Bernard Banks
Bernie is a noted expert about leadership and organizational change. Currently, he is the Associate Dean for Leadership Development and Inclusion and a Clinical Professor of Management at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management. As an Associate Dean, Bernie is accountable for leader development integration across the school's global portfolio of programs. He is also accountable for the generation, integration, and implementation of Diversity/Equity/Inclusion initiatives for the institution.
Bernie retired from the United States Army as a Brigadier General in 2016 after having successfully led West Point's Department of Behavioral Sciences & Leadership from 2012- 2016. In addition to having studied leadership extensively, he has led multiple military units ranging in size from 10 to 3000+ people. In 1995, Bernie was selected from over 40,000 officers to receive the Army's top award for entry-level managers (General Douglas MacArthur Leadership Award). In 2006, the Apache Helicopter unit he was leading in South Korea was designated as the top Apache Helicopter unit globally in the U.S. Army's annual best aviation unit competition.
A West Point graduate, Bernie is broadly educated. He holds graduate degrees from Northwestern, Columbia, and Harvard Universities. Additionally, he earned his Ph.D. in social-organizational psychology from Columbia University. Bernie's work has been published in a variety of outlets (e.g., Harvard Business Review, Military Psychology, New York Times). Furthermore, he has worked extensively with organizations across all sectors concerning their leader development efforts (e.g., Procter and Gamble, Mercedes Benz, General Electric, IBM, 7-Eleven, The US Forest Service, International Chiefs of Police).
Achal Bassamboo
Achal is the Charles E. Morrison Professor at Kellogg Codirector of the MMM program which is dual degree program between Kellogg School of Management & McCormick School of Engineering. He joined the Kellogg faculty in 2005. Achal holds a Ph.D. in Operations, Information and Technology from Stanford Graduate School of Business. His research interests include service systems, revenue management, and information sharing. He is currently studying flexible service systems with a focus on capacity planning and effects of parameter uncertainty and the credibility (or lack thereof) of information provided by a service provider or a retailer to its customers. His articles have appeared in leading journals, including Management Science, Manufacturing and Service Operations Management, and Operations Research. Professor Bassamboo was awarded the 2016 "Young Scholar Award" given by the Manufacturing and Service Operations Management Society for his research, Editorial boards for Management Science, POMS and Naval Research Logistics. Professor Bassamboo teaches courses on operations management, supply chain logistics, decision models and statistics.
Steven Franconeri
Steve is leading scientist, teacher, and speaker on visual thinking, visual communication, and the psychology of data visualization. He is a Professor of Psychology in the Weinberg College of Arts & Sciences at Northwestern, Director of the Northwestern Cognitive Science Program, as well as a Kellogg Professor of Management & Organizations by Courtesy. He is the director of the Visual Thinking Laboratory, where a team of researchers explore how leveraging the visual system – the largest single system in your brain - can help people think, remember, and communicate more efficiently. His undergraduate training was in computer science and cognitive science at Rutgers University, followed by a Ph.D. in Experimental Psychology from Harvard University, and postdoctoral research at the University of British Columbia. His work on both Cognitive Science and Data Visualization has been funded by the National Science Foundation, as well as the Department of Education, and the Department of Defense. He has received a prestigious National Science Foundation CAREER award, given to researchers who combine excellent research with outstanding teaching, and he has received a Psychonomic Society Early Career award for his research on visual thinking.
Fred Harburg
Fred is a Clinical Professor at Northwestern University, Kellogg School of Management, and the former Executive Director of the Kellogg Executive Leadership Institute. He provides catalyzing research, growth guidance, and executive coaching to many of the most respected Boards, CEOs, and C-Suite Teams. Fred served as the Chief Learning Officer for Motorola and Williams Energy, and Senior Vice President for Leadership and Learning at Fidelity. He began his career as a pilot, taught industrial psychology at the US Air Force Academy, and was a flight instructor for cadets, including some of the first US Air Force female pilots. He lectured at MIT, Harvard Business School, and Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. Fred is a senior fellow at PathNorth and served as a board member for The Human Performance Institute. His expertise makes him a sought-after keynote speaker, executive coach, writer, and consultant.
Fred, his wife, and their three children lived abroad for six years when his work took him to all parts of Europe and Asia. He now resides with this wife in Santa Fe, New Mexico where he is an avid mountain hiker and skier (who sometimes overestimates his abilities and lacks good judgment regarding his abilities to ski every slope).
Matt Ranen
Matt’s expertise comes from nine years as a leader at Global Business Network (GBN), the pioneering scenario consultancy that helped elevate the field of scenario planning worldwide. At GBN, and its parent firm, Monitor Group, he designed and led customized client engagements across a range of industries, globally, and served as an instructor in scenario planning methodology for both public and private courses. While at GBN, Matt developed new elements of the scenario methodology to connect it to strategy, innovation, and risk management decision tools.
In addition to his consultancy work, he has over eleven years of work in product management and new product development at a variety of technology and media companies--including startups--where he helped define and launch new-to-the-world products and services. His industry experience provides a practical foundation for connecting the broad issues explored in scenario work to tangible client decisions and solutions. This perspective is further enhanced by roles as Program Director for the Conference Board’s Strategy Executives Council and Guest Speaker on scenario planning and strategy for the Kellogg School of Management’s Executive Education programs.
Matt lives in the San Francisco Bay Area and works globally.
Peter Rea
Peter is the Vice President of Integrity and Ethics at Parker Hannifin in Cleveland, Ohio. He leads the Company's Integrity and Ethics function including the 'Winning With Integrity' program which is about preserving Parker’s reputation and protecting the Company’s financial strength by taking a strength-based approach to leadership and culture that is guided by character defined by virtue. Peter received his Ph.D. from the University of Akron. He served as the Director of the Center for Innovation and Growth at Baldwin Wallace University for twenty-nine years between 1983 and 2012. He is the author of six books including Exception to the Rule: The Surprising Science of Character-Based Culture which Fellows will read in preparation for class six.
Leigh Thompson
Leigh is the J. Jay Gerber Distinguished Professor of Dispute Resolution and Organizations at the Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University. An acclaimed researcher, author, and speaker, Thompson’s research focuses on negotiation, creativity, and teamwork. Thompson’s books include: Negotiating the Sweet Spot: The Art of Leaving Nothing on the Table, Creative Conspiracy: The New Rules of Breakthrough Collaboration, The Truth about Negotiations and Stop Spending, Start Managing. Thompson directs several executive education programs, including: Leading High-Impact Teams, High Performance Negotiation Skills, Constructive Collaboration, Negotiating in a Virtual World, and Creativity as Competitive Edge: Inspiration, Ideation and Implementation. Thompson created several publicly available teaching videos: Negotiation 101, Teamwork 101, High Performance Collaboration: Leadership, Teamwork, and Negotiation (MOOC series with Coursera), as well as, Is Your Team Slacking?, Managing Virtual Teams, High- Performance Negotiation Skills for Women, and How Brainwriting can Neutralize the Loudmouths.
Brooke Vuckovic
Brooke Olson Vuckovic is a Clinical Professor of Leadership at the Kellogg School of Management, where she teaches on a wide variety of leadership topics including the Moral Complexity in Leadership. Brooke received Kellogg's most prestigious teaching award, the L.G. Lavengood Professor of the Year, in 2021. Her work at Kellogg reflects her deep interest in the complex tasks of leadership broadly speaking, but especially within multi-generational family enterprise and founder-led companies. Brooke has provided highly personalized support to top-level executives as an executive coach for nearly two decades. Her work focuses on helping executives define their purpose and presence as leaders, stretching them to become more focused, non-reactive and clear on who they are, where they're going, why they lead and what the circumstances they face demand of them. Brooke’s approach to teaching and coaching is strongly informed by her multidisciplinary background. She received her MA and PhD from the Divinity School at the University of Chicago, where she also taught at University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business, through the popular Business Communications program. Brooke has lived in the Chicago area since 1992, when she relocated from her hometown of Austin, Texas. Though she is still strongly partial to the Mexican food in Austin, she has found a second home here with her husband and three daughters.