Announcing 2026 Susan Hammer Memorial Lecture Speakers

We are excited to announce that Dana H. Born, Ph.D., Brigadier General (USAF Ret.), Senior Distinguished Fellow at the HOW Institute for Society, Senior Associate at Harvard University, and member of IWF Washington DC, and Marilyn Gist, PhD, Organizational Psychologist, Author & Speaker, and member of IWF Carolinas, will deliver the Susan Hammer Memorial Lecture at the upcoming World Leadership Conference, Navigating Peaks and Valleys: Leading Amid Uncertainty, in Denver, Colorado, November 11-13.

The Susan Hammer Memorial Lecture honors the legacy of the late IWF Oregon member Susan Hammer, a trailblazing lawyer, mediator, and advocate for women’s advancement. Each year, the lecture features women who have made significant contributions to peace and civil society.

This year’s lecture will explore moral leadership – what it means both internally for organizations and in the broader world.  This topic is particularly relevant today as trust, character, and courage are critical for leaders across the world to successfully navigate and sustain their organizations.

Dana’s leadership experience across disciplines ranges from the US Air Force, the Air Force Academy, The Center Public Leadership at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, and corporate board service to The How Institute, where she is a teacher and mentor for the NXT-GEN Fellowship for Moral Leadership. She is the host of the HOW Conversations video series and podcast.

Marilyn’s work draws on more than 25 years of research and practice at the intersection of leadership, psychology, and human development. Her work centers on the important thesis that how we relate to others and to ourselves is the most consequential thing we do, from presence under pressure, to the discipline of discernment, to building cultures where people can bring both competence and character to their work.