Robert Galford

Coauthor of THE TRUSTED LEADER
Bringing Out the Best in Your People and Your Company

Rob Galford is Managing Partner of the Center for Executive Development, which was founded by several former Harvard Business School professors in 1987. He divides his time across teaching on Executive Education programs and working with senior executives at the world's leading companies on the leadership issues that lie at the intersection of business strategy and corporate organization. He has taught on the Executive Programs at the Columbia University Graduate School of Business, the Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University, and most recently Harvard University.

Earlier in his career, Rob was Executive Vice President and Chief People Officer of Digitas (NASDAQ:DTAS), a relationship-marketing services firm based in Boston, with offices worldwide. He was also a Vice President of The MAC Group and its successor firm, Gemini Consulting, focusing largely on the strategic and organizational challenges facing Fortune 100 Companies, international financial institutions and professional services entities. While there, he worked for a number of years in Western Europe prior to returning to the U.S., where he took on a variety of firm administrative and managerial responsibilities. He has practiced law with the international firm of Curtis, Mallet-Prevost, Colt & Mosle in New York, and has also worked in investment management, first for Citicorp in New York, and later in Boston. In addition, he has taught Management Policy in the MBA Program at Boston University Graduate School of Management.

Rob is a four-time contributor to the Harvard Business Review, including "The Enemies of Trust" (Feb 2003), "What's He Waiting For?" (1999), "Why Can't this HR Department Get Any Respect?" (1998), and "When an Executive Defects" (case comment-1997). His work also has appeared frequently in the Boston Globe, where he has served as one of the regular "Job Doc" advice columnists in the Sunday Globe, and he has been featured or quoted in such publications as Inc. Magazine, Sloan Management Review, and The American Lawyer. Rob is the co-author of The Trusted Advisor (with David Maister and Charles Green), published by Free Press/Simon and Schuster in 2000, and subsequently reissued in paperback by Touchstone/Simon and Schuster in 2001. The Trusted Advisor has been on business best-seller lists since the time of its publication.

Rob currently sits on the Boards of Directors of Forrester Research, Inc. and Access Data Corporation. He also hosts the business video, Talk About Change! with the popular cartoon character, Dilbert.

His educational background includes Liceo Segre, Turin, Italy, a BA in Economics and Italian Literature from Haverford College, an MBA from Harvard Business School and a JD from Georgetown University Law Center, where he was an Associate Editor of The Tax Lawyer. Rob lives with his family in Concord, Massachusetts.