About The Author
Colonel Tom Kolditz is an internationally recognized expert on crisis leadership and leadership in extreme contexts, in cross cultural leadership, and in the development of programs to inculcate leadership and leader development in everything from project teams to large organizations. Kolditz is a leader himself, serving in an array of military tactical command and technical staff assignments worldwide, commanding on three continents. His 32 year career has focused on either leading organizations, or studying leadership and leadership policy. He served for two 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. For the past 10 years he has chaired the academic department responsible for teaching, research, and outreach activities in Leadership, Psychology, Sociology, and Management at West Point, and is the founding director of the West Point Leadership Center. He is among a handful of presidentially confirmed officers offered permanent status at West Point beyond 30 years of service.
Dr. Kolditz has published more than 50 book chapters and articles across a diverse array of academic, military, and leadership trade journals, and serves on the editorial and advisory boards of several academic journals. He is a Fellow in the American Psychological Association and in the Inter-University Seminar on Armed Forces and Society, and is a member of the Association for Psychological Science, the Academy of Management and the Society of Psychologists in Management. In 2007 he was appointed a Visiting Professor at the Yale School of Management and teaches a crisis leadership course in their MBA curriculum annually.
Since 2001, Kolditz has served as coach to the U.S. Military Academy Sport Parachute Team. He weaves his personal experiences and abilities as a soldier, skydiver, and scholar into the first-hand study, analysis, and practice of leadership in dangerous circumstances—in extremis leadership—and how such leadership can inform the practice of leading in more ordinary settings, across the private, public, and social sectors. His most recent book, titled In Extremis Leadership: Leading as if Your Life Depended on It, was based on more than 100 interviews taken on the ground in Iraq during combat operations. He has been named as a leadership Thought Leader by the Leader to Leader Institute and as a Top Leader Development Professional by Leadership Excellence. In 2009, he was named to the Council of Senior Advisors, Future of Executive Development Forum.
Colonel Kolditz has presented leadership content to more than 200 governmental, corporate, and social sector audiences worldwide. As a professor, he has led academic seminars or given lectures to students from Babson, Wellesley, and Olin Colleges, the University of Missouri, Columbia University, Duke University, Yale University, the Military Psychology Center of the Israel Defense Forces, Peking University, the Beijing International MBA program, Harvard’s Center for Public Leadership, seven national and international service academies and more than ten major metropolitan law enforcement, firefighting, and public service academies and assemblies. Kolditz has appeared on ABC World News, ABC 20-20, Al Jazeera, MSNBC, CBS, NPR, Calgary Today, Morning Ireland, and interviews with reporters from the New York Times, the Associated Press, Time, Discovery, the Atlanta Journal Constitution, the Washington Post, La Razon, and more than a dozen national and international news agencies.
He holds numerous degrees, including a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology and Sociology from Vanderbilt University, as well as Masters and Ph.D. degrees in Social Psychology, a Master of Military Arts and Science, and a Masters in Strategic Studies.
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