Gayle D. Beebe, Ph.D.
Westmont President

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 10 books including, “The Shaping of an Effective Leader: Eight Formative Principles 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 more than $400 million dollars for various projects and added 390,000 square feet in new or renovated facilities on campus and in downtown Santa Barbara. He received master’s degrees in divinity from Princeton Theological Seminary, in philosophy of religion and theology from Claremont Graduate University, and in business administration in strategic management from the Peter F. Drucker School at Claremont Graduate University. He completed a Doctor of Philosophy in the philosophy of religion and theology at Claremont Graduate University.

David Brooks
New York Times Columnist and Author

Brooks is the New York Times columnist and author of a of a number of books including the two #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.

“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
CEO and Co-Founder of The Public Health Company

As CEO and Co-Founder of The Public Health Company, 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. Dr. Dean served as Co-Chair of the California Testing Task Force which successfully executed a strategy to rapidly scale up COVID-19 testing and exceeded the Governor’s goal of 60,000 diagnostic tests per day, reaching over 100,000 tests per day in under 12 weeks. 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. Dean completed an M.D. at Tulane University School of Medicine and a Master of Public Health and Tropical Medicine from Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine. 

Marcus “Goodie” Goodloe, Ph.D.
Scholar, Mentor, Speaker and Author

Goodloe is author of King Maker: Applying Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s Leadership Lessons in Working with Athletes and Entertainers as well as Habits: Six Steps to the Art of Influence. He travels the country mentoring students and educators, business professionals, athletes and entertainers, and faith communities on a range of issues, including cultural and interpersonal relationships, leadership, team and synergy, character formation and faith. Goodloe is also Senior Fellow for Ethics and Justice at Dallas Baptist University’s Institute for Global Engagement. He earned a Ph.D. in Leadership and Social Movement Theory, Leadership and Civil Rights from Dallas Baptist University.

Erin Meyer
Author, Speaker, Cultural Expert

The author of "The Culture Map: Breaking Through the Invisible Boundaries of Global Business" and co-author with Reed Hastings of "No Rules Rules: Netflix and the Culture of Reinvention." Meyer is a professor at INSEAD, one of the world's leading international business schools. Meyer's work focuses on how the world's most successful managers navigate the complexities of cultural differences in a global environment. She helps companies to develop organizational cultures that breed both flexibility and innovation and offers cutting-edge strategies to improve the effectiveness of projects that span the globe. Her work has appeared in Harvard Business Review, The New York Times, and Forbes.com. In 2021, Meyer was selected for the third time by the Thinkers50 as one of the fifty most influential business thinkers in the world.

Jeff Schloss, Ph.D.
T.B. Walker Professor of Natural and Behavioral Sciences
Director, Center for Faith, Ethics and Life Sciences

Schloss, whose Ph.D. in ecology and evolutionary biology is from Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, often speaks to public, church-related, and secular academic audiences on the intersection of biology and faith. Among his many academic publications are The Believing Primate: Scientific, Philosophical, and Theological Reflections on the Origin of Religion (Oxford University Press), which he edited with philosopher Michael Murray. Schloss has also participated in a number of invitational collaborations on topics in evolutionary biology, emphasizing various aspects of what it means to be human, hosted by several universities, including Cambridge, Edinburgh, Emory, Harvard, Heidelberg, Oxford, and Stanford. He has held fellowships at Notre Dame’s Center for Philosophy of Religion, St. Anne’s College Oxford, and Princeton’s Center for Theological Inquiry, and serves on the editorial boards of several journals, including Religion, Brain, and Behavior; Science & Christian Belief; and Theology and Science.

To learn more about the Lead Where You Stand conference, call (805) 565-6050.