Santa Clara University

Barry Z. Posner

Dean and Professor of Leadership

Barry Posner is Dean of the Leavey School of Business as well as a Professor of Leadership at Santa Clara University, located in the heart of Silicon Valley. He joined the faculty in 1976 and served previously as Associate Dean of Graduate Programs and Managing Partner of the Executive Development Center before being named Dean in 1997.

Barry, along with his co-author Jim Kouzes, received the International Management Council's award in 2001 as the nation's top management and leadership educators (previous recipients have included Peter Drucker, Ken Blanchard, Steve Covey, Norman Vincent Peale, Edward Deming, Tom Peters, and Rosabeth Moss Kanter). He was recently listed among the top 50 Leadership Coaches in America.

He is the co-author of the award-winning and best-selling leadership book: The Leadership Challenge. Described as a groundbreaking research study, The Leadership Challenge combines keen insights with practical applications and captures both why and how leadership is everyone's business. Now in its fourth edition, with over 1.6 million copies in print, this book has spent weeks on Business Week and Fortune’s best-seller lists, been the featured selection of several book clubs, named book-of-the-year by the American Council of Health Care Executives, received the Critic's Choice Award from the nation's book review editors, and translated into 18 foreign languages. Barry and Jim also developed The Leadership Practices Inventory which has been called “the most reliable, up-to-date leadership instrument available today,” and the on-line version was completed by over 850,000 people around the globe this past year alone. Barry has also co-authored several other award-winning, inspiring and practical books on leadership: Credibility: How Leaders Gain and Lose It, Why People Demand It; Encouraging the Heart: A Leaders Guide to Recognizing and Rewarding Others; A Leader’s Legacy, The Academic Administrator’s Guide to Exemplary Leadership, and Christian Reflections on The Leadership Challenge. Barry and Jim are working on a new leadership book which addresses the millennial generation.

An internationally-renowned scholar, Barry has published more than 80 research and practitioner-oriented articles in such journals as: Academy of Management Journal, Journal of Applied Psychology, Journal of Management Inquiry, Human Relations, Personnel Psychology, and IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management. He is currently on the editorial review boards of the International Journal of Servant-Leadership, Leadership and Organizational Development, and Leadership Review.

Barry serves on the Board of Trustees for the San Jose Repertory Theatre and for EMQ Families First. He has previously served on the Board for a NASDAQ-listed company, as a Public Director for the American Institute of Architects (AIA), and on the Boards of Junior Achievement of Silicon Valley and Monterrey Bay, Public Allies (Silicon Valley), Big Brothers Big Sisters of Santa Clara County, the Center for Excellence in Nonprofits, Sigma Phi Epsilon Fraternity, along with several start-up company advisory councils.

Barry received his undergraduate degree in political science from the University of California, Santa Barbara, a master's degree from the Ohio State University in public administration, and his Ph.D. in organizational behavior and administrative theory from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

At Santa Clara University he has received the President's Distinguished Faculty Award, several Extraordinary Faculty Awards from the business school, and other teaching and leadership honors from student organizations (like the MBA student association’s award for Audacious Leadership).

Barry is a warm and engaging conference speaker and dynamic workshop facilitator, having worked with such organizations as: Alcoa, Applied Materials, Arco, California Agricultural Leadership Program, Charles Schwab, Conference Board of Canada, Hewlett-Packard, Kaiser Permanente Health Care, L.L. Bean, Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital, Merck, Network Appliance, Northrop Grumman, Wylie Nursing Leadership Institute, Trader Joe's, and the U.S. Postal Service, among others. He has made presentations and conducted workshops across the U.S., and around the globe, from Canada, Mexico and Europe to the China, Korea, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa.

January 2009