When curiosity meets leadership: Cybele Raver’s ‘Quantum Potential’ podcast explores solutions for humanity’s greatest challenges

Vanderbilt Provost C. Cybele Raver is impressive. She is confident and unhurried in her manner and words. She speaks with precision and without the verbal blemishes-"likes" and "ums"-that most cannot shake.

Provost C. Cybele Raver, right, with her sister, left, and her daughter during Reunion Weekend 2024

These words could describe many powerful women, but Cybele Raver is unexpectedly candid and warm. She is sincere and considerate. She is also relatable and effortlessly funny. But there is one Raver characteristic that stands out above all others: curiosity.

"My favorite feeling is when my brain is on fire! I love that moment in a conversation when we feel high energy-when great sparks of questions and connections are lit and fired in quick sequence."

DRIVEN BY CURIOSITY

Whether she is catching up with a Quinq (a Vanderbilt alum who graduated 50 or more years ago), introducing a Grammy winner or briefing the Board of Trust, Raver appears composed and at ease. But she did not start that way.

"I was such a nerdy kid. Harriet the Spy was my favorite book," Raver says. "I loved the idea of collecting a ton of information about the world around me-figuring out what was going on and believing that there were stories underneath other stories." She enjoyed amassing data and uncovering stories so much, in fact, that she became a developmental psychologist and one of the country's foremost social scientists.

Growing up in Manhattan, the subjects of Raver's childhood investigations were her mother's vibrant community of filmmakers and actors. Tina Raver raised Cybele and her sister, actor Kim Raver, alone while holding multiple jobs in advertising and running her own business scouting locations for commercials and film production. This often-eccentric group was an important influence on the sisters. "We didn't have family in the neighborhood, so our extended family were my mom's friends."

Provost C. Cybele Raver welcomes first year students during Move In at The Martha Rivers Ingram Commons. (Harrison McClary/Vanderbilt University)

After graduating from Phillips Academy, Cybele earned a B.A. from Harvard and a Ph.D. from Yale. She began her career at Cornell University's Department of Human Development before joining the University of Chicago's Harris School of Public Policy. It was here that she designed and implemented the Chicago School Readiness Project, which sought to improve the school readiness and social-emotional well-being of low-income children enrolled in Head Start programs. She continued her work at the intersection of science and social policy as a professor at New York University.

When Raver won the American Psychological Association Award for Distinguished Contributions of Applications of Psychology to Education and Training in 2012, the APA wrote: Raver is "one of the most highly respected scholars and investigators in developmental science." Raver's research was supported by more than $20 million in funding from the MacArthur Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, the William T. Grant Foundation, the Spencer Foundation and more.

EXPANDING HER IMPACT

Raver's first role in senior leadership was as deputy provost of NYU, where she also taught social science. When asked why she made the change from the classroom to the boardroom, Raver is unequivocal: "Universities play a vital role in society-we can change the world through innovation and research that drive economic growth, national security and social impact. Over time, I realized that I could lead that kind of transformation in higher education if I took the leap and stepped up to university leadership."

Provost C. Cybele Raver, speaking at Graduates Day 2024, says, "It is both a tremendous responsibility and a true joy to be the provost of Vanderbilt University." (Harrison McClary/Vanderbilt University)

After 14 years at NYU, the lifelong New Yorker ventured south to join Vanderbilt University in July 2020 as provost and vice chancellor for academic affairs. One of her first observations of the Nashville culture was the friendly locals: "When people ask you 'How are you?', they actually wait for the answer," she says, still in disbelief years later.

As provost, Raver oversees all faculty, staff, programs and initiatives for Vanderbilt's 10 schools and colleges. In addition, she leads research, admissions, student affairs and residential life. Raver never likes to be far from the classroom, so she is also Cornelius Vanderbilt Professor of Psychology and Human Development at Peabody College and holds a secondary appointment in the Department of Psychology.

Some of the 61 new faculty members hired for the 2024-25 school year join C. Cybele Raver, provost and vice chancellor for academic affairs, at new faculty orientation. (Harrison McClary/Vanderbilt University)

"This role takes a lot of work and is the best job that I have ever had or even imagined! It is really intense and incredibly exciting, whether we are funding seed grants for remarkable ideas, navigating a crisis, forming a College of Connected Computing or opening a new campus in New York City. It is both a tremendous responsibility and a true joy to be the provost of Vanderbilt University," she says, smiling.

RADICAL COLLABORATION

When she arrived, Raver jumped right into partnership with Chancellor Daniel Diermeier-who had himself only been chancellor for one year-as they set out to transform higher education by building "the great university of the 21st century."

Collaboration, even "radical collaboration," is at the heart of this approach. Diermeier and Raver believe cross-disciplinary research and scholarship are crucial to enhance creativity, encourage use of innovative technology, accelerate time to discovery and forever change higher education.

To encourage collaboration, they invested more than $80 million in new centers and institutes focused on the greatest challenges facing humanity, including sustainability, inequality and health, national security and finding effective drug treatments for cancer, and neurological and other diseases.

DISCOVERY VANDERBILT

In 2022, they also launched Discovery Vanderbilt, investing $50 million in the first year alone for collaborative research and scholarship with new initiatives like Seeding Success, Scaling Success, the Rapid-Advancement MicroGrant Program and Generative AI Seed Grant.

Less than five years later, the Discovery Vanderbilt results are compelling: This bold bet on faculty-led discovery is delivering nearly four times the return on investment. In other words, for every dollar that Vanderbilt invested, faculty have secured four dollars in external funding. Notably, Scaling Success has produced an extraordinary 17.5 times return on investment.

Raver is quick to point out that Vanderbilt's transformation to the great university of the 21st century must be measured on "our ability to develop a new generation of leaders that work collaboratively to solve our biggest challenges by finding feasible, implementable solutions that immediately yield benefit. That is what the university of the 21st century looks like." If she and Diermeier are right, their results will be a powerful antidote to the skepticism facing higher education.

FEEDING CURIOUS MINDS: 'QUANTUM POTENTIAL' PODCAST

C. Cybele Raver, Ji Hye Jung and Quantum Potential executive producer and Professor Jad Abumrad on the set of the Quantum Potential podcast (Harrison McClary/Vanderbilt University)

Raver prefers a quiet corner where she can talk with great minds over being in the spotlight. The Quantum Potential podcast is a perfect outlet for this erudite leader, who is always seeking more opportunities to connect faculty with broader audiences and champion their discoveries.

"I was hungry for the opportunity to talk with faculty whose work I was already reading. And then I realized that those conversations would be fascinating to other people too. To date, we have recorded seven interviews, and each one surprised me and enriched my life. When we sit down to record a Quantum Potential podcast, I know my subjects very well-and yet each time I am amazed by the ideas that we uncover together."

Raver's lineup for her podcast about Vanderbilt research might surprise you: poet Major Jackson, percussionist Ji Hye Jung with a Grammy-winning string quartet, law professor and former Supreme Court clerk Lauren Sudeall, senior political analyst Josh Clinton, personalized cancer medicine researcher Brian Bachmann and addiction expert Erin Calipari. The Quantum Potential podcast will premiere in January 2025 and be available on all major podcast platforms. Listeners are in for a treat.

• Listen to the Quantum Potential Podcast
• Follow the latest news from the Office of the Provost
• Watch videos from the 'Quantum Potential' series
• Read more research news from Vanderbilt

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