Offered by Mike H.

Joined June 2024

Ex-Director of Stanford's Center for Leadership Development and Research

I specialize in developing structured leadership development plans for individuals, teams and organizations, with years spent in management and leadership development roles. At Stanford, I ran the Center for Leadership Development and Research at the Graduate School of Business (GSB), and later oversaw the Stanford MSx Program, the GSB's mid-career business degree. I had responsibilities for implementing the leadership curriculum in both the Stanford MBA and MSx programs, managed the school's first in-house leadership coaching staff, taught a Stanford GSB course ('Leading with Agility'), and co-developed the 'Stanford LEAP 360' leadership assessment tool that is used in Stanford Executive Education programs. I co-founded the LOWkeynotes program, the premier public speaking program at Stanford, to help MBA students develop executive presence, influence and communication skills. I launched the first diversity-focused GSB Executive Education program, the Advanced Leadership Program for Asian-American Executives (ALP). And I was responsible for recruiting, admitting and advising roughly 80 Stanford Sloan Fellows each year--global leaders who would spend a year at Stanford to study business and leadership in preparation for senior leadership roles. Prior to Stanford, I oversaw the Fellows and Senior Fellows Program at the American Leadership Forum, where I worked with C-level executives from corporate, government and nonprofit organizations in Silicon Valley to develop a dynamic regional community leadership network. This included executives from Netflix, HP, Applied Materials, Mayfield Fund, Adobe, Etrade, Agilent, Cisco, as well as mayors, judges, museum directors and other civic leaders. And in other roles, primarily as a consultant or entrepreneur, I've had to not only influence strategy, but also assure that my clients and partners got the support and coaching required to be successful, at varying levels within their organizations. I cannot say I've always been successful at each step. I've had my stumbles, which has been an important part of my own education. While I've taught leadership, I tend to think of myself as a student first, leading with curiosity rather than conviction. I've found that such an approach, avoiding judgment, is more likely to yield insights quickly, especially when working with clients.