The 18th annual Kravis-de Roulet Leadership Conference, Leading Corporate Boardrooms: The New Realities, the New Rules, will be held Friday, Jan. 25 at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York City. This year's theme focuses on the critical leadership role of corporate boards, with insight into boardroom trends, leadership best practices, and major challenges currently facing directors in the boardroom.
"With the sub-prime mortgage debacle and a struggling economy, corporate boards are back in the spotlight," says conference organizer Jay Conger, the Henry R. Kravis Research Chair in Leadership Studies. "We're witnessing who has built true leadership capability in their boardrooms and who hasn't. Our conference on boardroom leadership couldn't be more timely. I am particularly pleased that we'll have many of the nation's pre-eminent experts all in one room."
Sharp growth in the use of lead directors as well as appointments of non-executive chairs and the resulting regulations of Enron and WorldCom scandals are just a few issues informing scheduled discussions by participants.
Conference speakers include:
Joseph L. Bower (Donald Kirk David Professor of Business Administration, Harvard Business School)
Patrick Canavan (senior vice president, Global Governance for Motorola)
Dan R. Dalton (director of the Institute for Corporate Governance, Dean Emeritus)
Charles Elson (chair in corporate governance and director of the John L. Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance Lerner College of Business & Economics, University of Delaware)
Sydney Finkelstein (Steven Roth Professor of Management Tuck School of Business, Dartmouth College)
Jay Lorsch (Louis Kirstein Professor of Human Relations, Harvard Business School)
Denise Morrison (president, Campbell U.S.A.)
Maggie Wilderotter (chairman and CEO, Citizens Communications)
Conference topics will include: which practices best facilitate genuine board leadership; how committees can more effectively play their leadership role in evaluating the CEO's leadership; how to choose appropriate CEO successors and how to create a healthier balance of power between the CEO and the board.
The Kravis-de Roulet Leadership Conference is sponsored by the Kravis Leadership Institute at CMC, aspiring to be the premier academic center for the promotion and understanding of responsible, innovative leadership. The Institute works to provide unique opportunities for CMC students to develop as outstanding real world leaders in the public, private and social sectors.
More information about this conference is available online: http://www.claremontmckenna.edu/kli/conference/.