Glenn Gow, The Scaling Executive Coach and host of The Scaling Executive Podcast talks with Alliant International University CEO Andy Vaughn about turning federal regulation into a seat at the table, why engagement beats morale as a leadership metric, and how AI is coaching his frontline staff in real time.
I sat down with Andy Vaughn, president and CEO of Alliant International University, on The Scaling Executive Podcast to get his answer to a question every CEO in a regulated industry eventually faces: when a new regulation threatens your business, do you hand it to a lawyer or do you get in the room yourself? Vaughn’s answer is direct. When federal regulation threatens the core of your business, you dive into it personally rather than delegating it to a consultant or attorney, a strategy that put him on the U.S. Department of Education’s negotiated rulemaking committee for the 2024 Title IV rules after he spent three months working from department headquarters helping write the regulations that now govern his industry. I’m Glenn Gow, The Scaling Executive Coach, and I host this podcast to bring you frameworks like this one, tested by CEOs who scaled their companies through real threats, not hypothetical ones.
This episode is for CEOs in heavily regulated industries who are deciding whether to hand a regulatory threat to outside counsel or step into the fight themselves.
Key Takeaways
- Vaughn holds that CEOs facing a regulatory threat must engage the agency directly. That approach helped Alliant get clinical psychology programs written into the Biden administration’s gainful employment regulation and later won Vaughn a seat on the Department of Education’s Title IV negotiated rulemaking committee.
- Vaughn’s leading indicator is engagement, not morale or satisfaction: he tracks whether an employee will act for the organization when it counts, not whether they feel good day to day.
- Alliant built its online campus from scratch in 2016 with no outside investment. That campus now generates 52% of the university’s total revenue.
- Vaughn codified six organizational values so more than 400 full-time employees across seven campuses can make decisions without escalating every call to headquarters.
- Vaughn treats AI as a frontline coaching tool, not just a compliance policy. Alliant’s admissions counselors use a real-time AI assistant that flags required compliance language and surfaces catalog facts they forgot to mention during live calls with prospective students.
How CEOs Can Turn a Regulatory Threat Into a Seat at the Table
When the Biden administration issued the gainful employment regulation restricting proprietary colleges, Vaughn did not hand the fight to outside counsel. He flew to Washington D.C. with no existing contacts and started cold-calling regulators and lobbyists, working through roughly a hundred conversations to find the handful of people who could actually move the regulation. “When you find that 10, maybe half of that group can really help. It’s the golden ticket,” Vaughn says. That relationship-building got clinical psychology programs and extra time for post-degree clinical hours written into the gainful employment rule. It later put Vaughn on the Department of Education’s negotiated rulemaking committee for the 2024 Title IV rules, where he worked from department headquarters for three months helping write the regulations that now govern his industry.
Vaughn’s rule for when a CEO should personally engage rather than delegate to a lawyer or consultant: the threat has to be operational, not just legal. “Sometimes a CEO, your plane has to come down from 50,000 feet or 30,000 feet down to 10 at times,” he says. The decision rule behind the metaphor: when a regulation threatens the operational core of the business rather than a narrow compliance question, dropping altitude, meaning taking direct personal ownership of the relationship-building, produces outcomes that delegation cannot.
Why CEOs Should Measure Employee Engagement, Not Just Morale or Satisfaction
Vaughn draws a three-way distinction most CEOs collapse into one word.
| Term | What it means | Organizational effect |
| Morale | Internal, how an employee feels day to day | Short-term signal that does not predict performance |
| Satisfaction | Transactional, whether someone likes their boss or their role | Moves hills, in Vaughn’s framing |
| Engagement | Whether an employee will act for the organization when it counts | Moves mountains, the leading indicator Vaughn tracks |
“Engagement moves mountains. Satisfaction moves hills,” Vaughn says. At Alliant, that distinction drives the metric he tracks: not a happiness score, but engagement, the measure he treats as the leading indicator of organizational performance.
Vaughn backs the framework with a structural example, not just a philosophy. He codified six organizational values that give more than 400 full-time employees and hundreds of adjunct faculty across seven campuses a way to make decisions without escalating every question to headquarters. Named values, applied consistently, are what let his team move quickly across a geographically distributed organization instead of stalling on every decision that requires input from the home office.
How CEOs Can Build a New Revenue Stream With No Outside Investment
In 2015, Alliant flipped its tax status from nonprofit to proprietary, and the Department of Education imposed growth restrictions that barred the university from launching new programs. Alliant had no online campus and no significant capital to build one. In 2016, Vaughn’s team used the cash it had on hand to purchase software and build an online campus from scratch, with no outside investment. That campus now generates 52% of Alliant’s total revenue.
Vaughn ties the result to hiring, not capital. He credits the outcome to finding “people that want to fight for the underdog,” at a moment when few outsiders expected the university to survive its ownership change. The lesson: when growth restrictions cut off the conventional path (new programs, outside funding), the constraint forces a CEO to build the next revenue line with existing resources and a team willing to bet on a long shot.
How CEOs Can Deploy AI as a Frontline Coaching Tool, Not Just a Policy
Vaughn sees most colleges and universities stuck at the first step of AI strategy. “They’re making rules of what you can’t do,” he says of the defensive posture most schools take, a posture he calls necessary but insufficient as a full strategy.
Alliant’s implementation goes further than policy. The university’s admissions counselors use an AI tool that coaches them in real time during calls with prospective students, flagging required compliance language and surfacing catalog facts a counselor forgot to mention. “We’re finding AI not to replace staff, but make them a better staff member in their job and everything they do,” Vaughn says. His decision rule: deploy AI to strengthen frontline staff at the job they already have, not to write rules against it and stop.
What CEOs Can Take From Andy Vaughn’s Leadership Framework
| Principle | What it means in practice | Named evidence from this interview |
| Dive into regulation, don’t delegate it | When a threat is operational, not just legal, the CEO builds the regulator relationships personally instead of routing the fight through lawyers or consultants | Vaughn’s direct outreach helped rewrite the gainful employment regulation to include clinical psychology programs and won him a seat on the Department of Education’s Title IV negotiated rulemaking committee |
| Engagement moves mountains, morale and satisfaction do not | Track whether employees will act for the organization, not just whether they feel good day to day | Vaughn’s engagement discipline underlies six codified organizational values that let more than 400 employees across seven campuses make autonomous decisions without escalating to headquarters |
| Bootstrap growth is a hiring problem before it is a capital problem | Build new revenue lines with existing cash and a team willing to fight for an underdog position, rather than waiting for outside investment | Alliant built its online campus from scratch in 2016 with no outside funding; it now generates 52% of total university revenue |
| AI strategy fails if it stops at policy | Defensive rules are necessary but insufficient; deploy AI as a coaching layer that makes frontline staff better at their existing jobs | Alliant embedded the AI coaching tool directly into every admissions counselor’s live-call workflow, rather than issuing it as a static policy document, so every counselor gets real-time correction on required disclosures and catalog facts during the call itself |
Quotes from This Episode
- “Sometimes a CEO, your plane has to come down from 50,000 feet or 30,000 feet down to 10 at times.”
Andy Vaughn, President and CEO, Alliant International University - “Engagement moves mountains. Satisfaction moves hills.”
Andy Vaughn, President and CEO, Alliant International University - “We’re finding AI not to replace staff, but make them a better staff member in their job and everything they do.”
Andy Vaughn, President and CEO, Alliant International University - “The key is to hiring the right team members to surround yourself.”
Andy Vaughn, President and CEO, Alliant International University
Frequently Asked Questions
How should a CEO respond to a new federal regulation that threatens the business?
Andy Vaughn, CEO of Alliant International University, holds that when a regulation threatens the operational core of the business, the CEO should engage the agency directly rather than routing the response entirely through outside counsel. Vaughn flew to Washington D.C. with no existing contacts, built relationships through roughly a hundred conversations, and later earned a seat on the Department of Education’s negotiated rulemaking committee for the 2024 Title IV rules.
How is employee engagement different from employee satisfaction?
Vaughn defines satisfaction as transactional, whether an employee likes their boss or role today, and engagement as behavioral, whether that employee will act for the organization when it matters. He tracks engagement as the leading indicator of performance rather than morale or satisfaction, and he codified six organizational values at Alliant so employees can make decisions aligned with the mission without escalating every question to headquarters.
How can a CEO use AI without just writing rules against it?
Vaughn argues that defensive AI policies are a necessary first step but a poor final strategy. At Alliant, admissions counselors use a real-time AI tool that coaches them during live calls with prospective students, flagging required compliance language and surfacing catalog facts they missed. The approach treats AI as a tool that strengthens frontline staff at their existing jobs rather than a threat to manage only through restrictions.
CEOs Work with Glenn Gow to Scale Their Companies by Scaling Themselves First
Glenn Gow is The Scaling Executive Coach. He coaches ambitious executives into the CEO seat and CEOs into successful exits. With 25 years as a CEO and 5 years in venture capital, Glenn helps leaders scale their companies by scaling themselves first. If this conversation was useful, you can apply for executive coaching with Glenn Gow or apply to be a guest on The Scaling Executive Podcast.
