a career spanning 35 years at CSU, this alumna helped shape the voice and the values of the institution through her work with CSU System chancellors Albert C. Yates and Tony Frank and her work with CSU presidents Yates, Frank and Larry Penley. Photo: Kevin Samuelson / CSU System
Most times, you’ll find Cara Neth wearing a pair of reading glasses – or carrying them, at the ready, atop her head.
It’s just one sign she spends the better part of her waking hours reading, thinking, discussing, and writing.
For 35 years, until her official retirement two weeks ago, Neth has done this work for Colorado State University and the CSU System. Her titles have varied, but her jobs have presented a core responsibility: crafting messages on behalf of the institution’s top leaders.
By the numbers, Neth has served as lead communicator for two System chancellors. She has taken point on messaging for three CSU presidents (and has written at some level for seven, if you count interim presidents).
She has helped draft more than 20 presidential addresses to kick off the academic year, typically outlining serious university challenges and setting forth lofty campus goals (often with at least one quote from President Abraham Lincoln, who established the nation’s land-grant universities).
She has had a hand in countless speeches, op-ed columns, news releases, messages to campus, policy briefings, and correspondence. And she has been part of all the private discussions, meetings, phone calls, texts, and email threads leading up to those finished products.
‘Their voice and their ideas’
Neth is quick to note that, while it’s a collaborative process, her writing has started and ended with the presidents and chancellors for whom she has worked.
“I work with their voices and their ideas,” she said. “It’s always them. These are remarkable people with strong opinions. So, whatever gets written, they’re the ones who have to say it and own it. My job is to help them do that.”
As Neth extricates herself from all those meetings and email threads, her colleagues are reflecting on ways she has helped shape the voice and the values of Colorado’s land-grant university. And on the many ways she has served as a key connector and adviser on just about every significant issue to touch the CSU Administration Building across nearly four decades.
“She came with an ability to listen well and completely and with an understanding of the power of language to explicate, motivate, persuade, and move others to action. Such skills were invaluable and became the basis of a yearslong partnership,” former CSU President Albert C. Yates recalled.
Neth was working as a writer and editor in the university’s public relations office when Yates brought her into C-suite communications as his speech writer in 1990 (back when she didn’t wear reading glasses). They worked closely until Yates retired in 2003.
Now, it is Neth’s turn. At the end of June, she retired from her post as director of executive communications for the CSU System, which includes the flagship campus in Fort Collins, CSU Pueblo, and CSU Global; she earlier worked as director of CSU presidential and administrative communications. Neth also has served as publisher of STATE, the magazine of the CSU System. She will continue working 10 hours per week on select projects for the System chancellor.
A crucial role
Yates noted that presidential communication at a major research university is an enormous undertaking, requiring “efficiency in preparation and outreach to a host and diversity of audiences.”
“Cara spent the time needed to build relationships, listening to others, taking the pulse of the campus, and ‘carrying the water’ of many who were unheard and unseen,” Yates said. “Her personal integrity, absence of hyperbole, and understated reports demanded attention and had impact in unsung ways.”
One day, she might have penned an upbeat welcome to campus; another, she might have addressed university budget pressures, a research controversy, First Amendment challenges, racial tension, or a student crisis.
“There was a common humility and humanity that both got added by Cara,” said CSU System Chancellor Tony Frank, who has been Neth’s friend and colleague for more than 16 years in his roles as Colorado State president and System chancellor.
“It’s pretty hard to find somebody who wouldn’t answer, ‘Yes’ to the question, ‘Would you view Cara as a trusted adviser on your topic?’” Frank continued. “That’s just an amazing attribute when you think about it – across the breadth of the university and the span of time. One of the few constants has been people want to include Cara’s thinking and Cara’s voice.”
“Countless CSU System board chairs have made statements over the years – very professional-sounding statements – that sounded as good as they did in large part because of Cara Neth. I think Cara probably made every single one of us, at one point or another, say, ‘Man, I wish it had sounded that way when I thought it.’”
– Tony Frank, chancellor, CSU System
In 1987, Neth earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Colorado State University. She developed her writing chops as a beat reporter for the Fort Collins Coloradoan – and, earlier, as editor of the Rocky Mountain Collegian, as a “voice of youth” columnist for the Coloradoan while in high school and college, and, even earlier, as editor of Spilled Ink, the Fort Collins High School student newspaper.
Her father, the late Cecil Neth, was an important influence. He was a newsman through and through – working as an editorial page editor and columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times before the Neth family moved to Fort Collins, where Cecil joined the faculty at CSU’s journalism school. As a girl, Cara soaked up the buzz of big-city news and issues; she dreamed of working as an editorial writer.
“I thought that was the most beautiful possible life – where you read all morning, debated over lunch, and wrote all afternoon. Getting to work at CSU gave me the chance to do that,” she recently said.
‘Standard of Professional Excellence’
But the process was often less dreamy than her description. That’s why her colleague Jason Johnson, general counsel for the CSU System, invented an award called the “Cara Neth Standard of Professional Excellence.”
“Think of our most challenging times, and she was at the forefront of keeping university messaging on point,” Johnson said. “She’s the person who could take the ideas everyone was talking about and make them coherent and poetic.”
Those skills have had notable influence as Neth has worked with Tony Frank, with whom she developed a “common voice,” he said. In fact, Neth has often helped Frank find his voice – and his positions – as they have talked through issues facing the university while preparing for a speech or other form of communication.
“There have been times when I would write something, and she would come in and sit down and say, ‘You know what? If you’re going to wade into this topic, you can’t dip your toe in the water. You need to say something. What is it you want to say?’” Frank said.
He continued: “When you’re a public figure and you send out a big communication or give a speech, you’re putting down a marker about your position. The way you talk about it in advance with someone you trust – who guides you through your thinking – that person is going to influence you, and they’re really going to influence some of the values of the institution.
“It’s been one of the great privileges of my life to write with Cara Neth,” Frank said. “I wouldn’t trade it for anything.”
Student wellbeing
Rick Miranda, former CSU provost and interim president, called the partnership between Neth and Frank “extraordinary” and noted that Neth’s impact is also seen in her leadership of many System and campus projects.
“She was always so focused on the wellbeing of our students – what was good for the institution and the students,” Miranda said.
One such project was the President’s Multicultural Student Advisory Committee, which Yates created and Frank reinstated when he became president. Neth served for many years as adviser to the group, along with Blanche Hughes, vice president for student affairs, and the late Mary Ontiveros, former vice president for diversity. The committee gave underrepresented students a way to communicate directly with the president’s office about their CSU experiences and to learn about the inner workings of the university.
“Cara is one of the most kind and caring people I know,” Hughes said. “She was always willing to listen and helped students feel heard and valued. She valued everyone, even if she disagreed with them. I feel so honored that I had the chance to work with her.”
Additional contributions
Other projects included helping to create the university’s employee orientation program; leading creation of the VIPS leave program, so parents could volunteer in their children’s schools; and helping put together an emergency grant fund for employees impacted by natural disasters.
Neth described the chancellor’s and president’s offices as “support offices” – designed to help students, faculty, staff, and others excel and improve the university and higher education. She felt fortunate to work with Frank and Yates because they shared that perspective and understood that candid, authentic communication is central to that work.
“I feel really lucky. Working for CSU has been an incredible privilege. I feel like I’ve been able to help really good people at CSU get their jobs done,” Neth said.
“The most important lesson I’ve learned in more than 35 years is that individuals can make things better, and I’ve seen that happen,” she said. “A handful of people wanted to make CSU a leader in sustainability, and they led the way. A handful of people wanted to create the best first-year welcome in the country, and they did it. We built the Vietnam Memorial Bridge because one alumnus had the idea, and it inspired people. That’s the most exciting thing about being part of the university – people with passion and energy can make things better, and they do every day at CSU.”
Join the retirement celebration for Cara Neth!
4-6 p.m. Wednesday, July 24
Colorado State University Oval
