Faculty Steering Committee

Stuart Albert
Associate Professor, Carlson School of Management

Albert is an expert on the topic of timing. Some of his major publications include The Timing of Dissent and Towards a Theory of Timing: An Archival Study of Timing Decisions in the Persian Gulf War. Currently, Albert is writing a book on how timing affects all aspects of business, including how to determine the right time to act.

Massoud Amin
Professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering

Amin holds the Honeywell/H. W. Sweatt Chair at the University of Minnesota and is the director of the Center for Development of Technological Leadership. His expertise is in leveraging technology to enhance our nation’s infrastructure security, resilience, and efficiency, and in developing world-class leaders. He has created and led integrative research and development initiatives with diverse groups, ranging from the electric power industry to the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.

J. Brian Atwood (Beginning January 2013)

Atwood was unanimously elected Chair of the OECD’s Development Assistance Committee in January 2011. From 1993 to 1999 Mr. Atwood served as Administrator of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). Prior to this, he led the Transition Team at the State Department and was Under Secretary of State for Management. During the administration of President Jimmy Carter, he served as Assistant Secretary of State for Congressional Relations. From 2002 until 2010, M.r Atwood was Dean of the Hubert Humphrey School of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota. In 2001, he served on United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan's Panel on Peace Operations.

Laura Bloomberg
Executive Director

Associate Professor, Carlson School of ManagementBloomberg is the executive director of the Center for Integrative Leadership and an instructor at the Humphrey School of Public Affairs where she teachers courses on leadership and program evaluation. She has worked in the area of educational administration, policy, and leadership development for twenty years.

Robert H. Bruininks
Professor and President Emeritus, Humphrey School of Public Affairs

Bruininks holds the Elmer L. Andersen President Emeritus Chair in Civic Leadership and is the Emma M. Birkmaier Professor in Educational Leadership in the College of Education and Human Development. For more than 40 years he has served the University as assistant professor, professor, department head, dean, executive vice president and provost, and president. In July of 2011, he left the presidency to resume his academic career, focusing on transformative public and civic leadership, the development of human capital from early childhood through post-secondary education, and higher education policy issues.

C. Cryss Brunner
Associate Professor, College of Education and Human Development

Brunner, PhD, an Associate Professor in the University of Minnesota’s Department of Organizational Leadership, Policy, and Development, conducts research (on identity, power, school superintendents, technology, leadership preparation) published in academic journals including but not limited to: American Educational Research Journal, Educational Administration Quarterly, Educational Policy, Policy Studies Journal, Computers and Human Behavior, and Teachers College Record. In addition to sole-authoring one book and editing two books (one with Lars Bjork), she coauthored the book Women Leading School Systems: Uncommon Roads to Fulfillment (2007) with Margaret Grogan. Brunner is a recipient of the National Academy of Education’s Spencer Fellowship for work on superintendents, power, and decision-making.

John Bryson
Professor, Humphrey School of Public Affairs

Bryson is McKnight Presidential Professor of Planning and Public Affairs in the Hubert H. Humphrey School of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota. He works in the areas of leadership, strategic management, and the design of organizational and community change processes. He is a Fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration.

Barbara Crosby
Associate Professor, Humphrey School of Public Affairs

Crosby is a member of the Humphrey School's Public and Nonprofit Leadership Center. She has taught and written extensively about leadership and public policy, women in leadership, and strategic planning. She is the author of Leadership for Global Citizenship and co-author, with John M. Bryson, of Leadership for the Common Good.

Daniel Forbes
Associate Professor, Carlson School of Management

Forbes serves in the Department of Strategic Management & Organization at the Carlson School of Management, where he teaches courses on strategy and entrepreneurship. His research focuses on how people make decisions in the course of creating and managing new organizations, especially in contexts that require collaboration across multiple sectors. He has previously served as an advisor to the Food Industry Center and to the Management Assistance Program for Nonprofits.

Claire Hill
Professor of Law, Law School

Hill teaches courses in commercial and business law, as well as seminars in law and economics, transactions, and corporate governance. Professor Hill's research interests include capital structure, behavioral law and economics, contract theory, and law and language. She previously taught in the Schools of Law at Chicago-Kent, George Mason, Northwestern and Boston University; she also was a Sloan Visiting Professor at Georgetown. Before becoming a law professor, Professor Hill practiced corporate law at Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy in New York.

Brad Hokanson
Professor and Associate Dean for Research and Outreach, College of Design

Hokanson won the College of Design's award for Outstanding Teaching in 2008. He has a diverse academic record, including degrees in art, architecture, urban design, and received his Ph.D. in Instructional Technology. His research focuses on creativity and the use of technology to aid cognition. He has published his research in Computers in Human Behavior, Interactions with Media, Educational Technology, and the Handbook of Visual Languages in Instructional Design. He is a registered architect with a number of award winning projects, although no longer in active practice.

Steve Kelley
Senior Fellow,  Humphrey School of Public Affairs, Interim Deputy Dirctor, CIL

Kelley is a senior fellow at the Humphrey School of Public Affairs and its Center for Science, Technology, and Public Policy. He served in the Minnesota Legislature for 14 years, chairing the Senate Education Committee for four years. Kelley’s current work focuses on issues relating to science, technology, engineering and mathematics education, information and communications technology policy, innovation policy and the role of design thinking in innovation and public engagement with science.

He has served on a number of boards and commissions, including the Minnesota Board of Medical Practice, the National Conference of State Legislatures, the Citizens League, Sierra Club North Star Chapter Executive Committee, SciMathMN and Playworks Twin Cities.

P. Jay Kiedrowski
Senior Fellow,  Humphrey School of Public Affairs

Kiedrowski specializes in public and nonprofit finance, organizational development, and leadership. He retired from Wells Fargo & Co. as an executive vice president and manager of the institutional investments group. Before entering banking, Kiedrowski was Minnesota commissioner of finance and chief financial officer for the State of Minnesota. Prior to that, he was the budget director and assistant city coordinator for the City of Minneapolis.

Greg Lindsey
Professor, Humphrey School of Public Affairs
Acting Academic Co-Director, CIL

Greg Lindsey joined the Humphrey School of Public Affairs in 2008 as Associate Dean, served as Interim Dean in 2011, and as Executive Associate Dean until September 2012.

Lindsey specializes in environmental planning, policy, and management. His current research involves non-motorized transportation systems, including bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure, and studies of relationships between the built environment and active transportation and physical activity.  Lindsey teaches capstone and workshop courses in non-motorized transportation and the Humphrey School's CHANCE course, a course in which students do research with neighborhood organizations in the Cedar Riverside on issues of concern to local residents.

Alfred Marcus
Professor, Carlson School of Management

Marcus is the Spencer Chair in Strategy and Technological Leadership in the Carlson School and the Center for Technological Development and Leadership at the University of Minnesota He is author or editor of 13 books including Big Winners and Big Losers, Management Strategy, and Winning Moves. He is currently working on a book called Foresight: Scenarios to Generate and Test Business Strategies.

Philip Miller
Assistant Dean,, Carlson School of Management

Miller is an experienced business leader and educator with who has led teams, organizations and business operations as well as teaching management, consulting methodology and critical thinking at the undergraduate, graduate and executive levels. He brings experience and a passion for teaching and professional development to his role as Assistant Dean for MBA Programs and the Graduate Business Career Center at the Carlson School of Management. He has previously worked at 3M and Ernst & Young. In each role Phil has been responsible for developing and implementing analytical tools and frameworks to assist in clear, fact based decision making as well as professional and career development for MBA and undergraduates.

June Nobbe
Director, Office of Student Affairs

Nobbe provides oversight for curricular and co-curricular leadership programs, and student-community relations. She served as the Student Affairs representative in working to create an interdisciplinary Undergraduate Leadership Minor. She provides administrative leadership for the Leadership Minor and has worked at the University for 25 years in the Division of Student Affairs. She is also a Ph.D. Candidate in Educational Policy & Administration.

Daniel J. Pesut, PhD RN PMHCNS-BC FAAN ACC
Katherine R. and C. Walton Lillehei Chair in Nursing Leadership and Professor, School of Nursing

Pesut is the Director of the Katharine Densford International Center for Nursing Leadership and holds the Katherine R. and C. Walton Lillehei Chair in Nursing Leadership. He is a Professor of Nursing in the Population Health and Systems Cooperative Unit of the School of Nursing. He has completed Certificates in Management Development from Harvard Institute for Higher Education, Core Mediation Skills Training from the International Association of Dispute Resolution (IARD) and a graduate certificate in Integral Studies from Fielding Graduate University. Dr. Pesut is a certified Hudson Institute coach specializing academic career coaching, leadership development,integrally informed approaches to interprofessional health professions education.

Denise Trudeau Poskas
Leadership Development Specialist, University of Minnesota Extension

Poskas develops and strengthens leadership training program and curriculum efforts at Extension. She brings experience in evaluation methods, leadership training, leadership coaching, and supervisory management. She was previously at Virginia Tech University where, as a director of leadership, she restructured and designed the undergraduate leadership program and minor. She has established expertise in leadership coaching/consulting and teaching leadership studies at the university, corporate and community levels.

Sandra Potthoff, PhD
Associate Professor, School of Public Health

Potthoff is Associate Professor in the Division of Health Policy and Management in the School of Public Health and the former program director for the Master of Healthcare Administration Program. Her current research entails the integration of operations research models with electronic data to support evidence-based decision making.

Lou Quast
Hellervik/PDI Ninth House Endowed Chair in Leadership and Adult Career Development , College of Education and Human Development

Quast has worked as a consultant for PDI Ninth House, where he has been primarily active in designing and delivering large-scale leadership development interventions for client organizations across the United States and in a number of countries around the world. He has also been active in executive coaching; working with clients to develop a talent strategy to achieve their business strategy. In his U of M work he teaches both leadership and career-development courses, conduct research on multiple aspects of both fields, and work on other special projects.

Kathy Quick
Assistant Professor, Humphrey School of Public Affairs

Quick's research focuses on how managers in public and nonprofit organizations create opportunities for communities to address public issues together. She does ethnographic research in communities where such managers have been particularly successful in building platforms for ongoing civic engagement and leadership. She studies these practices across a range of issue areas, including city budgeting and resource management, environmental stewardship, urban master planning and zoning, neighborhood conflicts, and arts and culture development.

Jodi Sandfort
Associate Professor, Humphrey School of Public Affairs

Sandfort’s research, teaching, and practice focus on improving the implementation of social policy, particularly those policies designed to support low-income children and their families. She also is a senior fellow at the Minnesota Council of Nonprofits, where she develops and implements a statewide leadership development program. 

Karen Seashore Louis
Professor and the Robert H. Beck Chair, College of Education and Human Development

Seashore Louis is a Regents Professor and the Robert H. Beck Chair at the University of Minnesota. She has also served as the Director of the Center for Applied Research and Educational Improvement at the University of Minnesota, Department Chair, and Associate Dean of the College of Education and Human Development. Her research focuses on school improvement and reform, school effectiveness, leadership in school settings, and the politics of knowledge use in education. Most of her work since the mid-1980s has focused on improving education for students who come from circumstances that disadvantage them in the current education system. She has been involved in applied policy and evaluation research for over 35 years, and is currently engaged in a collaborative longitudinal study of leadership and school turnaround in St. Paul.

Myles Shaver
Pond Family Chair in the Teaching and Advancement of Free Enterprise Principles, Carlson School of Management

Shaver is Professor of Strategic Management and Organization at the Carlson School of Management. He is also the academic co-director of the Center for Integrative Leadership. He has received numerous teaching awards for MBA and executive education classes on Corporate Strategy, Multinational Business Management, and Corporate Responsibility; and Ph.D. classes on strategy and international business research. His research interests revolve around corporate strategy choices and their impact on performance. In particular, his research focuses on the management and economics of international expansion as well as corporate expansion through diversification and mergers and acquisitions.