Thomas Kolditz speaker

Thomas Kolditz

Brigadier General (Ret.), Leadership Thought Leader, Author, and Founding Executive Director of the Doerr Institute for New Leaders at Rice University, Global Gurus Top 30 StartUp Coach 2024, chosen as a Marshall Goldsmith 100 Coach
  • Leadership Innovator: Founded Rice University’s Doerr Institute and Yale’s Leadership Development Program, transforming leader education.
  • Military & Crisis Expertise: Retired Brigadier General and in extremis leadership pioneer, shaping crisis leadership worldwide.
  • Award-Winning Coach & Author: Globally ranked coach, with 75+ publications and partnerships advancing leadership in education and crisis recovery.
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Thomas Kolditz's 2025 biography

Thomas Kolditz: Renowned Leadership Expert, Social Psychologist, and Crisis Leadership Pioneer

Tom Kolditz is a social psychologist who develops leaders. He is currently the Managing Member of Saxon Castle LLC, a coaching and leader development consultancy. He founded the Ann and John Doerr Institute for New Leaders at Rice University and led it for 7 years. Prior to Rice, he taught as a Professor in the Practice of Leadership and Management and founded the Leadership Development Program at the Yale School of Management.

A retired Brigadier General, Tom led the Department of Behavioral Sciences and Leadership at West Point for 12 years, and was titled Professor Emeritus after retirement. He served for 2 years as a leadership and human resources policy analyst in the Pentagon, and a year as a concept developer in the Center for Army Leadership. General Kolditz is a recipient of the Distinguished Service Medal, the Army’s highest award for service. In 2017, he was honored with the prestigious Warren Bennis Award for Excellence in Leadership—an honor also bestowed on Doris Kearns Goodwin, Howard Schultz, Tom Peters, and Benazir Bhutto. From 2018 to 2023, he globally ranked in various coaching categories by Global Gurus, an independent research and professional ranking organization, most recently, #12 in Start-up Coaching in 2023. In 2019, he was selected by Thinkers50 MG100 as the #1 University Coach in the world in London in November 2019.

Dr. Kolditz has published more than 75 books, book chapters, and articles across a diverse array of academic and leadership trade journals, and served on the editorial and advisory boards of several psychology journals. He developed the concept of in extremis leadership—an original crisis leadership model—while serving in Iraq. His subsequent book on that topic, In Extremis Leadership: Leading as if Your Life Depended On It, currently helps train leaders in more than 8 service academies in the US, the United Kingdom, China, Israel, and Japan. His second book, Leadership Reckoning: Can Higher Education Develop the Leaders We Need, launched a national movement to improve the quality and quantity of leader development across higher education. Understanding the power of scale, Tom partnered with the American Council on Education and the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching to design and administer a Carnegie Elective Classification titled “Leadership for Public Purpose,” as a challenge to 5200+ colleges and universities to examine and improve the professional development of students, and is a member of the Leadership for Public Purpose National Advisory Committee.

In 2022, he worked with the largest employer in Ukraine, DTEK, and the International Coaching Federation, to pilot and administer a grand scale coaching strategy in business and government to assist and accelerate the resistance and recovery of Ukraine. He is a Fellow in the American Psychological Association and a founding member of the Board of Advisors for the Department of Psychology at the University of Missouri. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology and Sociology from Vanderbilt University, three Master’s degrees, and PhD in Psychology from the University of Missouri. Credentialed by the International Coaching Federation, Tom was also awarded an honorary Doctorate of Professional Practice by the Chicago School of Professional Psychology.

Thomas Kolditz's 2025 talks & topics

In Extremis Leadership, Leading As If Your Life Depended On It

The contemporary operating environments for both government and business is characterized by volatility, complexity, and uncertainty—perfect conditions for crises to emerge. Brigadier Gen. Tom Kolditz shows how extreme life-and-death situations can offer profound lessons for leaders in any setting. Gen. Kolditz’s research reveals that the leadership skills and principles evident in dangerous settings also apply to leading in business and everyday life, making this program applicable to both personal and professional success.

Dodging Bullets: How to Avoid Crisis

Few people want to be put into a position of being crisis managers, so how can leaders prepare organizations to avoid crises before they occur? Gen. Kolditz will take the audience through specific processes and techniques to help leaders anticipate and prevent crises and have a more effective, more empowered workforce every day.

Lessons from Sky Diving and High Risk Activities

Gen. Kolditz has lead thousands of civilian sky diving jumps and leads West Point’s elite Black Knights. Through heart-stopping real-life stories of leaders in these extreme situations, Dr. Kolditz insists that leaders at all levels can improve their effectiveness. In this program he share his knowledge about leading with influence, and communicating with purpose. He also has a variety of additional high-risk situations he shares that are ideal settings to seek and find great leaders, assess how they might be different, and gleans valuable insights for extraordinary leadership in everyday lives.

Bringing Innovation Leadership to a Legacy Organization

Learn best practices, tools and processes for effective organization design, identify key steps for mobilizing your desired organizational structure. Learn how to lead change in organizations, especially those that are tradition-bound and extraordinarily resistant to change. Tom Kolditz draws on first hand experience and multiple cases of innovation and change in organizations using a unique indirect strategy that was successful when more common change management strategies had failed.

Leading Through Tragedy

Tragedy eventually overcomes all organizations in the form of the death or serious injury of one or more members. Learn what to do to prevent tragedy from disrupting organizational effectiveness, harmony and leadership effectiveness. Lessons include concepts about succession planning, and proven leadership behavior during times of chaos.

Leaders Developing Leaders

One of a leader’s most powerful legacies is to develop those who work with them and for them. Leadership development programs in business have too often been relegated solely to talent managers and HR directors. Tom Kolditz illustrates how, in an evidence based way, each leader can personally and directly develop their people, increasing the performance and retention of employees and building a solid foundation for the future.