It gives me great pleasure to announce the appointment of three new fellows – Mary Gentile, Matt Bostrom and Richard Bents. We are honored to have their advice and assistance in our work of providing thoughtful reflections and practical metrics on securing a more moral capitalism and more moral government.
Each has provided unique and important insight into values and the role they play in our lives and institutions. As the Caux Round Table (CRT) focuses more and more on the moral sense in each of us, which provides the foundation for civilization, their advice and recommendations will be timely and very relevant to the challenges of our times.
Mary C. Gentile, Ph.D., is Creator/Director of Giving Voice to Values. Giving Voice to Values, a pioneering business curriculum for values-driven leadership, has been featured in the Financial Times, Harvard Business Review, Stanford Social Innovation Review, McKinsey Quarterly, etc. and piloted in over 1,260 business schools and organizations globally. She authored the award-winning book Giving Voice to Values: How to Speak Your Mind When You Know What’s Right, with translations in Chinese and Korean. She has also authored numerous other books and articles and partnered with Nomadic.fm in 2014 to launch six online interactive social cohort-based modules around Giving Voice to Values.
Mary is also Professor of Practice at the University of Virginia Darden School of Business, senior advisor with the Aspen Institute’s Business and Society Program and consultant on management education and leadership development.
Among numerous other awards, Gentile was named as one of the “Top Minds 2017” by ComplianceWeek, one of the 2015 “100 Most Influential in Business Ethics” by Ethisphere and one of the “Top Thought Leaders in Trust: 2015 Lifetime Achievement Award Winners” by Trust Across America-Trust Around the World. She was recently short-listed for the Thinkers50 2019 award for “Ideas Into Practice” (having also been short-listed in 2017). Giving Voice to Values also won the Bronze Medal in the 2017 Reimagine Education Ethical Leadership Awards.
From 1985-95, Gentile was faculty member and manager of case research at Harvard Business School and one of the principal architects of HBS’s Leadership, Ethics and Corporate Responsibility curriculum. She co-authored Can Ethics Be Taught? Perspectives, Challenges and Approaches at Harvard Business School and was content expert for the award-winning interactive CD-ROM, “Managing Across Differences” (HBS Publishing).
Gentile earned her B.A. from the College of William and Mary and her M.A. and Ph.D. from the State University of New York-Buffalo.
Richard Bents, Ph.D., specializes in leadership development, personal and organizational change and transformation. He has demonstrated excellence in implementing strategic and cultural change efforts with large organizations, including AT&T, Deloitte Hungary, ICI Films Americas, Lucent Technologies, Lawson Software, Magyar Telekom, MOL Hungary and Roche Pharma.
Rich assisted the CRT in developing our proprietary Decision Styles Inventory, a confidential, psychometric assessment for individuals enhancing their unique mastery of approaches to reaching decisions which engage stakeholders.
His approach centers on the issues of authority, responsibility and power, demonstrating how they can be exercised more fully, leading to personal accountability and healthy synergistic change. The result is a client better equipped to move into the future with clearer customer focus, more practical data-bases and better understanding of organizational theory and the values they wish to project.
Dr. Bents is recognized internationally as an expert on leadership development and evaluation research. He works with European partners in counseling business and civic leaders and training psychologists and consultants in leadership and organizational development. In addition, he directed the graduate education program at Hamline University, providing leadership and direction in teaching, curriculum planning, faculty selection and program evaluation.
Rich is the co-author of several books on personality and learning. Other writing and research topics include training and development, adult learning styles, decision-making and related topics.
Matt Bostrom, Ph.D., has served with distinction in law enforcement. He began his career with the St. Paul Police Department in 1982 and served as a Patrol Officer, Sergeant, Lieutenant, Commander, Senior Commander, Chief of Staff and Assistant Chief of Operations. He was elected as Sheriff of Ramsey County, Minnesota, the state’s second most populous county.
Matt was twice nominated as National Sheriff of the Year and both times he was awarded the Medal of Merit from the National Sheriffs’ Association. Some of his accomplishments include reorganizing the department to improve effectiveness and efficiency by focusing on the vision, mission, values and beliefs; co-founding the Criminal Justice Coordinating Council; launching professional standards, comprehensive training and cooperative hiring initiatives; and engaging with the community to build relationships and prevent crime.
The hallmark of Matt’s service as Sheriff was a focus on increasing the level of trust between the community and police officers. Through listening to the community, he learned of their desire for police departments to hire for character and train for competence. In response, he launched a recruitment and hiring initiative that centered on selecting men and women who possessed four observable character traits: trustworthy, truthful, responsible and respectful. This initiative increased community trust and improved police officer work habits, including sick time usage, discipline and commendations.
In addition to graduating from the FBI National Academy, Matt received his B.S. from the University of Northwestern, M.A. from the University of Saint Thomas, D.P.A. from Hamline University and Ph.D. (criminology) at the University of Oxford.
The Centre for Criminology at the University of Oxford invited Matt to develop a replicable model for increasing police trust by identifying and aligning the community’s values with those of the police. It is through the operationalization of these shared values in police officer recruitment, selection and training that can lead to increased trust between police officers and the communities they serve.
Matt has 10 years of experience as an Adjunct Professor at Saint Mary’s University, University of Northwestern and Hamline University. He co-authored Character-Based Police Officer Selection for the U.S. Department of Justice and his dissertation topics include The Influence of Higher Education on Police Officer Work Habits and Increasing Police Trust through Normative Alignment.