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At Decade’s End, the 2019 Symposium Addresses Ethics and Leadership with an Eye to Training, Gridlock, and More

As the decade closed, the McGowan Fellows—10 top-ranked students from 10 top-ranked MBA programs—met with alumni and renowned faculty and business leaders at the yearly McGowan Symposium on Business Leadership & Ethics. The subject: leadership in a VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous) world.

We’ve captured the essence of the symposium in three idea-rich interviews with the four national experts who presented at this year’s meeting. Among our questions: What has changed in our era and how do we train leaders for this change? How can we reach into and attenuate the socioeconomic causes of disease? And how can all of us bridge the gaping—and debilitating—divides that are growing among us?

The experts are:

Col. Charles D. Allen (retired) and Col. Joseph LeBoeuf (retired), who addressed the enduring principles of leadership that operate in VUCA conditions.

Jason Jay, senior lecturer at MIT Sloan School of Management, known for his work on intransigence in conversation and his book Breaking Through Gridlock: The Power of Conversation in a Polarized World.

David Vawdrey, then chief data informatics officer at Geisinger’s Steele Institute for Health Innovation, whose work has addressed the challenging world patients live and work in.

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