Santa Clara University

The Lecture:

Heroic Living and Heroic Leadership: Living Ignatian Today

     When: 10:00 - 11:30 AM, Tuesday, April 19th, 2011
     Where: Benson Parlors BC, Benson Center,
                   Santa Clara University (map)

The Ignatian Center for Jesuit Education and Human Resources are pleased to present best selling author Chris Lowney. Join us as Chris shares his thoughts on Heroic Living and Heroic Leadership. He will share his thoughts on how we can live a more fulfilled life and achieve success by taking a holistic approach that focuses on four values.

In his latest book, Heroic Living, Chris challenges each of us to transform work and home, and beliefs and actions, into an integrated whole. We need to make tough choices, get bottom-line results, and adapt to an ever-changing world. But we also need to find peace and fulfillment by grasping the greatness that we are called to, and how ordinary people who have bettered themselves and the world by finding a purpose worth living for and values worth standing for.

The book's ultimate challenge? By transforming ourselves into who we should be, we can lead our civilization toward what it should be: not a small-spirited, self-absorbed humanity but a great-spirited civilization that loves life, other people, and the world.

In Heroic Leadership, Chris offers leadership lessons from a 450-year-old company that grappled successfully with the same challenges that test great companies today: forging seamless multinational teams, motivating inspired performance, remaining "change ready" and strategically adaptable. That company? The Jesuits, the religious order founded by Ignatius of Loyola.

The Jesuits eschewed a "flashy" leadership style in favor of a holistic approach focusing on four unique values: self-awareness, ingenuity, love and heroism. Chris explores the four principles in detail, illustrating each with anecdotes from Jesuit history. He examines the Jesuit success formula of attacking real-world opportunities with real-world leadership strategies, showing how their formula can be used today to practice effective, whole-person leadership.

The Jesuits were launched into a world that had telling analogies to our own. New world markets were opening; media technology was evolving; and traditional approaches and belief systems were being questioned. The Jesuit organizational architects prized the same mindset and behaviors that modern companies value in today's complex and constantly changing world.

This event was co-sponsored by Human Resources

The Lecturer:

Chris Lowney, formerly a Jesuit seminarian, later served as a Managing Director of J.P. Morgan & Co in New York, Tokyo, Singapore and London until leaving the firm in 2001. He served successively on Morgan's Asia-Pacific, Europe, and Investment Banking Management Committees.

His first book, Heroic Leadership: Best Practices from a 450-Year-Old Company that Changed the World, was the #1 ranked bestseller of the CBPA and was named a finalist for a 2003 Book of the Year Award from ForeWord magazine. It has been translated into ten languages.

He is also author of Heroic Living: Discover Your Purpose and Change the World, and A Vanished World: Medieval Spain's Golden Age of Enlightenment, which was nominated for La Corónica award. Chris appeared in the PBS-aired documentary, Cities of Light, which echoed many of the book's key themes.

He currently serves on the board of CHI, a Catholic healthcare system comprising more than 70 hospitals across the United States. He also serves part-time as volunteer President of the Jesuit Commons, which is piloting online higher education programs for refugees in Africa. He is a summa cum laude graduate of Fordham University, where he also received his M.A.. He is holder of five honorary Doctoral degrees. He was raised in Queens (New York), lives in the Bronx, and roots for the New York Mets without feeling shame.