Speakers | 2024 National Conference
Jim Harter, Ph. D. Announced as Keynote Speaker
Jim Harter, Ph.D., is the Chief Scientist for Gallup's Workplace Management & Wellbeing. He is coauthor of Culture Shock, released in 2023, and Wall Street Journal bestseller Wellbeing at Work, released in 2021, a book that explores how to build resilient and thriving teams in organizations. He is also co-author of the No. 1 Wall Street Journal and Washington Post bestseller; It’s the Manager, released in 2019, as well as the New York Times bestseller 12: The Elements of Great Managing, an exploration of the 12 crucial elements for creating and harnessing employee engagement.
Jim’s book, the New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller, Wellbeing: The Five Essential Elements, is based on a global study of what differentiates people who are thriving from those who are not. His research is featured in First, Break All the Rules, and he contributed the foreword to Gallup's updated edition of this groundbreaking bestseller.
Jim is the primary researcher and author of the first large-scale, multi-organization study to investigate the relationships between work-unit employee engagement and business results. Updated periodically, this study currently covers 112,000 business units and includes 2.7 million employees in 276 organizations, across 54 industries and in 96 countries. His work has appeared in many publications, including Harvard Business Review, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Fast Company and Time Magazine, and in academic articles and book chapters.
Jim received his doctorate in psychological and cultural studies in quantitative and qualitative methods from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL).
Dr. Harter will be joined in coversation with Mike Ritz, Executive Director of Gallup's Federal Government Initiative. Mike has more than 20 years of experience growing organizations and strengthening communities. He joined the Gallup team in 2022 as the founding Executive Director of the Federal Government Initiative, driven to apply his expertise in human behavior and communication to help the federal government become more effective - to strengthen our nation - through strengths-based development, proven engagement practices, and thoughtful leadership.
The Federal Government Initiative aims to empower 4 million public sector leaders and employees to discover and leverage their talents, improve their performance, and enhance their well-being. Previously, as the Executive Director of Leadership Rhode Island for 13 years, Mike transformed the organization into a nationally recognized and award-winning nonprofit for community engagement and innovation. He successfully led and mobilized a statewide leadership movement for change that shifted Rhode Island’s most actively disengaged workforce in the country (as determined by the State of the American Workplace report) to one of the best-performing in the nation in three years.
Reginald Lewis Announced as Keynote Speaker
The Greenleaf Center for Servant Leadership is a nonprofit organization whose mission is to advance the awareness, understanding, and practice of servant leadership by individuals and organizations. In the words of Robert K. Greenleaf, A better society, one that is more just and more loving, one that provides greater creative opportunity for its people.
Greenleaf recognized that organizations, as well as individuals, could be servant-leaders. Indeed, he had great faith that servant-leader organizations could change the world. In his second major essay, The Institution as Servant, Greenleaf articulated what is often called the credo. There he said:
This is my thesis: caring for persons, the more able and the less able serving each other, is the rock upon which a good society is built. Whereas, until recently, caring was largely person-to-person, now most of it is mediated through institutions – often large, complex, powerful, impersonal, not always competent, and sometimes corrupt. If a better society is to be built, one that is more just and more loving, one that provides greater creative opportunity for its people, then the most open course is to raise both the capacity to serve and the very performance as servant of existing major institutions by new regenerative forces operating within them.
Join us on Tuesday, August 6, as we hear from Reginald Lewis, Executive Director of the Greenleaf Center for Servant Leadership.
About the Speaker: Reginald Lewis serves as the Executive Director of the Greenleaf Center for Servant Leadership and Adjunct Professor at Seton Hall University. Mr. Lewis has an extensive background in the philanthropic, non-profit, state and municipal government, and higher education sectors. He recently served as the Executive Director of the Newark City of Learning Collaborative (NCLC), a citywide, cross-sector, post-secondary attainment effort working to build Newark’s college-going culture and increase the number of Newark residents earning degrees and other high-quality credentials. NCLC is housed at Rutgers University-Newark, where Mr. Lewis also served as an Assistant Professor of Professional Practice in the School of Public Affairs and Administration (SPAA). While at SPAA, Mr. Lewis designed and taught the seminar Servant Leadership in the Public Sector.
Prior to NCLC, Mr. Lewis served as Executive Director of The Chad School Foundation, Inc., a Newark-based education policy and advocacy organization that seeks to improve conditions in public school systems serving disadvantaged students. In addition, he has served as Executive Vice-President of United Way of Essex and West Hudson, Special Assistant to Commissioners in the New Jersey Departments of Education and Human Services, and City Administrator for the City of East Orange, New Jersey. As Administrator, he provided oversight of the municipality’s day-to-day operations and delivery of town services for nearly 70,000 residents.
His stints in philanthropy include positions with the Ford, Joyce, and Victoria Foundations, as well as The Fund for New Jersey. While at The Fund, he co-edited Better Schools, an issue report that outlines strategies for improving New Jersey’s K-12 public schools.
In 2010, President Barack Obama appointed him to the U.S. Commission on Presidential Scholars, a position he held until December 2016. In 2019, Governor Phil Murphy appointed him to co-chair one of five working groups for implementing the New Jersey Higher Education Plan. He was also recently named to New Jersey’s Education Power 50 by NJBIZ.
A cum laude graduate of Morehouse College, Mr. Lewis received a master’s degree from the University of Chicago’s School of Social Service Administration.
WORKSHOP SESSIONS
On Tuesday, August 6, and Wednesday, August 7, a slate of 36 workshops will be presented by Community Leadership Program (CLP) professionals, leadership coaches, consultants, and experts from various relevant fields.
Attendees can attend workshops at six different times, with three concurrent session times offered on Tuesday and Wednesday.
The 2024 National Conference Conference Planning Committee is currently reviewing and selecting sessions from a pool of very strong proposals received through ALP's submission process.
Some 2023 sessions included Conversations with Purpose, It's Getting H.O.T. in Here: Creating Emotionally Safe Learning Environments, From Us vs. Them to We All Belong, Making Fundraising Strategy Fun, Best Practices for your CLP, Small Program Big Impact, Spontaneous Leadership.