Rice U. leadership scholar Kolditz to give opening keynote speech at Texas Boys State June 10

MEDIA ADVISORY

David Ruth
713-348-6327
david@rice.edu

Jeff Falk
713-348-6775
jfalk@rice.edu  

Rice U. leadership scholar Kolditz to give opening keynote speech at Texas Boys State June 10

HOUSTON — (June 8, 2018) – Tom Kolditz, a leadership scholar and executive director of Rice University’s Doerr Institute for New Leaders, will be the opening plenary speaker June 10 at Texas Boys State, the American Legion’s summer program where youth leaders create and run their own government. The weeklong program takes place on the University of Texas at Austin campus.

TOM KOLDITZ

Kolditz, a retired brigadier general, will discuss servant leadership and honor in governing.

Who: Tom Kolditz, leadership scholar and executive director of Rice’s Doerr Institute for New Leaders.

What: Texas Boys State opening plenary session.

When: Sunday, June 10, 4:25-6 p.m. Kolditz’s presentation begins at approximately 5:05.

Where: University of Texas at Austin, Hogg Memorial Auditorium, 2300 Whitis Ave.       

Kolditz biography:

Prior to joining Rice, Kolditz taught as a professor in the practice of leadership and management and director of the Leadership Development Program at the Yale School of Management.

Kolditz led the Department of Behavioral Sciences and Leadership at the U.S. Military Academy for 12 years. In that role, he was responsible for West Point’s teaching, research and outreach activities in management, leader development science, psychology and sociology and was appointed professor emeritus after retirement. His career has focused on either leading organizations himself or studying leadership and leadership policy across sectors.

Kolditz is an expert on leadership in extreme circumstances and has researched and analyzed the performance of leaders “in extremis” (Latin for “at the point of death”). The research, captured in the book, “In Extremis Leadership: Leading as if Your Life Depended on It,” included more than 175 interviews from combat zones and from leaders such as climbing guides, SWAT team chiefs, large-formation skydiving organizers and others who lead in dangerous places.

Kolditz served for two years as a leadership and human resources policy analyst in the Department of Defense and for a year as a concept developer in the Center for Army Leadership. He was the founding director of the West Point Leadership Center. He was instrumental in the design and formation of the Thayer Leader Development Group and is the managing member of Saxon Castle LLC, a leader-development consultancy. Kolditz is a recipient of the Distinguished Service Medal, the Army’s second-highest award in order of precedence, and recently received the Warren Bennis Award for Excellence in Leadership.

Kolditz holds a bachelor’s degree in psychology and sociology from Vanderbilt University, three master’s degrees and a Ph.D. in psychology from the University of Missouri.

For more information or to schedule an interview with Kolditz, contact Jeff Falk, associate director of national media relations at Rice, at 713-348-6775 or jfalk@rice.edu.

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This news release can be found online at http://news.rice.edu.

Follow the Doerr Institute for New Leaders via Twitter @DoerrInstitute.

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Related materials:

Tom Kolditz bio: https://doerr.rice.edu/content/tom-kolditz-0

Located on a 300-acre forested campus in Houston, Rice University is consistently ranked among the nation’s top 20 universities by U.S. News & World Report. Rice has highly respected schools of Architecture, Business, Continuing Studies, Engineering, Humanities, Music, Natural Sciences and Social Sciences and is home to the Baker Institute for Public Policy. With 3,970 undergraduates and 2,934 graduate students, Rice’s undergraduate student-to-faculty ratio is just under 6-to-1. Its residential college system builds close-knit communities and lifelong friendships, just one reason why Rice is ranked No. 1 for quality of life and for lots of race/class interaction and No. 2 for happiest students by the Princeton Review. Rice is also rated as a best value among private universities by Kiplinger’s Personal Finance. To read “What they’re saying about Rice,” go to http://tinyurl.com/RiceUniversityoverview.