Lifetime Achievement Awardee

Dr. Barbara C. Crosby is associate professor emerita at the Hubert H. Humphrey School of Public Affairs and former academic co-director of the Center for Integrative Leadership at the University of Minnesota. In 2017 she received the Leslie A. Whittington Excellence in Teaching Award from the Network of Schools of Public Policy, Affairs and Administration (NASPAA).

She has taught and written extensively about leadership and public policy, integrative leadership, cross-sector collaboration, women in leadership, media and public policy, and strategic planning. She is the author of Teaching Leadership: An Integrative Approach (2016), Leadership for Global Citizenship (1999), and co-author with John M. Bryson of Leadership for the Common Good: Tackling Public Problems in a Shared-Power World (2d. ed. 2005). The first edition of the latter book won the 1993 Terry McAdam Award from the Nonprofit Management Association and was named the Best Book of 1992–93 by the Public and Nonprofit Sector Division of the Academy of Management.

Dr. Crosby is a long-time member of the International Leadership Association and has been especially active in the Public Leadership interest group. During 2002-03, she was a visiting fellow at the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, Scotland.

She was coordinator of the Humphrey Fellowship Program at the University of Minnesota from 1990 to 1993 and director of the Humphrey School’s Reflective Leadership Center from 1999 to 2002. Currently she is board chair of The Open Book, a home for the literary and book arts in Minneapolis.

She served many years on the editorial board of Leadership Quarterly. She and John M. Bryson were joint winners of the 2019 Keith G. Provan Award for Outstanding Contributions to Empirical Theory from the Public and Nonprofit Division of the Academy of Management. Two recent publications are “Leadership for Social Transformation” with John M. Bryson, Bill Barberg, and Michael Quinn Patton in Journal of Change Management (2021) and “Leadership Lessons from Job in the Time of Pandemic,” Journal of Lutheran Ethics (December 2020).

A frequent speaker at conferences and workshops, she has conducted training for senior managers of nonprofit, business and government organizations in the United States, the United Kingdom, Poland, Ukraine, Australia, and New Zealand. She is a former gubernatorial press secretary and speech writer. She also has been a newspaper reporter and editor and has written numerous book chapters and articles for national and international journals.

Dr. Crosby has a BA degree with a major in political science from Vanderbilt University and an MA degree in journalism and mass communication from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She has a PhD in leadership studies from the Union Institute and University. In addition to her academic and community work, her priorities are family and artistic endeavors.