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Tracee Bentley, President and CEO of the Permian Strategic Partnership, joins The Leader Fast Lane to share lessons from a career spanning public policy, energy, and community development. From bringing competitors together around shared goals to building trust through difficult conversations, she explores how leaders turn ambitious visions into collective action. She also shares her commitment to mentoring future leaders and a memorable lesson from her grandmother about moving forward after setbacks.

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John Osborne, President and CEO of the Lubbock Economic Development Alliance and Visit Lubbock, joins me on The Leader Fast Lane to discuss the people and experiences that shaped his leadership. We talk about building trust through follow-through, sustaining progress on projects that take decades, and making organizational values part of everyday decisions.

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Leslie Reed draws on three decades of public service—including five assignments as a USAID Mission Director—to explain why effective leadership begins with listening, trust, and a willingness to hear difficult feedback. She shares lessons from leading across cultures, developing leaders at every level, navigating complex organizations, and sustaining communication and community during the extraordinarily difficult final months of USAID.

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In this episode, I speak with Will Rodriguez, Vice President for Strategic Initiatives at Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center, as he shares how lessons from the Marine Corps, manufacturing, healthcare, and higher education shaped his approach to servant leadership, adaptability, and data-informed decision-making. He offers practical insights on making difficult decisions, creating room for people to learn from mistakes, building relationships across an organization, and leading with fairness, consistency, and humility.

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James Mauldin, Vice Chancellor and Chief Financial Officer for the Texas Tech University System, shares leadership lessons drawn from a career spanning corporate operations, municipal government, aviation, higher education, and the Navy Reserves. He discusses leading through uncertainty, building trust before difficult decisions arise, creating a culture where bad news travels quickly, and developing people by giving them meaningful opportunities to stretch.

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A former colleague Ryan Walther joins The Leader Fast Lane to share lessons from two decades of international development work across countries, cultures, and functions. Drawing on his leadership at USAID, Ryan explores how leaders can pursue demanding results while investing in people, remain steady amid uncertainty, build trust across cultural and professional boundaries, and combine evidence with sound judgment.

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In this episode of The Leader Fast Lane, Texas Tech University System Chancellor Emeritus Dr. Tedd Mitchell reflects on a leadership journey spanning medicine, business, higher education, and public service. He shares practical insights on building a values-based culture, earning trust, making consequential decisions with incomplete information, and developing leaders whose influence extends far beyond the organization.

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Retired U.S. Ambassador Art Brown joins The Leader Fast Lane to share lessons from a 34-year public-service career that took him from Peace Corps volunteer in Benin to USAID Mission Director and U.S. Ambassador. We discuss leading across cultures, listening before acting, emotional intelligence, making consequential decisions with incomplete information, developing future leaders, and why Art believes effective leadership “takes elbow grease.”