Nancy Koehn, Harvard Business School Rock Star

Last week, I attended the Committee of 200's annual conference,held this year in Boston.  Thanks to connections made by C200 members with close ties to Harvard Business School, our Saturday morning was an intellectual business-based feast.

The high point for me was Nancy F. Koehn, who spent an hour or so with us that I wished could have been extended to a day or more.  She is electric, brilliantly smart, an incredible presented, a showman, a star. And she conducts a class (in effect, that's what our session with her was) as a conversation.  She is a great listener, knows how to read and hear an audience and adjust her remarks accordingly.

Nancy is a business historian.  It's a remarkable way for her to mix her deep and varied interests.  She graduated from Stanford, earned a Masters of Public Policy from Harvard's Kennedy School and then got a Masters and a PhD in History from Harvard.  She is an intellectual and began her teaching career on Harvard College's Faculty of Arts and Sciences where she spent seven hears, lecturing in History and Literature, and then in the Department of Economics.

Whew. 

Now she is an historian, especially of business, and her research focuses on entrepreneurial leadership and how leaders craft lives--as she describes it-- of "purpose, worth and impact."  She spent her time with us discussing three subjects of a book she is about to publish, showcasing Abraham Lincoln, Ernest Shackleton, and Oprah Winfrey.

Her work is especially important now in these days of confusion, depression, bad news from all sectors of our planet.  When Nancy talks of Lincoln and how he faced days that offered no respite from truly terrible and turbulent times and during which he felt he had no choice but to place men in harm's way in the Civil War, she is positively riveting in her ability to make you apply Lincoln's example to leaders in our current times. 

She knows her subjects.  Indeed, although Lincoln and Shackleton were not alive for her to interview, you sense from her words that she knows them deeply, that she understands the complexities of their humanness and that --best of all for us who want to learn from them--she knows what drove them to be such successful leaders in what most would consider impossible situations.

As for Oprah Winfrey, Nancy spent time in personal one on one meetings with Oprah and was given special access to the people around her. 

I'd guess that virtually every person in the room experiencing Nancy's presentation was inspired.  The inspiration was multi-layered; we were moved to consider our leadership roles in times of great adversity and take lessons from the remarkable people Nancy brought to life before us, and we were moved to take example from Nancy herself: a passionately engaged professor and historian who is committed to help build and sustain leaders who wish to lead lives that have worth and positive impact on others.

I'll be in line for Nancy's new book when it is published.  You may want to look for it, too.

Comments

[Kimi Stremmings]

Being a business historian is a very unique profession. As a woman of substance, Nancy is certainly fit for the job. I envy everyone who attended the symposium. =)