Staff & Faculty

Brad Smith Director Brad Smith is the director of Leadership Rice, responsible for development and oversight of the program. Mr. Smith brings to Leadership Rice a diversity of academic and professional experiences, having worked in the management consulting and investment banking industries and earned degrees in business and ethics. Brad enjoys investing in young adults and has served as a mentor with an organization that endeavors to empower residents of Houston's Third Ward. As director of Leadership Rice, he is concerned to help students recognize and hone their unique leadership strategies, and then to apply those strategies in contexts that fit their particular interests and abilities. As a native Houstonian and avid baseball fan, he can often be found at Minute Maid Park supporting the Astros or at Reckling Park cheering on the Owls.

Judy Le Associate Director Judy Le is the associate director of Leadership Rice, responsible for administering a variety of curricular and co-curricular activities designed to help Rice students realize their potential for leadership. Since graduating from Rice Judy has worked in the consulting industry, started her own business, and held positions in higher education. She has an extensive background in leadership development, having most recently served as the program director for Leadership Houston and prior to that advised several academic institutions regarding undergraduate leadership training. Judy also serves as a lead facilitator for LeaderShape, a weeklong leadership institute for undergraduate students.

Dr. D. Michael Lindsay Leadership Rice Faculty Associate and Assistant Professor of Sociology D. Michael Lindsay is a sociologist who specializes in issues surrounding leadership, religion, and culture. The author of several books, scholarly articles, and research reports, Lindsay has recently completed the nation's largest and most comprehensive study of public leaders who are people of faith. In 2006 he joined the faculty of Rice University, where he is also assistant director of the Center on Race, Religion, and Urban Life. Previously, he was the Harold W. Dodds Fellow and a National Science Foundation Graduate Fellow in the department of sociology at Princeton University. He also served as the consultant for religion and culture at The George H. Gallup International Institute. Lindsay's work has garnered multiple awards, including top honors from two international scholarly societies. In the spring of 2008 Dr. Lindsay will be teaching LEAD 375: The Social Dynamics of Leadership.

Dr. John Kimball Kehoe Jones School Action Learning Program Director and Lecturer in Management John Kimball Kehoe directs the Action Learning Program and teaches courses about organization and management in the MBA and the Executive MBA programs at the Jesse H. Jones School of Management at Rice University. In the Action Learning Program all first year MBA students do projects for host companies, applying what they learned to real business problems. On average projects are completed for 30 companies annually. In addition, Dr. Kehoe teaches courses in Organization Structure and Systems, Change Management in Organizations, Power and Influence in Organizations, Negotiation, and the Management of Service Businesses. He started teaching at the Jones School in 2002 and will be teaching LEAD 309: Leadership Theory to Practice this fall.

Dr. Deborah Barrett Professor of the Practice of Professional Communication Deborah Barrett has taught communication for over 25 years, specializing in professional and team communication for the last 20 years. She has taught at Rice University, where she was a lecturer in managerial communications in the MBA program from 1988-1991; at Texas A&M University, where she was a visiting assistant professor in technical writing; and at Houston Baptist University, where she was an associate professor of English and director of the writing specialization and English internship programs. She has coached executives and conducted numerous workshops on writing, presentations, teams, negotiations, consulting, and intrapreneurship for organizations across the world. Her approach to effective professional communication, called, "leadership communication," is the title of her book, published by McGraw-Hill in 2005. In conjunction with Leadership Rice, Deborah Barrett teaches LEAD 321: Leadership Communication, a course that helps students articulate ideas with poise, confidence, and clarity.

Joel Ferguson Adjunct Instructor Joel Ferguson serves as a senior advisor to private company leaders, specializing in helping emerging companies—privately-owned organizations with up to $25 million in revenues. Joel is a graduate of Rice University and its Jones Graduate School of Management, with degrees in Economics, Management, and Accounting. He currently teaches LEAD 313: Entrepreneurial Leadership, a consistently popular course that helps prepare Rice undergraduates to successfully translate their ideas to marketable products and services.

Ben Carson Program Assistant Ben Carson (Brown '09) joined the Leadership Rice team in January 2008.  He has been involved with Leadership Rice since his sophomore year, when he participated in a Summer Mentorship at Accion Emprendedora, a non-profit micro-finance firm in Santiago, Chile. This Summer, he will again participate in the SME program, working at In-Line Plastics, where he hopes to explore entreprenuerial business.