SPEAKERS

Jeff Eggers is a senior policy advisor, security professional, executive coach, and leadership consultant with more than 20 years experience leading high-performing teams for the White House, Department of Defense, and U.S. Navy. A trusted advisor to senior U.S. government officials, Eggers served as President Obama’s Special Assistant for National Security Affairs, where he oversaw critical and sensitive aspects of U.S. foreign and national security policy. Eggers is a passionate advocate for evolving models of leadership that take into account 21st century dynamics including generational clashes, rapidly advancing technologies, and shifting geopolitical forces. He believes that employees need to be empowered to make decisions in real time, and that teams operating with a powerful sense of purpose and empowered execution are most successful. Exclusively represented by Leading Authorities speakers bureau, Eggers explains why humble leadership is more important than heroic leadership, why leadership’s role is to cultivate rather than control, how a sense of “we” is the common thread amongst all high-performing teams—ranging from Forumla One Racing to the Tokyo String Quartet to Navy SEALS—and why the most significant risk factors to a corporation are internal.

Jeff Eggers served for four years as the National Security Council’s Senior Director for Afghanistan and Pakistan. He now leads the McChrystal Group’s Leadership Institute, where he helps Fortune 500 clients focused on improving performance to train more effective leaders and create a culture that enables peak performance. A behavioral science researcher, Eggers draws on cultural trends, current events, anecdotes from his time as a Navy SEAL leader and lessons about human nature itself to share impactful and actionable insights on decision-making, silo elimination, teamwork, and change management.

Prior to joining McChrystal Group, Jeff worked with a diverse mix of clients across industries, including an NBA franchise where he helped with leadership succession. He retired from the U.S. Navy following a successful 20 year career as a U.S. Navy SEAL. Operational tours included positions on several SEAL Teams, commander of the Special Operations Task Unit in western Iraq, and Operations Officer and Mission Commander for the U.S. Navy’s undersea special operations command. He served as a strategic advisor on national security matters, including the mid-2013 change of mission in Afghanistan, enabling an end to the U.S. combat mission and shifting emphasis to Afghan security forces. He shepherded the negotiation and signing of the U.S.-Afghanistan Strategy Partnership Agreements, and served as a Strategic Advisor to General Stanley McChrystal, Commander of NATO ISAF. He is credited with the mediation and resolution of the 2014 Afghan presidential electoral crisis, an effort that earned him the Samuel Nelson Drew Award, presented by President Obama for “Distinguished Contribution in Pursuit of Global Peace.”

Eggers is an Adjunct Senior Analyst for the RAND Corporation and has been published in Fortune, Foreign Policy, Politico, U.S. News and World Report, and more. He has taught courses in change management, leadership, and public policy for U.S. intelligence agencies, the Foreign Service Institute, and the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.

He is a Senior Fellow at the New America Foundation, an advisor for the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue, a member of the NationSwell Council, and a board member of the Special Operations Fund, a non-profit that cares for and assists the families of special operations veterans killed in action.

Paul W. Earle, Jr. is a brand and innovation professional, entrepreneur, intrapreneur, and lecturer with significant experience in design, the development of new products and services, new venture formation, intellectual property licensing, marketing communications of all kinds, and traditional brand management and strategy.

At present, Paul is Principal of Earle & Company, an innovation, branding, and design collective that helps progressive companies create the future. He also writes a monthly column for Forbes, where he covers innovation in the consumer products sector. Finally, he is an adjunct faculty member at Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management, where he co-teaches the popular “Corporate Innovation & New Ventures” class, a lab immersion that pairs student teams with top corporate partners such as McDonald’s, Visa, Procter & Gamble, United Airlines, Beam Suntory, Hyatt, E&J Gallo, and many others.

Prior to launching his latest enterprise, Paul was Executive Director of Farmhouse, the innovation and new venture center of the global creative agency Leo Burnett. Founded by Paul in partnership with Leo Burnett management in 2011 and operating successfully through 2016, Farmhouse developed new brands, new product and service concepts, and other new kinds of designed experiences for premier clients such as Procter & Gamble, McDonald’s, Kellogg’s, Allstate, E&J Gallo, and others. While at Burnett, Paul also co-authored the strategy that led to “Publicis90,” a global open innovation platform—the first of its kind in the big agency world. On his own, prior to joining Burnett, amongst other adventures, Paul was part of the founding team that created and launched ANGEL’S ENVY, a whiskey brand that achieved near instant success and would ultimately be acquired by Bacardi in 2015.

From 2001 to 2009, Paul served as founder and President of River West Brands LLC, a dormant brand acquisition and redevelopment company that later became part of Omnicom Group. River West acquired and relaunched well known but distressed brand properties such as COLECO toys, BRIM coffee, EAGLE snacks, NUPRIN analgesics, SALON SELECTIVES hair care, and a number of other icons. Paul and his work earned feature-length profiles in the New York Times, NBC’s Today Show, NPR, BBC, and other prominent media.

Earlier, Paul worked in brand management at Kraft Foods, Inc., principally on Kraft Macaroni & Cheese. He previously worked at Saatchi & Saatchi Advertising in New York, where he served the British Airways, General Mills, and Johnson & Johnson clients.

Paul holds a BA from Hamilton College and an MBA from Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management. He lives in the Chicago area with his wife and two sons.