The Best of ILA 2024 and ISLC 2024

Additional Bios Forthcoming.

Scott J. Allen, Ph.D., is an award-winning educator passionate about working with people at all levels and across industries. He serves as an instructor in SMU’s Cox School of Business Executive Education and spent more than 18 years as a professor of management. He also serves as a leadership consultant with Winding River Consulting. Allen’s areas of expertise include leader development, the future of work, and executive communication. Scott has published more than 60 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters. He’s the co-author of several books, including The Little Book of Leadership Development: 50 Ways to Bring Out the Leader in Every Employee; Emotionally Intelligent Leadership: A Guide for College Students; Discovering Leadership: Designing Your Success; and Captovation: Online Presentations by Design. Scott hosts Phronesis: Practical Wisdom for Leaders, ranked among the world’s top 2.5% of podcasts. Along with the podcast, he publishes a weekly newsletter. Scott frequently serves as a keynote speaker. In addition, he consults, facilitates workshops, and leads retreats across industries. Recent engagements include Catholic Charities, Progressive, Nestle, Toyota Motor North America, Enbridge (Dominion), and Cleveland Clinic, among others.  Scott served on the board of the International Leadership Association (ILA) and was named an ILA in 2021.

Gunilla Avby is an Associate Professor specializing in Organization Pedagogics, Quality Improvement, and Leadership at Stockholm University and at Jönköping University. The interplay between theory and practice plays a prominent role in my research, as well as other paradoxes present in the workplace, such as the relationship between new and old, structure and chaos, control and creativity, standardization and flexibility. An ongoing research project is to investigate how organizations can establish sustainable systems for leadership development that promote goal achievement while managing continuous change.

Ingela Bergmo-Prvulovic is an Associate Professor in the School of Education and Communication, Jönköping University, Sweden specializing in careers, transitions and career guidance, leadership, lifelong learning, and adult learning.   Their research spans over education and work, transitions and learning, policy governance, professional practices, and development.  Scientific Leader of ENCELL (Lifelong Learning). 

Dr. Kristin M. S. Bezio, professor of leadership studies and associate dean for academic affairs at the Jepson School of Leadership Studies, integrates the study of popular culture into the leadership studies curriculum. Her areas of specialization include leadership in literature, video games, and film; leadership in performance; and cultural and political history in early modern England (including Shakespeare). She is the author of numerous articles on leadership, literature, popular culture, and videogames, as well as multiple collected volumes and two monographs, The Eye of the Crown: The Development and Evolution of the Elizabethan Secret Service and Staging Power in Tudor and Stuart English History Plays: History, Political Thought, and the Redefinition of Sovereignty.   

Ira Chaleff is an author, speaker and executive coach in the greater Washington, D.C., area. Ira co-authored the original handbook for newly elected Members of Congress, now in its fifteenth edition and has facilitated over a hundred retreats for congressional offices. He has been adjunct faculty at the Federal Executive Institute, and was a Visiting Leadership Scholar at Churchill College, Cambridge University in England. Ira served two terms on the Board of Directors of the International Leadership Association and is the founder of its Followership Community. His previous award-winning books include The Courageous Follower: Standing Up to and For Our Leaders and Intelligent Disobedience: Doing Right When What You’re Told to Do Is Wrong, which has been published in translation in Beijing and Moscow. Ira speaks on courageous followership and intelligent disobedience, at a wide variety of institutions including the U.S. Department of State, the U.S. Naval Academy, the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, the European Commission of the EU and many others. His newest book, published this month is To Stop a Tyrant: The Power of Political Followers to Make or BRAKE a Toxic Leader, which has already been called “A book that has met its time.” 

Jonathan Clifton is an associate professor at the Université Polytechnique Hauts-de-France, France. His research interest focuses on leadership in interaction. He is an editorial board member of Leadership and he has published widely in journals such as Leadership, Human Relations, and the International Journal of Business Communication. He has also published two books on leadership: The Sociomateriality of Leadership. A Ventriloquial Perspective; and, with Stephanie Schnurr and Dorien Van De Mieroop, The Language of Leadership Narratives: A Social Practice Perspective. 

Professor Joanne B. Ciulla‘s research focuses on the ethical challenges of leadership and business ethics topics, including the concept of meaningful work. Before joining Rutgers, she held the Coston Family Chair in Leadership and Ethics at the Jepson School of Leadership Studies at the University of Richmond, where she was one of the school’s founders. Ciulla has also held academic positions at Harvard Business School, The Wharton School, and LaSalle University. Additionally, she served as the UNESCO Chair in Leadership Studies at the United Nations International Leadership Academy in Jordan and was a Fulbright Specialist. Ciulla has published extensively on leadership ethics and business ethics. She has received Lifetime Achievement Awards for her scholarship from the Society for Business Ethics, the International Leadership Association, and the Network of Leadership Scholars at the Academy of Management. Furthermore, Ciulla has delivered seminars and talks to business, government, and non-profit organizations in the United States and internationally.

Katja Einola is an Associate Professor at Stockholm School of Economics. She also consults organizations with leadership and HR challenges related to strategic and technological change. Before her academic career, she held various positions in expert, advisory and leadership roles in small and large multinational firms. Katja’s research focuses on teams, virtual work, leadership, HRM, artificial intelligence and ignorance in organizations. Her work has been published, for instance, in Organization Studies, Leadership, The Leadership Quarterly, Human Resource Management, British Journal of Sociology and Human Relations. Katja considers herself a global nomad, has lived on three continents and speaks fluently six languages.

Dr. Carole J. Elliott is Professor of Leadership Development at the University of St Andrews Business School, UK, and Visiting Professor at Copenhagen Business School, and Visiting Senior Research Fellow at Rennes School of Business. She is a Fellow of the British Academy of Management, and the Royal Society of Arts. Over the last 15 years Carole’s research has been funded by the ESRC, The Leverhulme Trust, and the British Academy. In 2016 with Professors Valerie Stead, Sharon Mavin, and Dr Jannine Williams she co-edited Gender, Media and Organization: Challenging Mis(s)Representations of Women Leaders and Managers. Recent collections that Carole has co-edited are Handbook of Research Methods on Gender and Management (2021) and Genderwashing in Leadership (2024). She has received several awards for her work in this area from the Academy of Human Resource Development, including: Laura Bierema Excellence in Critical HRD Award (2020), and Outstanding HRD Scholar Award (2022). Her co-authored book Human Resource Development: Critical Perspectives and Practices received the 2023 R.Wayne Pace Book of the Year Award. Carole is a former editor-in-chief of Human Resource Development International, and associate editor of Gender, Work and Organisation.

Keith Grint is Professor Emeritus at Warwick University. He has held Chairs at Cranfield University and Lancaster University and was Director of Research at the Saïd Business School, Oxford University. He is a Fellow of the International Leadership Association (ILA) and Professorial Fellow of the Australian Institute of Police Management (AIPM). He is also a founding co-editor with David Collinson of the journal Leadership, and co-founder of the International Studying Leadership Conference. He received ILA’s Lifetime Achievement Award in 2018. His books include The Arts of Leadership (2000); Organizational Leadership (2005); Leadership: Limits and Possibilities (2005); Leadership, Management & Command: Rethinking D-Day (2008); Leadership: A Very Short Introduction (2010); Mutiny and Leadership (2021), and A Cartography of Resistance: Leadership, Management & Command (2024).

“Dr. Joe” Lasley is an Assistant Professor at the University of Southern Maine and Founder of Gamenamic Leadership. He holds a Ph.D. in Leadership Studies and is a certified leadership coach. He specializes in experiential and transformational learning, using role-playing games, focusing on group dynamics, systems thinking, human development, and game-based learning.”Dr. Joe” Lasley is an Assistant Professor at the University of Southern Maine and Founder of Gamenamic Leadership. He holds a Ph.D. in Leadership Studies and is a certified leadership coach. He specializes in experiential and transformational learning, using role-playing games, focusing on group dynamics, systems thinking, human development, and game-based learning.

​Robert C. Liden (Ph.D., University of Cincinnati) is Professor of Management at the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC), where he is also Coordinator of the OB/HR Doctoral Program. He is known for his research on servant leadership and leader-member exchange, which involves the quality of relationships between leaders and followers. Servant leadership refers to leaders’ behaviors that place the needs of their followers before their own needs and center their effort on helping followers grow to reach their maximum potential and achieve optimal organizational and career success. A servant leader pays close attention to followers’ personal concerns and career growth, empowers them, prioritizes their work needs, interacts within ethical boundaries, and cares about creating value for the local community. His 2008 article in the Leadership Quarterly (Liden, Wayne, Zhao, & Henderson), which introduced what has become the most frequently used servant leadership measure was awarded the 2018 Leadership Quarterly Decennial Article Influence Award for the most influential paper published in Leadership Quarterly during 2008. In 2015 he received the Academy of Management’s Network of Leadership Scholars Eminent Leadership Scholar Award. Professor Liden received a “Lifetime Achievement Award” from the International Leadership Association in 2024. He has over 125 publications, which have been cited over 80,000 times according to Google Scholar.

Jennifer Okoliko is a Doctoral student in Human Science with a specialization in Leadership studies at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Her research interest focuses on exploring leadership concepts across cultures and the role of storytelling in building the leadership of the future. A lot of her past work has focused on nonprofit management and social/community development interventions which is visible through her nonprofit – Girls Should Thrive Initiative, an organization she founded in 2017 that is raising female leaders from unexpected places through education and trainings. She’s also a Mandela Washington fellow, an excellent orator, an inspiring speaker, and a great storyteller, telling true inspiring stories through movies including her movie “Voiceless” showing on Netflix which has won multiple awards including the prestigious AMVCA Award.

Megan Reitz is Associate Fellow at Saïd Business School, Oxford University and Adjunct Professor of Leadership and Dialogue at Hult International Business School. She focuses on how we create the conditions for transformative dialogue at work and her research is at the intersection of leadership, change, dialogue and mindfulness. She is on the Thinkers50 ranking of global business thinkers and is ranked in HR Magazine’s Most Influential Thinkers listing.  Megan has written a number of books, most recently Speak Out, Listen Up which is the second edition of her bestselling book Speak Up, with Financial Times Publishing. Speak Up was shortlisted for the CMI Management Book of the Year 2020.  She is a contributor to Harvard Business Review and MIT Sloan Management Review. She has presented her research on the BBC and CNBC. Her TED talk on the topic of employee activism has been viewed more than one and a half million times. She is mother to two wonderful teenage daughters who test her regularly on her powers of mindfulness and dialogue. 

Paul Sanders is an associate professor in the Department of Strategy and Entrepreneurship of NEOMA Business School (France), where he teaches international relations (geopolitics). Paul obtained his PhD in history and his research interests articulate around historical perspectives in leadership and ethics. He is the author of four monographs: History of the Black Market 1940–1946 (in French, 2001), The British Channel Islands under German Occupation 1940–1945 (2005), Protest, Defiance and Resistance in the Channel Islands – German Occupation 1940–1945 (co-authored, 2014), and The Ultimate Sacrifice. British Channel Islanders in Hitler’s Prisons and Concentration Camps, 1940-1945 (2018, third edition). In addition, he has published multiple articles in scholarly outlets such as Journal of Business Ethics, Critical Perspectives on International Business and Leadership (the last to date is a long essay on leadership during the Holocaust, in the Yad Vashem Search and Research Series). Previously, Paul served as deputy director of the Central Registry of Information on Looted Cultural Property 1933-1945 (London). In 2010 he advised the UK Department of Communities and Local Government in conjunction with the British Heroes of the Holocaust award scheme; and in 2023-24 he chaired the Lord Pickles expert enquiry on the number of deaths during the German occupation of the island of Alderney in World War II. 

Dr Kathrin Schweizer is a freelance lecturer and independent researcher who holds a managerial position in intralogistics. With over 10 years of teaching experience and more than 16 years of professional expertise across industries such as IT, automotive, and logistics, she has led numerous diverse teams and has over 9 years of leadership experience. Her passion for leadership, both in practice and theory, drives her work. In 2023, she earned her PhD from the University of Nicosia, Republic of Cyprus.  She is a systemic business coach (Steinbeis certification). Her personal motivation is to shape the future of management, as well as drive organizational and market development, by balancing scientific research with practical experience. She aims to blend theoretical insights with real-world applications in a way that complements practice, ensuring that her teaching and research remain highly relevant and impactful.

Dr Scott Taylor is Professor of Leadership & Organization Studies, Birmingham Business School, University of Birmingham, in the UK. He’s been teaching leadership and researching leadership education for a couple of decades. Most recently Scott’s extending his research on feminism at work into leadership, analysing men’s everyday leaderly practices in the craft brewing sector with colleagues in Scandinavia.