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Barbara Kellerman
Barbara Kellerman is an academic who focused on leadership at a time when that topic was very much outside of the mainstream. As a graduate student in political science at Yale University in the early 1970s, she was amazed to learn that no literature existed on the subject, except for Machiavielli's The Prince and a few selected works in psychology. In order to add to the scholarship, she decided to make the chancellor of Germany the subject of her Ph.D. dissertation, which was titled, Willy Brandt: Portrait of the Leader as a Young Politician.
"It used to be that leadership was something reserved to an elite few -- something to which only those with a certain status or position in life could aspire," says Kellerman. She observes that a change began to occur in the late 1970s, however. At the time, America was mired in recession, and businesses struggled to remain profitable in an increasingly global economy. In order to compete, the private sector began exploring issues of leadership. Demand was so great for leadership development that a new industry was born. Consultants and experts began to offer leadership workshops and seminars and authored numerous books on the subject.
In 1978, James MacGregor Burns published Leadership. His book explained the role of leadership throughout American history and distinguished between management and leadership in terms of transactional and transformational actions. It also served to elevate the theory of leadership to an intellectual level.
Kellerman developed her scholarship through several academic fellowships, and she has passed her knowledge on to others as a professor at Fordham, Tufts, Fairleigh Dickinson, George Washington, and Uppsala Universities. She became the director of the Center for the Advanced Study of Leadership at the James MacGregor Burns Academy of Leadership at the University of Maryland in 1998. There, she helped establish the International Leadership Association -- an independent global network for those with a professional interest in leadership. She also authored Reinventing Leadership: Making the Connection Between Politics and Business, which provided a bridge between business and political leadership and urged leaders to work together to solve the nation's problems.
As a professor and administrator, she has authored and edited eleven books and written numerous articles, columns, and op-ed pieces on the subject of leadership. She also is frequently sought as a political commentator.
In August 2000, Kellerman became the executive director of the Center for Public Leadership at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University (KSG). David Gergen and Ronald Heifitz serve as co-directors of the Center, which aims to improve the quality of public leadership in the United States and abroad through research, teaching, training, and outreach.
"I am thrilled that such a research center now exists," states Kellerman. "It will do for the public sector what leadership programs did for the private sector in making leadership much more fashionable as a field of inquiry. My job will be to secure the Center's future and ensure that it grows fast and strong."
Kellerman says that KSG students are extremely interested in leadership, and she feels that there is also a growing interest in leadership development among the general public. She credits this interest to a democratization of leadership. "It seems to be politically correct, if not literally true, that anybody can do this," she explains. Kellerman also believes that an interest in leadership is part of the human condition. "Every part of our culture -- from politics, to religion, and even personal relationships -- involves some manifestation of leadership."
Past Profiles
Dr. Joseph O'Rourke