KEGAN, Robert Dr.

United States

Dr. Robert Kegan is regularly referred to as the greatest living authority in the field of adult development today (but this is only because he has outlived the more talented contributors). His ground-breaking works on human and organizational behavior – The Evolving Self, In Over Our Heads, Immunity to Change, How the Way We Talk Can Change the Way We Work, An Everyone Culture – have helped create a whole new field of study, transformed practice in a host of professions, and unleashed the hope that we can all keep growing at any age.

Now an emeritus professor, Kegan was the William and Miriam Meehan Professor in Adult Learning and Professional Development at Harvard Graduate School of Education, where he taught for forty years. He was also Educational Chair for the Institute for Management and Leadership in Education and the Co-director for the Change Leadership Group. He continues to serve as the Chief Knowledge Officer of the Growth Culture Institute, a consultancy he co-founded, where he provides high-level services to leaders and organizations throughout the world.

Kegan attended Dartmouth College, graduating summa cum laude, and then took his interests in Human Development to Harvard University where he earned an interdisciplinary Ph.D.

In 2019, Kegan was inducted into a select group that includes Nobel Prize winners, Pope Francis, and Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones, when The Disruptor Foundation honored his “life-long contributions and innovations in the field of developmental psychology, which have led to ground-breaking insights into the emergence of orders of human consciousness and the ongoing internal Copernican shifts that lead to self-transformation.”

A husband, father, and grandfather, he is also an avid poker player, an airplane pilot, and the unheralded inventor of the “Base Average,” a superior statistic for gauging offensive contribution in baseball.