Join the Conversation - Harvard Business Publishing Launches Frontline Leadership Forum

I am excited, honored and humbled to have been asked to participate in a project that has just been launched by Harvard Business Publishing. Frontline Leadership is an on-line forum for discussing how the leadership lessons being learned in Iraq and Afghanistan can translate into leadership in the business world and beyond.

Frontline Leadership - "A new generation of leaders is coming of age on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan, where various combinations of counterinsurgency, urban combat, and nation building require unprecedented levels of innovation and flexibility. In Frontline Leadership, young veteran leaders and military leadership experts discuss the changing nature of leadership in war and what civilian managers can learn from it.”

I am pleased to introduce the group of commentators that has been assembled, under the leadership of Katherine Bell of Harvard Business Publishing.

Meet the distinguished team of commentators who anchor the Frontline Leadership discussions hosted by Harvard Business Publishing:

Rye Barcott is the president and founder of Carolina For Kibera, an NGO that has fought poverty and promoted ethnic and religious reconciliation in Nairobi, Kenya since 2001. After establishing CFK, Barcott served in the U.S. Marine Corps and deployed to Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Horn of Africa, and Iraq. He is currently a joint MPA and MBA candidate at Harvard University. Captain Barcott is a member of Harvard University's Advisory Committee on Shareholder Responsibility and Committee on Rights and Responsibilities, and he serves on the UNC NROTC Board of Directors and the World Learning Board of Trustees.

Donovan Campbell is currently a Zone Sales Leader Designate working for Frito-Lay in Dallas, Texas. He returned to Frito in September from a year-long involuntary military recall, during which he helped Special Operations Command Central start its Tribal Engagement Initiative in Afghanistan. After four years as a Marine Corps infantry officer, intelligence officer, and sniper platoon commander, including two tours in Iraq, Campbell graduated from Harvard Business School. His book about his Marine platoon and their 2004 Iraq tour together, Joker One, will be published in 2009.

Al Chase is the founder of White Rhino Partners, an executive search firm specializing in placing entrepreneurial leaders who have had a distinguished military career and/or are service academy graduates and hold MBAs from top-tier business schools.

Nathaniel C. Fick is a Fellow at the Center for a New American Security. He served as a Marine Corps infantry and reconnaissance officer, including operational assignments in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iraq. In 2007, Fick was a civilian instructor at the Afghanistan Counterinsurgency Academy in Kabul. He is the author of the New York Times bestseller One Bullet Away. He holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and an MPA in international security policy from Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government.

David Gowel graduated from the United States Military Academy in 2002. His military experience includes graduation from the US Army Ranger School, combat leadership as an armor platoon leader in Iraq and his position as Assistant Professor of Military Science at MIT. Currently, he is a US Army Reserve Captain serving as adjunct faculty at MIT, President and CEO of Clearly Creative, a marketing company, and he is earning his Master's Degree in Management from Harvard University.

Colonel Tom Kolditz is Professor and Head of the Department of Behavioral Sciences and Leadership at the US Military Academy at West Point, New York. Kolditz has served in an array of military tactical command and technical staff assignments worldwide, commanding through battalion level, and as a leadership and human resources policy analyst in the Pentagon. His most recent book is In Extremis Leadership: Leading as if Your Life Depended on It.

Doug Raymond manages several of Google's advertising product teams and works on the development and testing of new advertising formats in markets around the world. He is a former Army officer and served in the 1st Armored Division and 66th Military Intelligence Group, both based in Germany. He is a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a Principal of the Truman National Security Project. Doug holds a B.S. from the United States Military Academy and an MBA from Harvard Business School.

Scott Snook is currently an Associate Professor of Organizational Behavior at Harvard Business School. He served in the US Army Corps of Engineers for over 22 years, earning the rank of Colonel before retiring in 2002. He has led soldiers in combat. Among his military decorations are the Legion of Merit, Bronze Star, Purple Heart, and Master Parachutist badge. He has an MBA from the Harvard Business School and a Ph.D. from Harvard University in Organizational Behavior. His most recent book is Friendly Fire.

Everett Spain is currently a White House Fellow in Washington, DC, and just returned from Baghdad, where he served as the aide-de-camp to the commander of the Multi-National Force-Iraq, General David Petraeus. Earlier in his career, he was an assistant professor at West Point, where he taught Leading Organizations through Change and developed the degree granting partnership between West Point and Columbia University. As a US Army Officer, Everett served in Germany, Kosovo, and across the US with various outfits, including the 82d Airborne Division. Everett is a graduate of the United States Military Academy and earned an MBA from Duke University's Fuqua School of Business.

Maura Sullivan, a former Marine Captain, spent seven months as a logistics officer in Fallujah. She is currently an MBA/MPA candidate at Harvard's Business and Kennedy Schools. Last summer she worked for McKinsey in Singapore; this summer she worked at PepsiCo in New York.

Leonard Wong is a research professor in the Strategic Studies Institute at the U.S. Army War College who focuses on the human and organizational dimensions of the military. He is a retired lieutenant colonel whose career includes teaching leadership at West Point and serving as an analyst for the Chief of Staff of the Army. His research has led him to locations such as Iraq, Afghanistan, Kosovo, Bosnia, and Vietnam and has been highlighted in media such as the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, New Yorker, CNN, NPR, PBS, and 60 Minutes. He holds a B.S. from West Point and a Ph.D. from Texas Tech University.

I am deeply grateful to Harvard Business Publishing and to Katherine Bell for their leadership, foresight and initiative in serving as catalyst and host for this project. I encourage you to log onto the site and join in the conversation. Already, in the first few days of dialogue, it is clear that there will be a wide divergence of opinions expressed. Add your voice to ours in exploring the limits of leadership.

FrontLine Leadership Link

Enjoy!

Al