Adrianna Kezar recently sat down with Chancellor Tim White of the California State University system to discuss, among many other things, the newly released California State Graduation Initiative and what it will take to enact it. The key commitments of the initiative are: (1) hire more tenure-track faculty; (2) develop engaged advising; (3) solve the problem of bottleneck courses; (4) improve student preparation; (5) implement more high-impact practices; (6) expand data-driven decision-making; and (7) bolster transfer from community colleges. While the interview goal was to better understand the policy, what Kezar discovered along the way was that the underlying element that will make these policies work is wise leadership. Such leadership is increasingly hard to practice in public college and universities, which feel tossed about by politics, shrinking funding, and multiple and conflicting priorities. What current leaders can learn from this dialogue is to be more centered on core values and less concerned with fleeting pressures and trends.