Developing compassionate leaders in service of a flourishing world - Sophia Town

Leadership 2.0

English - May 30, 2023 08:00 - 46 minutes - 31.7 MB
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Sophia Town, Ph.D., is an assistant professor of organizational behavior at the Gabelli School of Business. As a qualitative researcher, Dr. Town explores how leaders can cultivate both knowledge and wisdom in service of individual, organizational, and societal flourishing.

During our conversation, we discussed, amongst others, the following topics :

- Our changing expectations from leaders

- Leadership versus Management

- The blurring boundaries between our working lives and our private lives

- Managing paradoxes

- Value alignment between organizations and employees

- Knowledge versus Wisdom

- Mindfulness

- Time and decision making

- Stories we tell ourselves

- The power of questions and self-reflection

- Preparing students for leadership positions

- Emotional intelligence

- Profit as a ‘happy coincidence’ (CSR)

- The importance of curiosity in the context of motivation

More about Sophia Town:

Dr. Town’s research program reflects three primary streams of research: (1) wisdom-based leadership, (2) systemic change for human flourishing, and (3) transformative business pedagogy.

In the classroom, Professor Town’s curriculum is guided by the question: “How can we develop compassionate leaders in service of a flourishing world?” Professor Town has designed and taught a number of reflective and experiential courses for the undergraduate, MBA, and Executive MBA levels covering topics such as leadership development, emotional intelligence, mindfulness, conflict management, and negotiation. Each course aims to humanize business education by fostering the ‘knowing,’ ‘doing,’ and ‘being’ of wisdom in the workplace.

Regarding transformative pedagogy, Dr. Town leads Fordham’s Human Flourishing Project (FHFP), a mixed-methods, interdisciplinary research lab that explores behavioral, psychological, communicative, and spiritual development in business education. Related to this project, Dr. Town serves as a Research Affiliate and Advisory Board Member for the Human Flourishing Program at Harvard University. She currently oversees Fordham’s collaborative participation in a multi-year, grant-funded research study with the Human Flourishing Program at Harvard University to study the role of ‘Love’ in business education.

In addition to her professorial role, Dr. Town is a Fellow for the Center for Humanistic Management at Fordham University and a Research Consultant for the Center for Mindfulness, Compassion, and Resilience at Arizona State University. In 2018, Dr. Town was named the Jeanne Lind Herberger Fellow for transformative research on work and life. She has received several teaching awards, including the 2018 Teaching Excellence Award (ASU) and the 2021 Dean’s Award for Teaching Innovation (Fordham University). In 2023, Dr. Town won the Dean’s Award for Faculty Service (Fordham University). Dr. Town’s work has been supported by grants from the John Templeton Foundation, the Lincoln Center for Applied Ethics, and the International Association of Jesuit Universities.

To connect with Dr. Town or her work, you can find her on LinkedIn and Google Scholar.

A full list of her publications can be found here: https://www.fordham.edu/gabelli-school-of-business/faculty/full-time-faculty/sophia-town/