Dr. John Hillen

The Honorable Dr. John Hillen is a board chairman, corporate director, popular college professor, and sought after speaker. In addition to his board roles, he teaches strategy and leadership at Duke University, Hampden-Sydney College, and in the MBA program at George Mason University – where he has won several teaching awards. A former public company CEO who has built and sold four mid-sized companies, he is an award-winning leadership author, a former senior US government official, a decorated combat veteran, and an executive coach.

John’s newest book, The Strategy Dialogues, is a critically acclaimed guide to thinking and acting strategically. Called by Patrick Lencioni “practical as it is entertaining…John Hillen makes strategy actionable and understandable” and by Marshall Goldsmith “a must-read for anyone looking to get clarity and bring these tools to their businesses.” John uses his decades of strategic leadership experience in several fields to reveal the secrets of strategic thinking and how to shape the future for an organization – skills that every executive needs to master.

An experienced speaker, facilitator and teacher, he moderates leadership seminars for The Aspen Institute and wrote a column on leadership and strategy issues for Washington Technology magazine and Forbes. His previous book, What Happens Now: Reinvent Yourself As a Leader Before Your Business Outruns You (co-authored with Mark Nevins) was named one of the top 30 business books of 2018 and is in its third printing.

Unanimously confirmed by the Senate in 2005, Hillen served as the Assistant Secretary of State for Political-Military Affairs in the second half of the Bush administration and in that capacity spent much of his time with U.S. and allied troops in war zones from Iraq to Afghanistan to the southern Philippines. He has written or edited several books on international security affairs and has published articles in dozens of journals and newspapers, including Foreign Affairs, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post. He has appeared on every major television network and was an on-air commentator for ABC News for a number of years.

Hillen, who served for 12 years as an Army reconnaissance officer and paratrooper, was awarded the Bronze Star for his role in the Battle of the 73 Easting during Operation Desert Storm. He recently spent nine years on the Chief of Naval Operations Executive Panel, the federal advisory committee supporting the head of the U.S. Navy, and received the Navy’s Meritorious Public Service Award in 2017. He was the military advisor on the original Call of Duty video game series set in World War II. In 2020 he was inducted into the US Army ROTC Hall of Fame.

Dr. Hillen graduated from Duke University with degrees in public policy studies and history and was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship after graduation. He holds a master’s degree in war studies from King’s College London, a doctorate in international relations from Oxford University, and an MBA from the Johnson School of Management at Cornell University. He was awarded an honorary Doctor of Laws from Hampden-Sydney College in 2019.

Mark D. Nevins is an executive advisor, consultant, and coach who works with individuals, teams, and organizations to help them perform more effectively, efficiently, and profitably. He serves his clients in three general areas: C-Suite Leadership Development and Coaching; Executive Team Alignment; Organization Development advisory.

For more than twenty years, Mark has been advising and consulting to senior executives of dozens of large and small organizations around the world, in virtually all industries, in both the private and public sectors. His clients range from Fortune 100 companies to smaller privately held high growth firms, including American Express, athenahealth, Big Brothers Big Sisters, Boeing, Citibank, CapitalOne, Comcast, Exxon-Mobil, Ford Motor Company, Guardian Life, Google, MongoDB, NBCUniversal, Oppenheimer Funds, Reed Elsevier/RELX, Schindler, Schlumberger, Sony, ThyssenKrupp, Thomson Reuters, Time Warner, Tory Burch, UBS, UnitedHealth, and Voya. He also serves top-tier management consulting and private equity firms and has consulted to universities as well as branches of the US government and military.

Mark’s publications include What Happens Now? Reinvent Yourself as a Leader Before Your Business Outuns You, and The Advice Business, a book on management and strategy consulting. He is a long-time moderator for The Aspen Institute’s flagship seminars on Values-Based Leadership and Leading Change. He was a founding Advisory Board member of the Institute for Executive Development (IED) and often guest lectures on at top business schools.

In his corporate career, Mark spent a decade in global leadership roles with the strategy and management consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton and the executive search firm Korn/Ferry International. In each of these roles he led organization and people development globally and oversaw the full range of human resource functions. He also consulted with a number of Booz Allen's major clients on organizational change challenges.

Prior to his career in the private sector, Mark taught at Harvard University for nearly a decade. He was graduated with honors from the College of the Holy Cross, and he took his Ph.D. in English Literature from Harvard University, during which time he received awards for his teaching and scholarships for research and study in the United States and abroad. Mark sits on the boards of a private equity firm as well as Stay-Focused, a not-for-profit organization that empowers young adults with disabilities in leadership and self-reliance via SCUBA certification. He has traveled, worked, and taught in more than 50 countries around the globe.