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)
Reed Sheard, Ed.D.
Reed Sheard graduated from the University of Sioux Falls, earned a masters of divinity degree at Fuller Theological Seminary, and a doctorate in higher education leadership from Seattle University. He joined Westmont in 2008 after serving at Spring Arbor University in Michigan as a Vice President and CIO. Sheard serves as the vice president for college advancement as well as on the executive team of Westmont College. Sheard has authored articles on innovation and technology, digital transformation, and AI in non-profit fundraising. He serves on numerous boards, most recently the Higher Education practice group of the CIO Executive Council, CIO Innovation Council at Salesforce, along with chairing the AI in Advancement Advisory Council. In 2015 he was named one of the top 100 CIOs in North America by ITG/Computerworld.
