“Character and the Professions” Conference
March 18-20, 2021

Watch or listen to our sessions on:

Public Life | Religious LeadershipEngineering and Technology
Diversity and the Professions | Medicine | Business | Law

Recap

In America and across the globe, we are facing a crisis of leadership. Trust in institutions and the professionals who lead them is at a near-historic low, and in the aftermath of COVID-19, the importance of effective leadership has only become more apparent.

This crisis of leadership reflects, in part, a crisis of character. Once trusted to promote the public good, the professions are increasingly seen as captured by narrower concerns of self-interest and self-preservation, and character is often subordinated to technical skills and expertise.

This virtual conference sought to explore the role of character in the professions and elevate the virtues that are most important for professionals across six professional contexts: public life, religious leadership, engineering and technology, medicine, business, and law. By bringing together distinguished scholars and respected practitioners in each field, we explored new ways of understanding the theory and practice of ethical leadership while attending to insights from particular professions. The conference considered questions such as:

You can read a more detailed summary of the conference, its attendees, and their feedback here.


Thursday, March 18, 2021

Character and Public Life

Keynote

Eric Beerbohm, Professor of Government, Harvard University

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Panel

Moderator: Rogan Kersh, Provost, Wake Forest University

Panelists:

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Face to Face Speaker Forum partnership event featuring remarks from former Secretaries of State Madeleine K. Albright and General Colin L. Powell, USA (Ret)

Friday, March 19, 2021

Character and Religious Leadership

Keynote

Jonathan Lee Walton, Dean of the Wake Forest School of Divinity

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Panel

ModeratorJill Crainshaw, Vice Dean for Faculty Development and Academic Initiatives and Blackburn Professor of Worship and Liturgical Theology, Wake Forest University

Panelists:

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Character, Engineering, and Technology

Keynote

Shannon Vallor, Professor and Chair in the Ethics of Data and Artificial Intelligence, University of Edinburgh

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Panel

ModeratorOlga Pierrakos, Professor and Chair of Engineering Department, Wake Forest University

Panelists:

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Character, Diversity, and the Professions

Keynote

Stephanie Creary, Assistant Professor of Management, The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania

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Panel

Moderator: José Villalba, Vice President of Diversity and Inclusion, Wake Forest University

Panelists:

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Saturday, March 20, 2021

Character and Medicine

Keynote

Margaret Plews-Ogan, Chief and Associate Professor of General Medicine, Geriatrics, and Palliative Care, University of Virginia School of Medicine

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Panel

Moderator: Julie Freischlag, CEO of Wake Forest Baptist Health and Dean of Wake Forest School of Medicine

Panelists:

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Character and Business

Keynote

Taya Cohen, Associate Professor of Organizational Behavior and Theory, Carnegie Mellon University

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Panel

Moderator: Michelle Roehm, Dean, Wake Forest School of Business

Panelists:

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Keynote

The late Deborah RhodeProfessor of Law, Director of Center on the Legal Profession, Stanford University

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Panel

ModeratorJane Aiken, Dean, Wake Forest University School of Law

Panelists:

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Support for the Conference

The conference is co-sponsored by the Oxford Character Project and the Program for Leadership and Character at Wake Forest University as part of an ongoing partnership to promote leadership and character development. In addition to strong research institutes and professional programs, both universities have been home to research projects seeking to understand how leadership and character can be developed, including The Oxford Character ProjectThe Character ProjectThe Beacon ProjectAllegacy Center for Leadership and Character, the Kern Entrepreneurial Engineering Network, and the Program for Leadership and Character at Wake Forest. Both institutions have also sought to apply this research to develop programs that help students cultivate the virtues needed to lead for the common good. A central focus on character formation—not merely the skills and strategies of leadership—has led these programs to draw heavily from diverse disciplinary and professional contexts.

The conference is made possible in part by support from the Lilly Endowment, Kern Family Foundation, and the John Templeton Foundation.