Chief Operating Officer: Joe Massman

PUBLISHED JANUARY 2024

He came from a large Kansas City family and grew up around a lot of other big families, so Joe Massman’s introduction to complex organizations came early in life. “A focal point for me,” he says, “was how they set priorities. That always grounded me, along with my wife and my own family, in making my own decisions.” 

Massman, our selection as chief operating officer of the year for his achievements at Kansas City University, isn’t your garden-variety COO—in fact, he carries two titles for the state’s largest medical college, also serving as its chief financial officer. In his combined role, he oversees both administrative and fiscal affairs, and his leadership extends across finance, campus operations, facilities, human resources, compliance and legal affairs, and information technology.

That’s a lot on anyone’s plate, and Massman approaches it with a value set that runs all the way back to those days growing up in Brookside. “Several of my mentors were at a little old-school,” he says, and one of them, whose funeral Massman recently attended, had been particularly influential as an eighth-grade football coach. “Mr. Fitzgerald is a good example of an influential person I learned a lot from,” Massman says. “He was genuine, very authentic, and he taught us a lot about the importance of showing up, being accountable, working hard, doing your best, and putting the interests of the team and others above your own. He engaged with his family and community with a clear sense of direction and set expectations that I’ve used as a frame of reference in my life.”

Massman went on to earn his business degree from Notre Dame, then his MBA from New York University. He also graduated from Harvard University’s Institute for Educational Management. His interest in accounting was sparked with a class in high school, “and I was reasonably good at math,” he says. “People I trusted told me to pursue accounting; they said it was the language of biz. And it’s still an advantage for people getting into the working world.”

He went to work for KPMG because he thought it was the best firm in town and found his way to the audit track. “I was grateful they hired me because I was able to work with and for some of the smartest and best people I ever met,” he says. “As far as audit or tax, I thought that audit would give me more exposure to the operations of a business and the people who manage it, and I knew I’d eventually move out of accounting and into operations.”

Having done the East Coast thing and lived in Los Angeles early in his career, he knew that he’d be coming home to raise a family. Over the years, he has worked for some big brands in regional business, including fast-growth startups like Freightquote and the ETF Store, among others. Since his arrival at KCU in 2011, he’s been part of the leadership team driving significant growth, including the expansion of the campus on Independence Avenue and the development of a new campus in Joplin. He has also led operating-system upgrades and process improvement for its IT, human resources, facilities, and financial systems. He’s also flexed some development cops by leading strategic real-estate acquisition and planning/execution for various projects involving facilities, renovation, and maintenance.

When the role at KCU presented itself, he says, it wasn’t a slam-dunk decision. “I was contacted about it but didn’t take it seriously at first. The more I learned about it, though, I saw that it could be really different than anything I’d ever done. It was really challenging where the university was at the time, and I saw the possibilities of change and had in mind what I thought needed to get done to make it work and improve it. That was exciting to me, and the mission also connected with me. It’s very different trying to help the university, rather than being focused on venture capital or private-equity return.”

It didn’t hurt, he says, to enter that setting with a background from more entrepreneurial settings. “When you’re at a business that’s scaling or growing quickly, you need to understand the business and how to drive growth. You need to wear a lot of hats, building infrastructure and solving problems across a lot of functional areas. You have to learn those quickly; typically, if you’re scaling rapidly with small amounts of capital, you don’t have a ton of depth. So, I really had exposure to a lot of the areas I work with right now and was more prepared than some others might have been to take those on. That experienced helped me take a fresh look at some of the challenges we faced.”