Lead Where You Stand Speakers
Lead Where You Stand packs a wealth of content into a compact schedule as speakers from a deliberate variety of fields help us to think well about the organizations we are building day-by-day and to recognize and engage opportunities to improve our spheres of society in redemptive ways.
Gayle D. Beebe, Ph.D.
Westmont president since 2007, Beebe has spent more than a quarter century in higher education. He has authored or edited more than 40 articles and 11 books including, “The Shaping of an Effective Leader: Eight Formative Principles of Leadership” and "The Crucibles That Shape Us: Navigating the Defining Challenges of Leadership." Leading unprecedented growth at Westmont while facing significant challenges, he has loved attracting new resources to build out the campus, developing new academic and co-curricular programs, and pursuing the next horizon. Under Beebe’s leadership the college has raised nearly $500 million dollars for various projects and new academic programs and added 390,000 square feet in new or renovated facilities on campus and in downtown Santa Barbara.
David Brooks
Brooks is a New York Times columnist and author of several books, including the #1 New York Times Bestsellers, "The Road to Character" and "The Second Mountain: The Quest for a Moral Life." Brooks is one of America’s most prominent political and social commentators. He writes a bi-weekly, op-ed column for the New York Times and regularly appears on PBS News Hour and National Public Radio’s All Things Considered. His most recent book, "How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen," reflects on the topic of human connection and its importance in today's society.
“Westmont has become my home away from home…and the kind of conversations that we have here, the kind of people I’ve gotten a chance to be with year after year have become valuable to me.” - David Brooks
Charity Dean MD, MPH&TM
As CEO and Co-Founder of PHC Global, Dean which brings together the best expertise in public health disease control with private sector tech innovation to build autonomous disease control decision capabilities in scalable software. Prior to this, she was the Assistant Director of the California Department of Public Health (CDPH) and part of the executive leadership team directing California’s strategy and response to the COVID-19 pandemic. In her role with CDPH, Dr. Dean provided strategic direction and oversight for the Center for Health Care Quality and led public health and healthcare policy development and implementation to benefit all Californians. Dr. Dean was the subject of bestselling author Michael Lewis in The Premonition: A Pandemic Story. The story follows three central characters, one of which is Dr. Dean and details her story of confronting the pandemic.
Charles Duhigg
A graduate of Yale University and Harvard Business School, Charles is a Pulitzer prize-winning journalist and the author of The Power of Habit, which spent over three years on bestseller lists and has been translated into 40 languages, Supercommunicators, also a bestseller published in 2024, and Smarter Faster Better, a third bestseller. Mr. Duhigg writes for The New Yorker magazine and previously wrote for The New York Times. Charles led the New York Times team that won the 2013 Pulitzer prize in explanatory journalism for “The iEconomy,” a series that examined the global economy through the lens of Apple. That series included examinations of such topics as the factories in China where iPhones and iPads are manufactured.
Charles has also received The George Polk award, the Gerald Loeb award, the Investigative Reporters and Editors Medal, the Scripps Howard National Journalism award, the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award, and other honors. While a reporter at the Los Angeles Times, Charles reported from Iraq about American military operations. Today, Charles writes for The New Yorker magazine. Before becoming a full-time journalist in 2003, Charles worked as an analyst for American Property Global Partners, a private equity firm and co-founded SWPA Education Management Group, L.L.C., which developed education programs for medically underserved areas. He lives in California with his wife and two children.
Wendy Jackson, M.F.A.
A graduate of the University of California at Berkeley with a B.A. in English Literature, and an M.F.A. in screenwriting from the University of Georgia, Wendy’s vast experience in the film & television industry spans from SONY Pictures Television where she developed made for television movies; advertising and marketing with Turner Broadcasting and, developing TV pilots. Most recently, she’s received the prestigious Producers Guild Mark (p.g.a) for her producing work on the critically acclaimed and award-winning feature length documentary, MAYNARD (Netflix)
Jeff Schloss, Ph.D.
T.B. Walker Professor of Natural and Behavioral Sciences
Director, Center for Faith, Ethics and Life Sciences
Dr. Schloss graduated from Wheaton College and earned his doctorate in ecology and evolutionary biology at Washington University. He joined the Westmont faculty in 1981. He enjoys taking students into the field (Yosemite alpine meadows, Michigan north woods, Costa Rican rainforests, and New Zealand barrier islands) and joining them in research outside of class. His scholarship focuses on the fascinating relationships between biology and Christian faith. He holds visiting faculty appointments in several programs in the United States and abroad, serves on numerous international editorial and advisory boards related to science and religion, and writes and speaks widely on biology and faith.
