Business Leadership Today Contributors
Mark S. Babbitt
Mark S. Babbitt is President of WorqIQ, a firm that helps organizations understand leadership’s impact on culture, the company’s collective level of Workplace Intelligence (WQ), and what “good” means to them. Mark is also CEO and Founder of YouTern, a career-focused community that helps college students, recent graduates, and young professionals find their first or next internship or job within the right culture for them.
In addition to the best-selling Good Comes First, Mark co-authored A World Gone Social. Followers also find Mark’s advice in Entrepreneur, Inc., Forbes, and many other publications. An in-demand speaker, Mark was named one of Inc. Magazines’ Top 100 Leadership Speakers.
Curtis Bateman
Curtis Bateman is FranklinCovey’s vice president of international direct offices. With over twenty-five years of experience in the training industry, Curtis is an internationally recognized presenter, content developer, change consultant, business leader, and coach. His passion for enabling organizations “at change” resulted in the co-creation of transformative, industry-leading solutions, including Change Element, Leaders@Change, Managing Millennials, Millennials@Work,
Ash Beckham
Louis Carter
Louis Carter is CEO and founder of Best Practice Institute, which is home to several HR SaaS companies and brands such as Most Loved Workplace®. Most Loved Workplace provides Meaningful HR data and insights, employer branding, and marketing for cultural change efforts. Louis is one of the top Global Gurus in Organizational culture. He has written over 11 best-selling books on leadership and organizational culture, including, Best Practices in Talent Management, Change Champions, and In Great Company: How to spark peak performance by creating an emotionally connected workplace.
Debra Corey
Debra Corey is a highly experienced and award-winning HR leader, world-class speaker, consultant, and four-time author who has been named as one of the top 101 global employee engagement influencers. She’s had a varied career, working for global companies such as Gap Inc., Quintiles, Merlin Entertainments, and Reward Gateway, where she developed and delivered HR strategies in a rebellious way, pushing the boundaries and challenging the status quo to truly drive employee engagement. She now acts as the Chief Pay It Forward Officer at DebCo HR, where she inspires and works with others to bring out their inner rebel and drive cultural and business change through employee engagement.
Todd Davis
Todd Davis is a senior consultant and thought leader at FranklinCovey, and has over 35 years of experience in human resources, talent development and executive recruiting. Todd has been with FranklinCovey for 28+ years and until recently, spent 18 of those years as Chief People Officer and Executive Vice President where he was responsible for the global talent development in over 40 offices reaching 160 countries. Additionally, he authored and co-authored best-selling books including Get Better: 15 Proven Practices to Build Effective Relationships at Work and Everyone Deserves A Great Manager. https://www.
David Dye
David Dye helps human-centered leaders find clarity in uncertainty, drive innovation, and achieve breakthrough results. He’s the President of Let’s Grow Leaders, an international leadership development and training firm known for practical tools and leadership development programs that stick.
He’s the award-winning authors of four books including Courageous Cultures: How to Build Teams of Micro-Innovators, Problem Solvers, and Customer Advocates and Winning Well: A Manager’s Guide to Getting Results-Without Losing Your Soul and hosts the popular Leadership without Losing Your Soul podcast.
S. Chris Edmonds
S. Chris Edmonds is a speaker, author, executive consultant, and founder of The Purposeful Culture Group. He’s the author of two Amazon best sellers: Good Comes First and The Culture Engine. Chris a top 30 organizational culture Global Guru, an Inc. Magazine Top Leadership Speaker and a featured presenter at South by Southwest. He’s been featured in The Wall Street Journal, SmartBrief, People, CNN, Fox31, NBC, and Fast Company.
Chris’ Culture Leadership Charge and Good Comes First video episodes can be found on YouTube
Brad Federman
Brad Federman helps leaders and companies, “Discover and live their possible.” Amazing results occur when organizations engage employees and customers, build resilient and bulwark relationships, as well as create collaborative and agile cultures. He is the President of PerformancePoint LLC., an international consulting and training firm focused on driving results through strong leadership and healthy cultures.
He is an award-winning author of three books and contributing author to one Cultivating Culture: 101 Ways to Foster Engagement in 15 Minutes or Less, Jump Start: 50 Ways to Engage Your Team, 101 Great Ways to Enhance Your Career, Employee Engagement: A Roadmap for Creating Profits, Optimizing Performance, and Increasing Loyalty, Brad has been featured on numerous podcasts, in major publications such as Forbes, Fortune, LA Times, and on national shows and networks such as Fox Business News.
Andrew Freedman
Andrew Freedman is a lifelong advocate for maximizing human potential and creating positive change, personally and professionally. For over 25 years, he’s been a driving force in designing strategies that provide leaders a foundation to translate individual, team, and organizational talent into tangible business growth.
As managing partner of SHIFT Consulting, he’s helped countless companies across diverse industries flourish through vibrant company cultures and a high performance mindset. Additionally, through his work as an affiliate faculty member of the University of Baltimore, Andrew’s continued goal is to use his insatiable passion for human performance to inspire new generations of business leaders with the art and science of creating and executing successful, people-focused business strategies.
Pamela Hackett
Pamela Hackett is a former CEO with over 35 years of experience working boots-on-the-ground with leaders and their teams. She is the author of the post-pandemic book for a new workplace Manage To Engage. How Great Managers Create Remarkable Results. Pam is on a mission to help leaders at every level better engage and improve their results. She is on a quest to help build organizations that are both fit and healthy. Productive and engaged. Leaders can make their numbers and have people who love coming to work.
Pamela has achieved the ‘first woman’ label for all her senior roles and has consulted for some of the world’s largest companies. She is a people-focused executive, motivated to engage leaders at every level so their teams can do great work and deliver value.
Dr. Troy Hall
Featured on The Today Show, ABC, the Global BV-TV Network, Beyond the Business Radio Show, and CEO World, Dr. Troy Hall is an award-winning talent retention consultant, international speaker, and author of the bestselling titles, Cohesion Culture: Proven Principles to Retain Your Top Talent, and Fanny Rules: A Mother’s Leadership Lessons That Never Grow Old.
As the founder of Cohesion Culture™, Dr. Troy has dedicated his career to establishing a cycle of culture wellness in the corporate and professional sphere. His consulting and executive coaching engagements are built on the strategic framework of Cohesion Culture™, making the concepts of belonging, value, and shared commitment easy for organizations to adopt and implement. From the U.S. to Canada and the United Kingdom, from the Middle East to Africa, Asia, Europe, and Australia, Dr. Troy has spoken at global conferences as a subject matter expert on the topics of culture & leadership, strategy, and change.
Ken Hartley
Ken Hartley is an inspirational speaker, an accomplished singer, a talented illusionist, a skilled actor, a bestselling author, and a gifted teacher. He has been in top level leadership positions for over 30 years in organizations ranging in size from 90 to 13,000 people.
He is a CSP® (Certified Speaking Professional) with the National Speakers Association, a Certified Speaker and Leader with the John Maxwell Team and a Certified recognized expert in the DISC Model of Human Behavior. He is also a recipient of the Merlin Award (think of the “Oscars” for magicians) from the International Magicians Society for “Corporate Inspirational Magician of the Year” for 2024.
He has authored 10 books including Hidden Treasures, Leadership Illusions, and Leadership Lessons from My Fathers.
Ken exists to empower you to look past what you currently see, into what you cannot see, until that becomes your new reality. His presentations combine powerful principles in the areas of leadership, personal growth, and communication with a lot of fun which he likes to call “edutainment”!!
Linda Holbeche
Dr Linda Holbeche is an independent coach, developer, consultant, researcher and author in the fields of HR, strategy, organization design and development and leadership. She works with UK and international clients in many sectors. A recognized thought and practice leader and voted one of the UK’s HR Most Influential, Linda was previously CIPD’s Director of Research and Policy.
She is now Adjunct Professor at Imperial College London, Visiting Professor at four other UK universities, Honorary Fellow of the Institute for Employment Studies and of Roffey Park. She is also a Fellow of the Institute of Leadership and Management (ILM) and Fellow of the Chartered Institute for Personnel and Development (CIPD).
Linda has written over 60 research reports, authored or co-edited sixteen books, numerous book chapters and articles in the field. Her latest books are The Agile Organization, Organization Development: A Practitioner’s Guide for OD and HR, and Aligning HR and Business Strategy.
Karin Hurt
Karin Hurt helps human-centered leaders find clarity in uncertainty, drive innovation, and achieve breakthrough results. She’s the founder and CEO of Let’s Grow Leaders, an international leadership development and training firm known for practical tools and leadership development programs that stick.
She’s the award-winning author of four books including Courageous Cultures: How to Build Teams of Micro-Innovators, Problem Solvers, and Customer Advocates and Winning Well: A Manager’s Guide to Getting Results-Without Losing Your Soul and a hosts the popular Asking for a Friend Vlog on LinkedIn. A former Verizon Wireless executive , Karin was named to Inc. Magazine’s list of great leadership speakers.
Robert Jordan
Robert Jordan is the CEO of InterimExecs, which matches top executives with companies around the world. Based on research with thousands of leaders and companies, he and Olivia Wagner wrote Right Leader Right Time: Discover Your Leadership Style for a Winning Career and Company, and have launched the FABS Leadership Assessment, a free assessment at RightLeader.com designed to help leaders and organizations perform better. Jordan also authored How They Did It: Billion Dollar Insights from the Heart of America, and helped publish Start With No, Jim Camp’s bestseller on negotiation.
David Kasperson
David P. Kasperson has been building high-trust partnerships and innovative solutions for clients of FranklinCovey’s Global Trust Practice for more than 15 years. Most of that time has been spent in collaboration with Stephen M. R. Covey, managing his speaking business, and custom client solutions as the Director of Business Development. An expert on trust, he has served clients via consulting, coaching, program design, and keynote speaking in more than twenty countries. He is the Wall Street Journal bestselling co-author of Trust & Inspire: How Truly Great Leaders Unleash Greatness in Others. https://www.franklincovey.com
Carol Schultz
Carol Schultz, founder and CEO of Vertical Elevation, is a talent equity and leadership advisory expert. Recognized for her proficiency in corporate leadership, she’s spent three decades helping executives gain clarity in their careers, make bold leadership moves, and create cultures of performance. Schultz and her team have helped hundreds of companies—from seed stage pre-initial public offerings to publicly traded companies—transform their organizations and create sustainable, talent-centric cultures that run at maximum efficiency. She’s the host of the popular podcast Authentically Successful and author of the new book Powered By People: How Talent-Centric Organizations Master Recruitment, Retention, and Revenue (and How to Build One)
Jeff Skipper
Jeff Skipper is an expert in accelerating change. For more than 25 years, clients such as IBM, Suncor, Goldman Sachs, and The Salvation Army have engaged him to achieve dramatic results during strategic transformation by wrapping complex change in motivating missions. Jeff holds a Master’s degree in Organizational Psychology and is a Certified Change Management Professional. His book, Dancing with Disruption, was published in 2023.
John Spence
John Spence has spent more than three decades helping companies and people be more successful. From startups to the Fortune 10 John serves his clients as an executive coach, training facilitator, keynote speaker, and strategy advisor.
John has been recognized as one of the Top 100 Business Thought Leaders in America, one of the Top 100 Small Business Influencers in America, one of the Top 50 Small Business Experts in America, and one of the top 500 Leadership Development Experts in the World. He was recognized on the global list of the Top 100 Thought Leaders in Trustworthy Business Behavior. Other recipients include Richard Branson, Tony Hsieh, Ram Charan, Thomas Freidman, Rosabeth M. Kanter, Patrick Lencioni, Tom Peters, and Howard Schultz. The American Management Association named John one of America’s Top 50 Leaders to Watch along with Sergey Brin and Larry Page of Google and Jeff Bezos of Amazon.
John’s areas of expertise include leadership, high-performance teams, organizational culture, accountability, and strategic thinking/planning. He has built his entire career on making complex business ideas straightforward and actionable.
John is also the author of an acclaimed book on business excellence, called Awesomely Simple.
You can learn more about John at www.JohnSpence.com.
Laurie Sudbrink
Like you, leadership expert and author Laurie Sudbrink has seen effective leadership that makes people want to step up and do more – and she has seen down-right terrible leadership that only inspires people to tell stories of the monstrous boss they have!
So what does it take to be effective? Is it power? Authority? An impressive title?
Of course not.
It’s about doing the right thing, even in the face of the most challenging of times.
Laurie has over two decades of executive coaching, leadership training and most importantly, real-life business experience.
She is the author of Leading With GRIT, endorsed by Don Miguel Ruiz (The Four Agreements) and Ken Blanchard (The One Minute Manager).
Visit LaurieSudbrink.com to learn more.
Matt Tenney
Matt Tenney has been working to help organizations develop leaders who improve employee engagement and performance since 2012. He is the author of three books, including the groundbreaking, highly acclaimed book Inspire Greatness: How to Motivate Employees with a Simple, Repeatable, Scalable Process.
Matt’s ideas have been featured in major media outlets and his clients include numerous national associations and Fortune 500 companies.
He is often invited to deliver keynote speeches at conferences and leadership meetings, and is known for delivering valuable, actionable insights in a way that is memorable and deeply inspiring.
Matt is also the host of the Business Leadership Today Podcast.
You can learn more about Matt at www.MattTenney.com.
Ciara Ungar
Ciara Ungar is a New York City-based Author on Leadership, Certified Business & Leadership Coach & Consultant, an Award-Winning Strategist, and an International Speaker. She is also an Innovation Women Speaker, Instructor with Columbia University Immersion Programs, a Mass Challenge Advisor, a Startup Council, and Forbes Coaches Council member. She has a blended academic background with degrees and certifications in Communication, Psychology, Integrated Strategy, Entrepreneurship & Business Strategy, and Cultural Diversity from Purdue University, Georgetown University, and Wharton Business School. She applies her robust 16 years of professional expertise working with Fortune500 companies, high potential startups, top global agencies, and Angel/VC Investors to entrepreneurship, leadership development, business strategy, and professional growth. A disciple of “Start With Why,” her purpose is to guide others through transformative thinking as they build businesses, teams, and personal purpose that inspires change.
Gregg Ward
Gregg Ward is the founder and executive director of the Center for Respectful Leadership and a bestselling, award-winning author, speaker, facilitator, and executive coach. He’s on a mission to transform lives and organizations through respect and respectful leadership; he’s developed and delivered over 2,500 keynote presentations and talks, training programs, seminars, webinars, and workshops in North America, Europe, and the Middle East for groups ranging in size from 12 to 2,000. His many clients include ADP, Ericsson, Ford, Harley-Davidson, Intel, Kaiser Permanente, Qualcomm, the U.S. Navy, the U.S. Department of Labor, and Warner Bros. Studios. His second book, The Respectful Leader: Seven Ways to Influence Without Intimidation, is an Amazon bestseller, an Amazon Editors’ “Best Book of the Month,” and a 2018 Axiom Business Book Awards Gold Medal Winner. Its new, follow-up release, Restoring Respect (Winding Creek Press; February 1, 2023), is a must-have guide for repairing broken work relationships. Learn more at RestoringRespectBook.com.
Matthew Wride
Matthew Wride is a business executive that focuses on making human resources a strategic partner in organizations of all sizes and types. Matthew serves as the President of Decision Wise, an Employee Experience solutions provider.
Prior to making the transition to business management, Matthew was a corporate attorney in Salt Lake City, Utah. Prior to practicing law, he was a consultant with Deloitte. For years, Matthew was an adjunct professor of political science at Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah. In 2018, he was recognized by Utah Business Magazine as a CXO of the year.
Matthew also serves as a member of the Board of Directors for Wasatch Educational, Inc., which is the parent entity for Rocky Mountain University of Health Professions in Provo, Utah (RMU). RMU is a regionally accredited university focused on graduate programs in healthcare. Matthew also serves on the Board of Directors for the parent company that owns and oversees the Noorda College of Osteopathic Medicine in Provo, Utah.
Matthew is co-author of the book, The Employee Experience: How to Attract Talent, Retain Top Performers, and Drive Results, published by Wiley & Sons.
Tom Watkin
Tom Watkin is an author and business leader with experience that spans the globe. He’s led teams and business development efforts for organizations of all sizes over a range of industries. These have included startups, companies with limited market exposure, and those with strong existing customer bases. His MBA, MSc, and BSc (hon) let him bridge the gap between the technical, sales, and commercial disciplines. His love of business development culminated in the publishing of Business Development Begins Here, a book that helps technical professionals and entrepreneurs gain the skills needed to purposefully grow their businesses.