Leadership in the Post-COVID Era

Hitendra Wadhwa 

PhD/MBA MIT (Management Science)

Professor of Professional Practice, Columbia Business School

General John W. Nicholson Jr.

U.S. Army Retired, President of the PenFed Foundation

Lloyd Trotter

Founder and Managing Partner, GenNx360 Capital Partners

Host: Shyam R Chidamber
Adjunct Professor, Department of Management at American University

This is an MIT Sloan Club of DC event.

Hitendra Wadhwa is Professor of Practice at Columbia Business School and founder of the Mentora Institute. He teaches Columbia's most popular MBA leadership class on Personal Leadership & Success. He also teaches MBA and Executive Education programs on Driving Strategic Impact and Leading from the Inside Out, and has received the Executive-MBA Commitment to Excellence Award, the Dean's Award for Teaching Excellence, the Lear Award for Service to Students, and the Columbia Marketing Association Award for the Most Dynamic and Engaging Professor.

Hitendra’s mission is to codify and teach scientific principles of success in life and leadership. With a Ph.D. in Management Science from MIT and a lifelong study of the world’s mystic traditions, Hitendra brings a mathematician’s rigor and a truth-seeker’s spirit to some of today’s most vexing questions about authenticity, success, leadership, human potential, and more. His widely acclaimed research and teaching on leadership have been covered by Inc., Forbes, Fortune, CNN, Psychology Today, BBC World Service, Financial Times, and Wall Street Journal. His weekly webcast, Intersections, features acclaimed thought leaders and practitioners in the craft of leadership.

In the past, Hitendra was an Engagement Manager at McKinsey & Company and the CEO/founder of a Silicon Valley start-up, Paramark, which was twice recognized as a Top-100 Internet technology company by Technologic Partners/Venture Wire. To learn more about Hitendra, visit his website.

Lloyd Trotter is Founder and Managing Partner of GenNx360 Capital Partners, launching the firm after nearly 40 years with General Electric. During his GE career, Trotter was named Vice Chairman, General Electric, and President and CEO of GE Industrial, where he was responsible for a $28B business with nearly 80,000 employees worldwide.

Prior to this role, Lloyd was Executive Vice President of Operations where he led efforts to improve operational excellence across GE's businesses. From 2004 to 2006 he served as President and Chief Executive Officer of GE Consumer & Industrial, a role he assumed following the 2004 merger of GE's Consumer Products, Industrial Systems, and Supply businesses.

Lloyd graduated from Cleveland State University with a bachelor's degree in Business Administration, and in 2001 the school awarded him an honorary doctorate degree. Lloyd has also been awarded an honorary doctorate degree from the school of business at North Carolina A&T and St. Augustine’s University.

He is a recipient of the prestigious Bernard H. Falk Award, recognizing Lloyd’s many contributions to the electro-industry and to NEMA. In 2005, Black Enterprise Magazine named Lloyd one of the 75 Most Powerful African Americans in corporate America.

John W. Nicholson Jr. is a retired United States Army four-star general who last commanded U.S. Forces - Afghanistan (USFOR-A) and the 41-nation NATO-led Resolute Support Mission from March 30, 2016 to September 2, 2018, succeeding General John F. Campbell.[2] He was the longest-serving commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan, having been the senior officer in theatre for more than 2 years, 5 months.[3] He was previously commanding general, Allied Land Command from October 2014[4] and commander of the 82nd Airborne Division. Nicholson is the son of John W. Nicholson, also a former general officer in the United States Army, distantly related to British Brigadier John Nicholson (1822–1857).

General Nicholson is an Adjunct Faculty member on leadership with Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School and is a member of Harvard’s Belfer Center ‘Elbe Group’ which sustains a Track Two dialogue between retired American and Russian senior officials in the military and intelligence fields. On April 2019, Nicholson joined the PenFed Foundation for Military Heroes as its president. On May 12, 2019, Nicholson received the Knight Commander’s Cross, Great Cross with Star on the 70th anniversary of the Berlin Airlift from then Germany Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen.