The New Haven Country Club was definitely the place to be on Thursday morning. As gracious and elegant hosts, the staff and management set a bountiful table for the members of the Greater New Haven Chamber of Commerce and the guests of the sponsoring organizations, Albertus Magnus College, Fidelity Investments and the New Haven Register.
The event featured Denis Perkins with “Leadership Lessons from the Extraordinary Saga of Shackleton’s Antarctic Expedition” as outlined in his book, Leadership at the Edge . Through a carefully crafted and dramatic presentation of photographs, journals and drawings, interlaced with a great sense of humor, he illustrated 10 critical leadership strategies that can be extrapolated from research of teams that have faced the limits of human endurance and how they can be successfully employed in the challenges that are faced in daily life.
Perkins graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy, served in the U.S. Marines in Viet Nam, completed a Harvard M.B.A. and a University of Michigan Phd in psychology. He even taught at Yale, where, he says, “The rubber meets the sky!”
The ever personable Tony Rescigno‘s introduction of the sponsors led to President (extraordinaire) Julie McNamara‘s (in photo with Perkins) announcement that Albertus Magnus will be offering a new master’s degree program in Leadership. Few, here, are aware of the geographical breadth or depth of the college’s offerings and satellites around the state. The Chamber will also be host to fee based seminars by Catherine Bradshaw, the first of which will deal with “Leading Through Change and Transition,” based on Perkins’s book. It should be another extraordinary morning.
The folks lined up to purchase the book and take advantage of the opportunity to meet the author. It is the first time since Harry Potter that we have seen the demand greater than the supply.
