"Leadership and Public Values"

Ambassador James A. Joseph is a native of Opelousas, Louisiana, and a graduate of Southern University in Baton Rouge. He is former U.S. Ambassador to South Africa and founder of the Center for Leadership and Public Values at Duke University. The Center and the College of Business at Southern University have partnered in creating the Effective Leadership Program in response to the challenges created by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. The Program will recruit, train and provide reinforcing support for successive 25-member classes of Fellows.

Fellows will be women and men who are nominated by senior leaders in the business, non-profit and public sectors throughout Louisiana and are offered Fellowships based on competitive review of their applications. Fellows will be predominantly African-American, mid-career leaders who are on fast tracks to senior positions in their fields and who demonstrate a sincere interest in understanding and applying universal moral values to their lives and work. The premise of the Program is that values-based leadership is, over time, effective leadership, the product of doing the right things as well as doing things right.

The program's faculty is led by Amb. Joseph, who holds an advanced degree from Yale University in addition to his undergraduate degree from Southern. He has served as a Vice President of the Cummins Engine Company and President of the Cummins Engine Foundation, Under Secretary of the Interior (in the Carter Administration), CEO of the national Council on Foundations, and American Ambassador to South Africa from 1996 to 2000.

Amb. Joseph founded the Center for Leadership and Public Values at Duke in 2001 (and its counterpart at the University of Cape Town) and serves as Professor of the Practice of Public Policy Studies. He is also Chairman of the Louisiana Disaster Recovery Foundation established by Governor Kathleen Blanco.