In fulfillment of the Leadership Center’s mission to explore innovative leadership knowledge and practices to better those we serve, we endeavor to provide the latest thinking on issues and trends that impact all of us.
To that end, this collection is the varied speaker events hosted by the Leadership Center to the campus community.
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The Powerful Pull of Work Well-Being
Janine Moon
Janine has more than 20 years of executive and management level experience in various business environments, as well as executive and leadership development coaching, career coaching and peer advisory groups. Janine works with leaders who want to improve their presence and effectiveness in order to increase employee commitment and business results. In this session, leaders will recognize the value in fostering a workplace where associates can strengthen themselves and recreate the culture around the five aspects of work well being: physical, mental, emotional, social and spiritual. Each of these five aspects has two characteristics that can be awakened, developed and measured.
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There was a Silver Lining to the Pandemic! Can Our Institutions See It?
Vickie Thompson-Sandy
Join us as we continue to Re-Imagine Work with Mason Moments, where we’ll welcome Vickie Thompson-Sandy, President and CEO of The Buckeye Ranch, to discuss how the nonprofit human services sector adapted to help people in poverty using telehealth services. The human services industry learned it could provide safe and effective services via telehealth, which removed barriers that exist for clients who live in poverty, such as travel, childcare, and work schedule conflicts. This session will explore the challenges of transitioning a workforce back to a traditional face-to-face environment where telehealth is not feasible due to the slow system change process.
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Effective Toxic Leadership vs Pleiotropic Leadership (Demystifying Dark Transformational Leaders Session 3)
Cecelia Martin
Demystifying Dark Transformational Leaders with Dr. Cecelia Martin.
There is clearly a distinction between Transformational Leaders and other types of leaders. Affectionately known as Transformers, these powerful change agents ignite organizations to accomplish extraordinary outcomes that transcend the monotony of day-to-day operations. Transformers accomplish the mission, move others into action, and inspire the hearts and minds of many with grand and compelling visions. However, transformers can exemplify the best of leadership and the worst of leadership. When operating from the dark side of charisma, Transformers can become the single catalyst to derailing a company’s success, their impact can be catastrophic. Instead of ignoring or dismissing these dark traits, we can learn to recognize and mitigate the signs of toxicity in Transformers and use it as an opportunity to embed accountability and bring balance to the pressures that come with power and authority.
Session 3: Effective Toxic Leadership vs Pleiotropic Leadership
Contextual balance is crucial to understanding effective toxic leaders, which would support balance to studies that are bias and distorted. Inadequacies and incompetency do not necessarily translate into bad or toxic leadership as the literature might suggest, neither does poor judgment. Many great leaders have experienced challenges, but they are often able to reflect and change course. Some leaders are misinformed, lacking knowledge, and therefore made poor decisions. However, there is something different to be said about leaders who lead with venom, manipulate followers for personal gain, and knowingly commit crimes. Toxic leaders exhibit traits that influence and germinate negatively like a virus; whereas, the behaviors of pleiotropic leaders are consistent, but the results are extremely positive or extremely negative outcomes, at the opposite ends of the spectrum, with very little shades of grey.
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Augmented & Virtual Reality: How it can Elevate Education & Humanity
Alice Wroe
Alice Wroe researches and commissions innovative ways the global community of leaders can be together when physically apart, exploring what it means to be human whilst digital. Previously she was Creative Director of Magic Leap’s digital human Mica, where she oversaw the creative and ethical direction of the pioneering digital human who, under her direction, used art and culture to engender positive ways for society to relate to embodied AI. Through this work she explored whether it is possible for embodied AI to champion gender equality. As Founder of Herstory, Alice has creatively activated women’s history for some of the world’s leading brands and institutions. Driven by developing virtual experiences that do not compromise the humanity of the user, she says she is looking with hope to a future where technology enables everybody to reach their full potential and creates a fairer and more inclusive society.
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Dark Women Leaders – Examining the Dark Side of Transformational Leadership (Demystifying Dark Transformational Leaders Session 2)
Cecelia Martin
Demystifying Dark Transformational Leaders with Dr. Cecelia Martin.
There is clearly a distinction between Transformational Leaders and other types of leaders. Affectionately known as Transformers, these powerful change agents ignite organizations to accomplish extraordinary outcomes that transcend the monotony of day-to-day operations. Transformers accomplish the mission, move others into action, and inspire the hearts and minds of many with grand and compelling visions. However, transformers can exemplify the best of leadership and the worst of leadership. When operating from the dark side of charisma, Transformers can become the single catalyst to derailing a company’s success, their impact can be catastrophic. Instead of ignoring or dismissing these dark traits, we can learn to recognize and mitigate the signs of toxicity in Transformers and use it as an opportunity to embed accountability and bring balance to the pressures that come with power and authority.
Session 2: Dark Women Leaders – Examining the Dark Side of Transformational Leadership
The purpose of this lecture is to examine three alleged dark female transformational leaders, Margaret Thatcher, Indira Gandhi and Martha Stewart, accomplished women who have achieved success and recognition in their respective spheres of influence yet are also known for their abrasive personalities, destructive effects on followers, and as corporate lawbreakers
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Women in Leadership
Kim Campbell, Irina Batsenko, Elena Lagunina, Marjory Pizzuti, and Sherry Mercurio
You will learn how female leaders have carved their paths to success and discovered their leadership styles, and what it takes to exude an executive presence while being authentic, and so much more. This dynamic panel event brings together four leading women in their industries to discuss and advise on growing your leadership skills, with the goal of inspiring, educating, and offering tools for success for women in the workforce.
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Transformers – More than Meets the Eye: Examining the Dark Side of Transformational Leadership (Demystifying Dark Transformational Leaders Session 1)
Cecelia Martin
Demystifying Dark Transformational Leaders with Dr. Cecelia Martin.
There is clearly a distinction between Transformational Leaders and other types of leaders. Affectionately known as Transformers, these powerful change agents ignite organizations to accomplish extraordinary outcomes that transcend the monotony of day-to-day operations. Transformers accomplish the mission, move others into action, and inspire the hearts and minds of many with grand and compelling visions. However, transformers can exemplify the best of leadership and the worst of leadership. When operating from the dark side of charisma, Transformers can become the single catalyst to derailing a company’s success, their impact can be catastrophic. Instead of ignoring or dismissing these dark traits, we can learn to recognize and mitigate the signs of toxicity in Transformers and use it as an opportunity to embed accountability and bring balance to the pressures that come with power and authority.
Session 1: Transformers – More than Meets the Eye: Examining the Dark Side of Transformational Leadership
Leaders have their own style and approach to organizing and implementing vision and tasks. Leadership style is not only crucial to the progress and survival of an organization, but it can be a key element to company productivity and employee job satisfaction. The organization is the structure and infrastructure under which the leader and the followers’ function. Since the style or approach of a leader can help to improve an organization or cause it to deteriorate, it is equally important to examine to identify and acknowledge the dark side of transformational leadership.
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Leading Through Disruption
Brett Kaufman
Brett is a builder of conscious communities, believing that success comes easiest when working from one’s highest and best self. This has motivated his work to be centered around mental health, wellbeing, and creative expression. Brett’s vision of creating spaces that provide healthy, sustainable, and holistically supportive environments for people to work and live led to the founding of Kaufman Development in 2011 and has changed the real estate development landscape in one of the country’s fastest growing cities. This passion has also motivated Brett to become a coach and mentor to over 100 entrepreneurs, using a framework that taps into a person’s life journey and provides tools for meditation, therapy, and personal development.
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Leaning into the Future of Work: Lessons in Leadership from a NASA Astronaut
Douglas Wheelock
Col. Douglas Wheelock’s experience with interacting with our civilization's most advanced technologies and in leading successful space missions is legendary. In this time of extraordinary disruption and transformation of every aspect of society, his insights will help both leaders and educators prepare for the future and to develop the competencies that enable others to thrive in a VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous) future. About NASA Astronaut Douglas H. Wheelock (Colonel, U.S. Army, Ret.) Douglas H. Wheelock was selected by NASA in 1998. The retired Colonel has accumulated more than 178 days on the Space Shuttle, International Space Station, and Russian Soyuz. Wheelock flew on STS-120 in 2007, and in 2010, he served as a Flight Engineer for Expedition 24 and commander for Expedition 25. During this mission, Wheelock conducted three unplanned spacewalks to replace a faulty ammonia pump module. The New York native holds a Bachelor of Science in Applied Science and Engineering from the United States Military Academy in West Point, New York and a Master of Science in Aerospace Engineering from Georgia Tech in Atlanta, Georgia.
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Get in the Game! Series: The Business of Sports
Luke Fedlam
Luke is a partner in the firm’s Corporate Department leading the Sports Law Practice Group. He brings a well-rounded approach to the challenges athletes face at any phase of their career. Working with an athlete’s team of advisors he provides the essential, objective, thorough and balanced counsel necessary to leverage the opportunity at hand. Luke regularly advises a range of clients – from student athletes transitioning into professional sports, professional athletes navigating life on a team, to retiring athletes creating the game plan for their life after sports – on matters including marketing contract analysis, immigration issues, investment opportunity due diligence, asset protection, real estate development, brand and mark protection, as well as trust and estates. Prior to joining Porter Wright, Luke served as a legal manager in the mergers & acquisitions area and director of business development at The Scotts Miracle-Gro Company. He leads the advisory firm, Anomaly Sports Group.