Robert M. Galford

Robert Galford is a managing partner of the Center for Leading Organizations. He divides his time across teaching on Executive Education programs and working with senior executives at the world’s leading firms on the leadership issues that lie at the intersection of strategy and 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.

Galford was formerly a managing partner with the Center for Executive Development (CED). Earlier in his career, Galford was Executive Vice President and Chief People Officer of Digitas (NASDAQ:DTAS), a marketing services firm based in Boston, with offices worldwide. He was also 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, with 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.

Galford is a five-time contributor to the Harvard Business Review and 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 other publications as Inc. Magazine, Sloan Management Review, and The American Lawyer.

He was also an Associate Editor of The Tax Lawyer at the Georgetown University Law Center. Galford is the co-author of The Trusted Advisor (with David Maister and Charles Green), initially 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.His second book, The Trusted Leader (co-authored with Anne Drapeau), was published by The Free Press in January 2003. His third book, Your Leadership Legacy, co-authored with Regina Maruca, was published by Harvard Business School Press (September 2006).

Galford currently sits on the board of directors of Forrester Research, Inc., where he chairs the Compensation and Governance Committee. He also serves as an outside board advisor to the noted architectural firm, Shepley, Bulfinch, Richardson and Abbott. 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 Associate Editor of The Tax Lawyer.