Welcome to Leadercast 2019 | Leading Healthy Teams

Gayle King is a co-host of “CBS This Morning” and Editor-at-Large of the award-winning O, the Oprah Magazine.

King previously hosted “The Gayle King Show,” a live, weekday television interview program on OWN: The Oprah Winfrey Network. The program, which featured a discussion of a broad variety of topics that include politics, cultural developments, was also broadcast on XM Satellite Radio, where it premiered in 2006.

Before moving into print and radio, King worked for 18 years (1982-2000) as a television news anchor for CBS affiliate WFSB-TV in Hartford, Conn., during which period, she also hosted her own syndicated daytime program. Prior to joining WFSB, King worked at several other television stations, including WDAF-TV in Kansas City, Mo. (1978-1981), WJZ-TV in Baltimore, Md. (1976), and WTOP-TV in Washington, D.C. (1975).

King has received numerous awards for her extensive work as a journalist. In addition to three Emmys, she was honored in 2008 with the American Women in Radio & Television Gracie Award for Outstanding Radio Talk Show and in 2010 with both the Individual Achievement Award for Host-Entertainment/Information and the New York Women in Communications’ Matrix Award recipient.

King spent several years of her childhood in Ankara, Turkey, before returning with her family to the United States. She graduated from the University of Maryland in 1976 with a degree in psychology.

The mother of a daughter, Kirby, and a son, Will, she currently resides in New York City.

Patrick Lencioni is founder and president of The Table Group, a firm dedicated to providing organizations with ideas, products and services that improve teamwork, clarity and employee engagement.

Lencioni’s passion for organizations and teams is reflected in his writing, speaking and executive consulting. He is the author of eleven best-selling books with over five million copies sold. His capstone book, The Advantage, is the pre-eminent source on organizational health. After sixteen years in print, his classic book, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, remains a weekly fixture on national best-seller lists. Released in 2016, The Ideal Team Player is a much-anticipated follow-up to his team book and also a Wall Street Journal best-seller.
The wide-spread appeal of Lencioni’s leadership models have yielded a diverse base of speaking and consulting clients, including a mix of Fortune 500 companies, professional sports organizations, the military, non-profits, schools and churches.

Pat addresses thousands of leaders each year at world-class organizations and national conferences. Consistently the top rated keynote speaker at major events, Pat shares his insights and inspires his audiences through his accessibility, humor and story-telling.

Named in Fortune magazine as one of the ‘ten new gurus you should know,’ Pat and his work have been featured in USA TODAY, Bloomberg Businessweek, and Harvard Business Review, to name a few.

Prior to founding his firm, he worked as a corporate executive for Sybase, Oracle and Bain & Company. Pat lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with his wife and four sons.

Dr. Caroline Leaf is a communication pathologist and cognitive neuroscientist with a Masters and PhD in Communication Pathology and a BSc Logopaedics, specializing in cognitive and metacognitive neuropsychology. Since the early 1980s she has researched the mind-brain connection, the nature of mental health and the formation of memory. She was one of the first in her field to study how the brain can change (neuroplasticity).

During her years in clinical practice and her work with thousands of underprivileged teachers and students in her hometown of South Africa and in the USA, she developed her theory (called the Geodesic Information Processing theory) of how we think, build memory and learn, as well as tools and processes that have transformed the lives of individuals with Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI), chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), learning disabilities (ADD, ADHD), autism, dementias, and mental ill-health. She has helped thousands of students and adults learn how to use their mind to detox and grow their brain and succeed in every area of their lives, including school, university and the workplace.

She currently teaches at academic, medical and neuroscience conferences, churches and to various audiences around the world. Dr Leaf is also involved in the global ECHO movement, which trains physicians worldwide on the mind-brain-body connection. She runs the “Integrated Mind Network”, which is a panel of top neurosurgeons, neurologists, MD’s, ob/gyn’s, endocrinologists, MD’s and neuroscientists that she consults and does research and clinical trials with. One of the Integrated Mind projects that she is currently running through her research foundation involves clinical trials using her mind techniques, which are been evaluated using various scales and QEEG technology. She is part of a mental health initiative in Washington DC.

Dr. Leaf’s You-Tubes videos, podcasts, and TV episodes have reached millions globally. Her passion is to help people see the power of the mind to change the brain, and to see the link between science and spirituality through controlling their thoughts and emotions, learning how to think and learn, and finding their sense of purpose in life.

Marcus Samuelsson is the acclaimed chef behind many restaurants worldwide including Red Rooster Harlem, Red Rooster Shoreditch, and Marcus B&P. Samuelsson was the youngest person to ever receive a three-star review from The New York Times and has won multiple James Beard Foundation Awards including Best Chef: New York City. He was tasked with planning and executing the Obama Administration’s first State dinner honoring Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. Samuelsson was also crowned champion of television shows Top Chef Masters and Chopped All Stars, and served as a mentor on ABC’s The Taste. A committed philanthropist, Samuelsson co-produces the annual week-long festival Harlem EatUp!, which celebrates the food, art, and culture of Harlem. Samuelsson is co-chair of the board of directors for Careers through Culinary Arts Program (C-CAP). In May 2016, he was inducted into the James Beard Foundation Who’s Who of Food and Beverage in America. He is the author of multiple books including The New York Times bestselling memoir Yes, Chef, the young adult version — Make It Messy, Marcus Off Duty cookbook, and his latest book — The Red Rooster Cookbook: The Story of Food and Hustle in Harlem. In addition, he is one of the founders of the website Food Republic. Recent restaurant openings include: Red Rooster Shoreditch in East London; Marcus B&P in Newark, New Jersey; and Streetbird Express at the world-famous Madison Square Garden. He most recently announced the opening of his newest restaurant, Marcus, coming to Montreal in Spring 2019. Samuelsson’s new TV series titled No Passport Required with VOX/Eater and PBS debuted summer of 2018. He most recently joined Buzzfeed’s Tasty as Executive Chef-in-Residence of their newly launched talent program. Follow him on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter at @MarcusCooks.

Juliet Funt is the CEO of WhiteSpace at Work, a training and consulting firm that helps organizations, their leaders and employees flip the norms of business in order to reclaim their creativity, productivity and engagement. With thought-provoking content and immediately actionable tools, she has become a nationally recognized expert in coping with the Age of Overload in which we all live and work.Juliet helps professionals learn the pivotal difference between activity and productivity. She teaches them a streamlined method for personal process improvement – leading to more creativity and engagement. She helps executives, managers and teams answer the critical question “What thoughts deserve my full attention today?”

Juliet regularly wows audiences as a high-impact, high-energy speaker. Yet her deeper mission is to show organizations how WhiteSpace® can change the negative patterns and behaviors that prevent them from achieving optimum results. Her clients include a number of Fortune 100 companies and span a wide array of industries, from financial services to technology, manufacturing to the military, and executive workshops to audiences as large as 7,000.

Incredibly intuitive, Juliet successfully blends highly customized content with a keen understanding of clients’ needs in her programs and consulting work. With a unique blend of charisma, humor and tough love, she has the uncanny ability to connect with people at all levels, compelling them to make real, lasting change. Yet beneath her powerful assets, she is both authentic and accessible. As a busy corporate speaker and consultant, business owner, wife, and mother of three young boys, she practices on a daily basis the WhiteSpace® concept she shares with clients.

Juliet Funt is a force for change in organizations around the world, helping them find their WhiteSpace, recharge their people and reclaim their passion for work.

A powerful leadership communicator and best-selling author, Andy Stanley is considered one of the most influential speakers in America. He is the author of 20-plus books, including Deep & Wide; When Work & Family Collide; Visioneering; and Next Generation Leader. In the digital world, his success reaches well beyond the Atlanta area. Each month, nearly 1.5 million of his messages, leadership videos, and podcasts are accessed from North Point’s website.

In 2012, Your Move with Andy Stanley premiered on NBC after Saturday Night Live, giving Andy an even wider audience with which to share his culturally relevant, practical insights for life and leadership. Currently, over six million episodes are viewed each month through television and podcast, underscoring his impact not only as a communicator but also as an influencer of culture.

But nothing is as personal as his passion for engaging with live audiences, which he has pursued for over two decades, speaking at leadership events around the world. In high demand, he speaks to nearly 200,000 people at various annual events before audiences of both church and organizational leaders.

Andy and his wife, Sandra, have three grown children and live near Atlanta.

Ginger Hardage recently retired as Senior Vice President of Culture and Communications at Southwest Airlines after an illustrious 25 years, where she served as a member of the CEO’s executive leadership team. At Southwest (the nation’s largest airline), Ginger led a team of 150 people responsible for building and sustaining the organization’s legendary culture and communications enterprise.

Recognized by many as a foremost global authority on building and sustaining organizational culture, Ginger was responsible for the activities that nourished the culture and the internal and external communications function. At Southwest, Ginger was a tireless ambassador of the world-famous Southwest Culture, leading to honors like 22 consecutive years on FORTUNE’s “Top 10 Most Admired Companies in the World” list. Most importantly, Ginger helped champion the values that have made Southwest a culture of enduring greatness – we put people first, we treat customers like family, we nurture our culture, and we try to change ahead of the times.

In addition to leading Southwest’s “Best Place to Work” initiatives, Hardage led the airline’s culture and communications evolution, expanding the communication functions to include more robust internal communications capabilities and a more focused corporate philanthropy program. She also led the airline’s Culture Committee, employee recognition and engagement, and all company wide celebrations.

Upon retirement, Southwest CEO Gary Kelly said “Ginger has made countless contributions to Southwest. She has been an invaluable business partner, advisor, and mentor. She brings constant, positive energy and enthusiasm to all those around her, and that is infectious. She has built superb teams that we are very proud of, and that I know will continue her special brand of excellence.”

Throughout her career, Ginger has received countless awards and honors including the PRWeek Top 50 Power list, PRWeek 50 Most Powerful Women in Public Relations, Texas’ Most Powerful and Influential Women, and “Legendary Communicator” by Southern Methodist University in 2007. Ginger was inducted into the Public Relations Hall of Fame in 2015, received the Legacy Award from the Plank Center for Leadership in 2016, and was selected for the James C. Bowling Executive-In-Residence Lecture Series at the University of Kentucky in 2005.

Ginger currently serves as a Trustee on two global boards—Ronald McDonald House Charities and the Arthur Page Society. In Dallas, she serves on the board of The Trinity Park Conservancy, was recently President of the Trinity Commons Foundation, and is an advisory board member for the City of Dallas’ Center for Performance Excellence. Ginger previously served on advisory boards of Novartis in Basel, Switzerland; Business Civic Leadership Center, an affiliate of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce; Big Brothers and Sisters of Metropolitan Dallas; Southwest Cares; and the Council of Public Relations Firms.

Craig Springer is the Executive Director of Alpha USA; a program that runs in over 6,000 churches across every major denomination and 450 prisons throughout the country. Alpha mobilizes 50,000 volunteers and 350,000 participants annually in the US and over 1.5 million globally. Alpha is a simple idea of a great meal, a short talk and a meaningful discussion about life and faith over ten weeks. It is for people with questions, frustrations and serious doubts about spirituality, the church, the direction of their lives or anything in-between. The key to Alpha is listening – it’s a judgement-free space where any point of view is respected, no one gets corrected and people can explore their thoughts together. Alpha USA is helping to transform the culture of churches in America and across the globe to listen more than we speak and invite those in who don’t believe or behave in all the familiar ways. Best-Selling Author and Leader, Rick Warren, has stated “Alpha is one of the most effective tools for the 21^st century.”

Craig has been a leader and pastor in influential churches in Chicago and Denver, one of which was named Outreach Magazine’s 2014 Fastest Growing Church in America. Craig lives in the Denver area and is a passionate hack at every mountain sport you can name. He has been married to Sarah for 18 years, has two, full-hearted children and one very spoiled beagle.

Carla Harris is a Vice Chairman, Managing Director and Senior Client Advisor at Morgan Stanley. She is responsible for increasing client connectivity and penetration to enhance revenue generation across the firm. She formerly headed the Emerging Manager Platform, the equity capital markets effort for the consumer and retail industries and was responsible for Equity Private Placements. In her 30 year career, Ms. Harris has had extensive industry experiences in the technology, media, retail, telecommunications, transportation, industrial, and healthcare sectors. In August 2013, Carla Harris was appointed by President Barack Obama to chair the National Women’s Business Council.

For more than a decade, Ms. Harris was a senior member of the equity syndicate desk and executed such transactions as initial public offerings for UPS, Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, Ariba, Redback, the General Motors sub-IPO of Delphi Automotive, and the $3.2 Billion common stock transaction for Immunex Corporation, one of the largest biotechnology common stock transactions in U.S. history. Ms. Harris was named to Fortune Magazine’s list of “The 50 Most Powerful Black Executives in Corporate America”, Fortune’s Most Influential List, U. S. Bankers Top 25 Most Powerful Women in Finance (2009, 2010, 2011), Black Enterprise’s Top 75 Most Powerful Women in Business (2017), and “Top 75 African Americans on Wall Street”, and to Essence Magazine’s list of “The 50 Women Who are Shaping the World”, Ebony’s list of the Power 100 and “15 Corporate Women at the Top” and was named “Woman of the Year 2004” by the Harvard Black Men’s Forum and in 2011 by the Yale Black Men’s Forum.

Prior to joining Morgan Stanley, Carla received an MBA, Second Year Honors from Harvard Business School and an AB in economics from Harvard University, Magna Cum Laude. Carla has also received Honorary Doctorates of Laws, Humanities and Business from Marymount Manhattan College, Bloomfield College, Jacksonville University, Simmons College, the College of New Rochelle, St. Thomas Aquinas College and Fisk University, respectively. Carla Harris is actively involved in her community and heartily believes that “we are blessed so that we can be a blessing to someone else.”

She is the past Chair of the Board of the Morgan Stanley Foundation and of The Executive Leadership Council, and sits on the boards of Sponsors for Educational Opportunity (SEO), A Better Chance, Inc, and St. Vincent’s Hospitals, and is an active member of the St. Charles Gospelites of the St. Charles Borromeo Catholic Church and the Mark Howell Singers. She is a member of the board of overseers of Harvard University and of the board of directors of the Walmart Corporation. Ms. Harris was co-chair of the National Social Action Commission of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Incorporated. She has been named to the New Jersey Hall of Fame (2015) and has received the Bert King Award from the Harvard Business School African American Alumni Association, the 2005 Women’s Professional Achievement Award from Harvard University, the Pierre Toussaint Medallion from the Office of Black Ministry of the Archdiocese of New York, the Women of Power Award given by the National Urban League, the Women of Influence Award from The Links, Incorporated and many other awards. In her other life, Carla is a singer, and has released her third gospel CD “Unceasing Praise” (2011) , her second CD, a gospel album titled, “Joy Is Waiting”, was featured on BET Nightly News while her first CD entitled, “Carla’s First Christmas”, was a bestseller on Amazon.com in New York and in record stores, and was featured on the CBS Evening News with Dan Rather in his “American Dream” segment. She has performed 5 sold out concerts at Carnegie Hall. Carla is also the author of the books, Strategize to Win (2014) and of Expect to Win (2009) (Hudson Press).