Practical Wisdom for Leaders with Scott J. Allen, Ph.D.

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Dr. Michael Lickers is a well-known Kanien’keha:ka, educator from Six Nations of the Grand River in Canada.  

Michael is an Adjunct Professor at Royal Road University in the School of Leadership and serves as the Indigenous Scholar in Residence. Michael is also an Associate faculty in the College of Interdisciplinary Studies and School of Environment and Sustainability. 

Michael has recently retired after years of service from his role as Specialist in Indigenous and Community Relations. A Founder and past Executive Director of the Ghost River Redi...

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Doug Conant is the only former Fortune 500 CEO who is a New York Times and Wall Street Journal best-selling author, has been a Top 50 Leadership Innovator, a Top 100 Leadership Speaker, and twice named one of the 100 Most Influential Authors in the World.

A devoted leadership practitioner and teacher, Doug's 45-year career is defined by achieving high performance through an intentional commitment to studying, practicing, improving, and spreading the tenets of "leadership that works."

He is Founder and CEO of ConantLeadership, former President and CEO of Campbell Soup Company, former...

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Rear Admiral Michael N. Parks, United States Coast  Guard, Retired, assumed the responsibilities in April 2015  as Regional Executive of the Northern Ohio Region of the American Red Cross. In this capacity he oversees five  American Red Cross Chapters covering 31 Northern Ohio counties serving 5.3 million people. 

From 2010 to 2013, Parks was based in Cleveland and served as Commander, Ninth Coast Guard District, responsible for leading and directing all Coast Guard operations throughout the eight-state Great Lakes region, including the 1,500-mile international border with Canada. In that capacity he led more than 6,000 active, reserve, civi...

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Dr. Nathan Eva is a Fulbright Scholar (2021) and the co-director of Engagement for the Department of Management at the Monash Business School. His research examines follower-first leadership approaches that deliver organizational performance combined with inclusive and supportive workplaces.

Associate Professor Eva received his Ph.D. from Monash University in 2014, received the 2015 Emerald/EFMD Outstanding Doctoral Research Award in Leadership, was awarded as a 2016 Greenleaf Scholar by the Greenleaf Centre for Servant Leadership, received the 2020 Dean's Awards for Excellence in Research by an Early Career Researcher, and was Highly Commended for his...

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Steve Drotter is an American leadership expert, widely read author, and executive consultant best known for being the lead author of the influential business book The Leadership Pipeline. He is widely recognized for his work in leadership development, succession planning and organization design.

Drotter has more than five decades working on the human side of business. He has worked with over 150 businesses, large and small, in 37 countries, across many industries. Working with boards and CEOs, he has advised on 50 CEO succession plans. Many of his customers lead their industries and use...

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Gary Lloyd is a change leadership practitioner, author of Gardeners Not Mechanics: How to Cultivate Change at Work, and creator of Leadership Skills Lab and Leadership Skill Builder. He has spent much of his career leading complex change and developing leaders, including more than a decade as a mentor and former co-chair of Warwick Business School’s mentoring programme. His current work explores how AI can support safe practice, reflection, and genuinely personalised leadership development.

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Rob Kaiser is a road-worn veteran of executive selection and development in the C-suite and the author of five books, including The Versatile Leader and Fear Your Strengths (both with Bob Kaplan), along with Executive Selection, Filling the Leadership Pipeline, and The Perils of Accentuating the Positive. His work has also appeared in hundreds of peer-reviewed articles in behavioral science and business press, as well as in professional presentations. In the late 1990s, Rob's research identified versatility, the capacity to balance seemingly opposing leadership behaviors such as forceful and enabling, or strategic and...

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Jon Acuff is a New York Times bestselling author of 11 books, including Soundtracks, Finish, and All It Takes Is a Goal, which together have sold more than one million copies. His newest book, Procrastination Proof: Never Get Stuck Again (Baker Books, April 14, 2026), argues that procrastination isn't a character flaw but a learned coping mechanism, drawn from more than a decade of research and testing with over 30,000 participants. Named one of Inc.'s Top 100 Leadership Speakers, Acuff has delivered keynotes for organizations including Microsoft, Walmart, FedEx, Nissan, and Comedy Central.

Acuff hosts...

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Jeff Fellows is currently the Business Development Executive for the Naval Air Missiles portfolio at Raytheon, focused on meeting warfighter demands for lethal and survivable mission effectors. With a background in 5th-generation tactics, Jeff has also spearheaded growth strategy and tactical applications for next-generation technology within Raytheon's Advanced Technology Strategic Business Unit.

Retiring from active-duty naval service in January 2022, Jeff spent 20 years leading high-velocity organizations as an officer and combat aviator. An experienced carrier pilot with more than 3,300 flight hours and 660 arrested landings in F/A-18 E/F Super Hornets and...

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Mark Shapiro is an American-born Canadian baseball executive, born April 3, 1967, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Shapiro joined the Cleveland Indians in 1991, rising from an entry-level role to general manager (2001) and then team president (2010). During his 24 years there, the Indians won six division titles and two AL pennants. He was named Sporting News Executive of the Year twice, in 2005 and 2007.

In 2015 he became president and CEO of the Toronto Blue Jays, succeeding Paul Beeston. He hired Ross Atkins as GM, oversaw renovations to the Dunedin player development complex and Rogers Centre, and signed a...

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Dr. Steven Segal is a psychologist, philosophical counsellor, and leadership coach. He is a former Associate Professor at the Macquarie Graduate School of Management and has spent more than two decades working at the intersection of psychology, philosophy, leadership, and organisational life. His work explores how individuals and communities respond to uncertainty, disruption, and existential threats—those moments when people experience a loss of meaning, belonging, identity, or a sense of being at home in the world. Through his therapy, counselling, coaching, teaching, and writing, he helps individuals and organisations navigate co...

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Dr. Tyson Yunkaporta is an academic, arts critic, and researcher who is a member of the Apalech Clan in far north Queensland, Australia. He works as a senior lecturer in Indigenous Knowledges at Deakin University in Melbourne, where he also founded the Indigenous Knowledge Systems Lab.

He carves traditional tools and weapons alongside his academic work, and his writing process draws on this practice, often beginning with images and carvings rather than words. He is best known as the author of Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World (2019), which...

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Dr. Shane McLoughlin is an Associate Professor in the School of Education at the University of Birmingham, where he works in the world-leading Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtues. He is a leading expert on Aristotle’s concept of practical wisdom, and his work brings together moral philosophy and psychology, character education, behavioural science, differential psychology, clinical psychology, coaching psychology, and psychometrics to explore how people develop the good character and judgement needed to live and act well.

Shane is the author of Practical Wisdom Coaching, published by Routledge, and serves as...

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Dr. William (Willy) Donaldson has over 35 years of experience as a Board member and President and has been CEO of 8 companies and over 30 years of experience in higher education. Willy is the Founder and President of Strategic Venture Planning, a management consulting firm that assists boards, investors and senior management teams maximize results.

Dr. Donaldson is an Assistant Professor in Finance. He teaches Advanced Financial Statement Analysis, Entrepreneurial Finance, Strategic Management, Innovation, Entrepreneurship and Systems Thinking, as well as multiple capstone classes. Dr. Donaldson is the Director of the Luter Business...

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Keith Eigel, Ph.D. is the founder of The Leaders Lyceum (lye-see-um), an organization dedicated to leveraging challenges to accelerate the leaderʼs journey to sustained effectiveness. He is co-author of a forthcoming book on personality, leader effectiveness, and leveraging the diversity of perspective for team performance called The Vehicle.  Over the last twenty-five years, his research and writing have had a global reach, being cited in academic and best-selling publications on 5 continents. Keith and his team have honed a developmental curriculum that extends and leverages over sixty years of...

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Dr. Randal Joy Thompson is a scholar-practitioner and global citizen who has assumed leadership positions and led teams in countries around the world including Cameroon, Morocco, Romania, Ukraine, Moldova, and Belarus, Iraq, Afghanistan, Morocco, Liberia, Nigeria, Ghana, Myanmar, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and El Salvador, initially as a Commissioned US Foreign Service Officer and then as independent contractor. Her scholarship has focused primarily on leadership, focusing on women, teams, and the commons. She works with organizations to help facilitate the establishment of autonomous self-led teams as well as to help...

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Dr. Randal Joy Thompson is a scholar-practitioner and global citizen who has assumed leadership positions and led teams in countries around the world including Cameroon, Morocco, Romania, Ukraine, Moldova, and Belarus, Iraq, Afghanistan, Morocco, Liberia, Nigeria, Ghana, Myanmar, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and El Salvador, initially as a Commissioned US Foreign Service Officer and then as independent contractor. Her scholarship has focused primarily on leadership, focusing on women, teams, and the commons. She works with organizations to help facilitate the establishment of autonomous self-led teams as well as to help...

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Dr. Jonathan W. White is an endowed professor in the School of Civic Leadership at the University of Texas at Austin. He is the author or editor of more than 17 books covering various topics, including civil liberties during the Civil War, the USS Monitor and the Battle of Hampton Roads, the presidential election of 1864, and what Abraham Lincoln and soldiers dreamt about.

Among his awards are the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia’s Outstanding Faculty Award (2019), CNU’s Alumni Society Award for Teaching and Mentoring (2016), the Abraham Lincoln Institute Book...

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Adam Tarnow is a leadership development specialist, keynote speaker, and author of The Fog of Work. With a unique blend of humor, humility, and hard-won insight, Adam helps professionals get out of their own way, navigate complexity, and lead with confidence.

A recovering CPA and former public accountant, Adam now heads up the Leadership Development Practice at PeopleWorks International, where he equips leaders to thrive in today’s fast-paced, people-driven workplaces. He’s spoken to audiences across industries—from manufacturing to professional services to education—and has a gift for making complex...

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Cameron Mofid is a traveler, social entrepreneur, and speaker who became one of the youngest verified people ever to visit all 195 countries in the world by the age of 25. After struggling with obsessive-compulsive disorder for much of his life, Cameron used travel as a form of “real-world exposure therapy,” pushing himself into unfamiliar and uncomfortable environments across the globe. His experiences ultimately inspired him to found Humanity Effect, a nonprofit organization supporting children in Makoko, Nigeria through schools and an orphanage serving hundreds of students. Cameron’s work and story have been featured by For...

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Marshall Ganz is a senior lecturer in public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School and one of the leading thinkers on leadership as collective action.

He began his career as a grassroots organizer during the civil rights era, working with Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and later with the United Farm Workers, where he helped build organizing capacity among farmworkers. That field experience became the foundation for his lifelong focus on leadership, organizing, and social movements.

Ganz later transitioned into academia, where he developed frameworks that bridge practice and theory...

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Dr. Eric Kaufman is a Professor, Extension specialist, and associate head for Virginia Tech’s Department of Agricultural, Leadership, and Community Education. He developed and now coordinates Virginia Tech’s graduate certificate program in Collaborative Community Leadership.  He also supports an academic major in Community Leadership and Development, as well as an undergraduate minor in Leadership and Social Change.  Eric’s research investigates and promotes collective leadership, with special emphasis on followership, problem solving, and leadership-as-practice.  He is a past president of the Association of Leadership Educators (ALE) and a past chair of the Inter...

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Dan Jenkins, Ph.D., is Professor of Leadership & Organizational Studies at the University of Southern Maine. Co-author of The Role of Leadership Educators: Transforming Learning and author of over 75 peer-reviewed publications, his scholarship spans leadership pedagogy, artificial intelligence (AI), followership, critical thinking, and curriculum design. A pioneer in integrating AI into development, training, and education, he develops innovative courses preparing students for digital-age leadership challenges. Dan serves as Co-Founder of the International Leadership Association’s Leadership Education Academy, Associate Editor of the Journal of Leadership Studies, and co-host of The Leadership Ed...

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Jay Abbasi is a global keynote speaker, TEDx speaker, coach, and former Tesla leader who helps professionals thrive under pressure without burning out. At Tesla, he led national training programs for over 1,000 employees, and has since coached leaders at Google, Amazon, TikTok, Wells Fargo, and many more. He’s been featured in Forbes Founder, Authority Magazine, and Medium, and is the host of the top-rated podcast Unstuck with Jay Abbasi. Blending corporate experience with deep expertise in mindfulness, resilience, and well-being, Jay offers a powerful message: success isn’t about avoiding challenges, but mast...

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Dr. Chris Rehm is passionate about developing leadership capacity from younger ages, rather than waiting until college or adulthood. His early work in schools propelled him into educational administration and consulting, where he gained experience with curricular and organizational alignment, intentional learning outcome design, strategic planning, program evaluation, and technology implementation. Chris is currently Head of School at Wuhan Yangtze International School. 

Joel Wright is a leadership architect, social entrepreneur, innovator, and facilitator of leadership and organizational development. For over 20 years, he has focused on the question: what would the world l...

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Thomas Hill III is the chief executive officer of Kimray, Inc. As the grandson of Kimray's founder, Garman Kimmell, Thomas grew up around the family business and manages the family-owned company with a sense of stewardship and heritage. 

In 1948, Kimray revolutionized pressure regulation in the oil and gas industry by introducing a three-inch pilot-operated back pressure regulator. The company has since grown to be a globally-known manufacturer of a comprehensive line of reliable, smart, and inventive American-made control equipment for safely and efficiently producing oil and gas. Having worked in virtually e...

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John Bernatovicz is a husband, father, brother, entrepreneur, author, and lifelong Northeast Ohioan. Over the last 15 years, he has started or been an owner of six business ventures and is the president and founder of Willory, a staffing and consulting firm solely focused on HR and payroll.

As the president and founder of Willory, John focuses on transforming organizations to meet their full potential. Through Willory, John ensures his clients have the best talent in their HR and payroll department and optimize the technology supporting companies’ number one asset: people. With ov...

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Dr. Melisa Buie is a problem solver, author, and operational excellence leader known for making complex systems work better. Her work spans advanced technologies such as lasers and semiconductor equipment, as well as large-scale global manufacturing and business systems.

Melisa’s career sits at the intersection of engineering innovation and operational performance. She has held key roles with leading organizations in the semiconductor and photonics industries, including Lam Research, Coherent, Applied Materials, and Advanced Energy. As Global Director for Lean Operational Excellence at Coherent, Inc., a $2B global photonics solutions company, sh...

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Elisa Mallis is currently the Global Vice President of Global Research, Innovation and New Content Creation at the Center for Creative Leadership (CCL®), a top-ranked global provider of executive education. The organization uses research to develop people into better leaders, transforming individuals, teams, organizations, and societies.

She has over 20 years of experience as a business leader focused on transformational change, human capital strategy, and sales and marketing. She is known for her ability to successfully blend a focus on purpose and values with practical actions and results. Growing up between countries, G...

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Dr. Joel Rothaizer is a psychologist, executive coach, organizational consultant and leadership development specialist. He’s Board Certified in Organizational & Business Consulting Psychology, and a Master Certified Coach through the International Coaching Federation. His book on leadership, called Clear Impact, has been strongly endorsed by Ken Wilber. The head of Integral Zen calls it the most integral book on leadership he’s ever read.

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Ronald E. Riggio, Ph. D., is the Henry R. Kravis Professor of Leadership and Organizational Psychology and former director of the Kravis Leadership Institute at Claremont McKenna College. He is the author of more than a dozen books and more than 100 research articles and book chapters on leadership, assessment centers, organizational psychology, and social psychology. He's served on the editorial boards of The Leadership Quarterly, Leadership, Group Dynamics, and Journal of Nonverbal Behavior.

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Mark O’Donnell is a highly successful entrepreneur, CEO, and Expert EOS Implementer™. He is the current Visionary and CEO of EOS Worldwide. Named to the 2022 and 2023 Inc. 5000 as one of America’s fastest-growing companies, as well as to the 2022 Inaugural Inc. Power Partner list, EOS Worldwide has helped thousands of entrepreneurs all over the globe get everything they want from their businesses.

Mark has also served as Head Coach for the company. He has helped more than 100 companies achieve their goals and get what they want from their businesses.

As a...

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Dr. David M. Rosch is an associate professor in agricultural leadership, education, and communications at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, where he teaches leadership theory and studies the impact of leadership development on young people. He has been repeatedly recognized for teaching excellence and received his college’s Teaching Excellence Award. Dave serves as editor of the Journal of Campus Activities Practice and Scholarship and has held numerous leadership roles within the International Leadership Association and related organizations. He has authored more than 50 scholarly works and earned his PhD in higher educ...

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Dr. Barbara Kellerman is a Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Center for Public Leadership. She was the Founding Executive Director of the Center, and a member of the Kennedy School faculty for over twenty years. Kellerman has held professorships at Fordham, Tufts, Fairleigh Dickinson, George Washington, Christopher Newport, and the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth. She also served as Director of the Center for the Advanced Study of Leadership at the University of Maryland.

Kellerman received her B.A. from Sarah Lawrence College, and her M.A. M.Ph...

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Ira Chaleff is an author, speaker, and executive coach in the greater Washington, DC, area. His extensive experience with the US federal government includes directing and chairing the nonpartisan Congressional Management Foundation, where he is now Chair Emeritus. 

Ira co-authored the original handbook for newly elected Members of Congress, now in its fifteenth edition, and has facilitated over a hundred retreats for congressional offices. He has led and participated in Democracy strengthening programs in Asia and West Africa and consulted for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty in Eastern Europe.

H...

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Paul Crick is grounded in, and informed by, the principles, wisdom and practice of the martial art of Aikido, which he applies as a powerful discipline for mastering his craft as a seasoned, transformational coach. Through this lens, he supports leaders and teams to carve out their own distinctive path to success.

With over two decades of hard-earned personal and professional experience working internationally as a consultant and coach, Paul specialises in enabling clients to navigate uncertainty and periods of intense transition and growth, amplifying clarity, confidence and impact at moments...

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Peter Weiss is a leadership mentor, former CEO, and founder of MindKaizen. He works with senior leaders operating under high pressure and complexity, helping them strengthen their inner operating system so they can meet today’s demands with clarity and stability. His work focuses on staying grounded under pressure, acting in line with personal values, and protecting the relationships that matter most.

Originally from Germany, and with a background in bioengineering and an MBA, Peter spent decades leading and transforming organizations across Asia. He founded and led the Kaizen Institute Thailand an...

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Dr. Toby Newstead is a respected leadership scholar and practitioner at the University of Tasmania, located in lutruwita on the lands of the palawa and pakana people. With a background in corporate change, leadership development, and professional communications, she brings practical expertise to her academic, coaching, and consulting work.

An internationally recognized researcher, Dr. Newstead specializes in virtues-based leadership development, leadership ethics, and leadership in the volunteer sector. Her research appears in top journals. In 2023, she published a book titled Leadership and Virtues: Understanding and Practicing Good Leadership.

Dr...

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Dr. David V. Day holds appointments as Professor of Psychological Science and Leadership and serves as the Academic Director of the Kravis Leadership Institute at Claremont McKenna College in California (USA). He has published more than 100 peer-reviewed journal articles, books, and book chapters, many pertaining to the core topics of leadership and leadership development and is the author of the recent book titled “Developing Leaders and Leadership: Principles, Practices, and Processes.” David received the 2024 Eminent Scholar Award from the Network of Leadership Scholars at the Academy of Management and the Lifetime Achievement Award from...

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Nick Hart is the Principal at Horizon English School in Dubai, part of the Cognita global network of schools.  Nick holds an MBA in International Educational Leadership and has authored two books on educational leadership, focusing on its cultural and impact domains.

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