John Dugan, Ph.D.

Director, Program Quality, Design, & Assessment

John currently serves as the Director of Program Quality, Design, and Assessment in the Youth & Engagement Programs Division at The Aspen Institute. The Aspen Institute is an educational and policy studies organization based in Washington, DC. Its mission is to foster leadership based on enduring values and to provide a nonpartisan venue for dealing with critical issues. John reached the rank of full professor in the Higher Education graduate program at Loyola University Chicago.

John is the Principal Investigator for the Multi-Institutional Study of Leadership, an international research program examining influences on socially responsible leadership and other educational outcomes (e.g., efficacy, resilience, social perspective-taking, identity development). To date more than 350 institutions in the Australia, Canada, Chile, Jamaica, Mexico, and the United States have participated in the study yielding over 500,000 participants. John’s research has generated over 40 publications including his most recent book: Leadership Theory: Cultivating Critical Perspectives. John earned his bachelor’s degree in Communications and Spanish from John Carroll University. He holds master’s and doctoral degrees in Counseling and Personnel Services from the University of Maryland, College Park. He lives in Chicago with his husband (Trey) and two dogs (Charlie and Bernie). In his free time, he is unapologetically nerdy and loves to spend times reading comic books, watching documentaries, and avoiding sports.

Georgia Sorensen, Ph.D.

Møller Leadership Scholar and Møller By-Fellow

Georgia Sorenson, Ph.D. Is the James MacGregor Burns Leadership Scholar and Møller By Fellow at Churchill College, University of Cambridge.  Before coming to the Møller Institute, University of Cambridge, she founded the James MacGregor Burns Academy of Leadership at the University of Maryland, USA where she was Distinguished Research Professor. She is also cofounder of the International Leadership Association. In addition, Professor Sorenson has served as Senior Policy Analyst to President Jimmy Carter in the White House, Inaugural Chair and Professor of Transformational Leadership of the U.S. Army War College, and Visiting Senior Scholar at the University of Richmond’s Jepson School of Leadership Studies as well as the University of Maryland Carey School of Law.

An architect of the leadership studies field, she was awarded the 2015 International Leadership Association’s Lifetime Achievement Award, an award that “honors an individual’s accomplishments in the development and enhancement of the field of leadership over his or her lifetime.”

Dr. Sorenson is co-editor (with George Goethals and James MacGregor Burns) of the four-volume multi-award winning Encyclopedia of Leadership, and The Quest for a General Theory of Leadership.  She was coauthor of Dead Center (with James MacGregor Burns) an analysis of the Clinton presidency.  Her latest book is on business leadership, The Power of Invisible Leadership (with Gill Hickman).  Sorenson serves on the editorial board of numerous refereed journals including, Leadership, Leadership Quarterly (Associate Editor, 2007-2014) and Leadership Review. She is co-editor (with Ronald Riggio) of a series, Leadership Research and Practice, for Routledge Press and also of the upcoming University of Cambridge Press journal Elements: Leadership.

Susan Komives, Ph.D.

Professor Emerita

Susan R. Komives is Professor Emerita at the University of Maryland. She is past president of CAS and ACPA; was vice president of two colleges; and is the author/editor of a dozen books including Student Services, Exploring Leadership, Leadership for a Better World, The Social Change Model: Facilitating Leadership Development, and the Handbook for Student Leadership Development. She is executive editor of the inaugural New Directions in Student Leadership series. Her books have been translated into Chinese and Japanese. She was a member of the teams that developed Learning Reconsidered, the Social Change Model of Leadership Development, the Relational Leadership Model, the Multi-Institutional Study of Leadership, and the Leadership Identity Development grounded theory. She is co-founder of the National Clearinghouse for Leadership Programs (NCLP) and a former member of the Board of Directors of ILA. Dr. Komives is a recipient of both the ACPA and NASPA outstanding research awards, the ALE Distinguished Leadership & Service Award, and the ACPA Life Time Achievement Award.

Eboo Patel

Founder & President

Eboo Patel is a leading voice in the movement for interfaith cooperation and the Founder and President of Interfaith Youth Core (IFYC), a national nonprofit working to make interfaith cooperation a social norm. He is the author of Acts of Faith, Sacred Ground and Interfaith Leadership. Named by US News & World Report as one of America’s Best Leaders of 2009, Eboo served on President Obama’s Inaugural Faith Council. He is a regular contributor to the public conversation around religion in America and a frequent speaker on the topic of religious pluralism. He holds a doctorate in the sociology of religion from Oxford University, where he studied on a Rhodes scholarship. For over fifteen years, Eboo has worked with governments, social sector organizations, and college and university campuses to help realize a future where religion is a bridge of cooperation rather than a barrier of division.