board of directors

[flea]

For my management class, I have the following assignment:

A) pick a personal board of directors --a small set of individuals whose life and leadership you would like to emulate. (You don't have to have known all of these personally and they may be either historical or contemporary figures. But, there should be at least six and no more than ten individuals on your board.)

I am really bad at believing in role models. So far I have come up with 4 people: Barack Obama, Mary Patterson McPherson (who was the president of my undergraduate college and now sits on the Mellon Foundation board), and two former coworkers, neither of whom actually hold any managerial position.

Ideas? Who do you respect and want to emulate? All I can think of are cliches (Gandhi) and people who were good leaders (in some way or another) but not people I want to actually emulate.

Comments

[jesseh.livejournal.com]

My current professional idol is Naomi Levine, who's done a ton of interesting stuff beyond our (sort of) shared profession.

Do you have people like that in your field?

[calligrafiti.livejournal.com]

Vaclav Havel. Wrote plays, survived Soviet control of his country (and helped end it), became president, and married an allegedly hot actress. He's led a full, and effective life.

[loligo.livejournal.com]

Well, if you're looking for more effective community organizers, I always thought Dorothy Day was pretty cool. Or (see icon) Wangari Maathai.

[veejane.livejournal.com]

Having a good idea of the workload of a university president, I'm not sure I'd want to emulate one of them either. And, it's a weird assignment. I don't want to emulate the life or leadership of any economist or finance person, but I bet you do want a finance person somewhere on your board, if only for the development networking.

...Actually, I wouldn't want to emulate anybody who's good at development, or networking, or wrangling outsize personalities. All of those skills are good to have on a board, but that doesn't mean I want to be any of them!

[fashionista-35.livejournal.com]

How utterly dorky can I get?