Thankful to be part of this academic year’s GW Academic Leadership Academy (GWALA)–pictured here is our graduation ceremony–where we attended guest lectures and discussions and received training and coaching on topics such as decision making, conflict management, effective communication, emotional intelligence, faculty development, and staff engagement. Thanks to Vice Dean Jiawen Yang for nominating me, and to to Associate Provost Jeff Brand and Sara Melita for hosting our GWALA cohort!
Very excited to see that Markus Kreutzer and my new book on “Reconceptualizing Organizational Control: Managing in the Age of Hybrid Workplaces, Artificial Intelligence, and the Gig Economy” is listed as forthcoming on the Cambridge University Press website!
The VSA 2011 Boys came in second in their bracket in this year’s Jefferson Cup–hence the half-smiles of most of the boys 😉
Congratulations to Max for being accepted to Paul VI High School in the Fall 2024!
Congratulations to Sophia for her induction into the National Honor Society and into the International Thespian Society. Way to go, girl!
Thanks to Erin’s surprise Christmas gift and Jorge R.’s hospitality, I spent a fantastic few days skiing and snowshoeing in the Colorado mountains–what a great start to the new year!
Another milestone: Sophia had her junior-year homecoming dance at St. Paul VI Catholic High School this weekend (pictures at the Air & Space Museum due to the rain). My little girl is growing up way to fast!
Congrats to Max’s VSA soccer team who came in second in this weekend’s Heritage Cup tournament after coming in first in their group and then narrowly losing a penalty shoot-out in the final match!
This year’s Annual Conference of the Strategic Management Society took place from September 30 to October 3 in Toronto, Canada, and it was great to meet so many old and new colleagues and friends in person again!
Just finished the second book authored by clinical psychologist Dr. Lisa Damour. Complementing and extending her prior book, “Untangled,” her most recent book, “The Emotional Lives Of Teenagers” combats the prevalent myths that (1) emotion is the enemy of reason, (2) difficult emotions are bad and should be avoided at all cost, and (3) their amped-up emotions make teens psychologically fragile. Instead, this book provides a detailed and illustrative discussion of how we as parents could support our teenagers to understand and manage their emotions to become capable and compassionate adults.
And for all of us it contains the important reminder that: “Mental health is not about feeling good. Instead, it’s about having the right feelings at the right time and being able to manage those feelings effectively.”
Vacationing with Erin’s family in rustic, but beautiful Exuma Island, Bahamas. Dodging the infamous potholes on our way to the secluded Coco Plum Beach and Tropic of Cancer Beach, catching a ride on Elvis’s Water Taxi to Stocking Island’s Chat ‘n’ Chill, where the kids fed conch to the stingrays, sharing a close look at Jacques Cousteau’s Mystery Cave with a four-foot barracuda, hopping on the Seven Beaches boat tour, having a lemon shark follow us riding the natural Lazy River, and enjoying a week of Bahamian food and hospitality.
Just finished reading–OK, I was listening to it on Kindle–this book that came highly recommended by a number of friends. “Untangled” by Dr. Lisa Damour offers indispensable advice for all of us who are raising strong and independent teenage daughters:
“Raising a young woman will be one of the most vexing, delightful, exhausting, and fulfilling things you will ever do. Sometimes all on the same day. The job is hard enough even under the best conditions, and anyone doing a hard job deserves support. When we get that support, when we understand the developmental tour de force that is adolescence, we can truly enjoy and empower our girls.”
This past weekend, Max’s travel soccer team competed in the 2023Â Eastern President’s Cup in Valley Forge, PA. Although they did not win the cup, the team showed up in force and provided us with some great soccer games to watch.
It was a great privilege and pleasure to host a group of over 40 Masters of International Management students from Vlerick Business School at George Washington University’s School of Business today. I truly enjoyed our discussion on how to crack complex and open-ended strategy questions and hope the students took some ideas away from our session together!
Max’s soccer team has done it again–and won this Memorial Day weekend’s Cannon Cup tournament! Congratulations to his team and his coaches for this well-deserved win!
Huge congratulations to Sophia’s high school theater team, whose “Murder on the Orient Express” was nominated for 12 Cappies (for the uninitiated, that’s the Oscars for high-school theater)! Amazing to see what the team has accomplished and enjoyed the great gala event last night at the Hylton Performing Arts Center.
After coming back in the last two minutes of overtime and winning the penalty shootout in the semi-finals, Max’s soccer team resoundingly won the President’s Cup final to become the 2023 Virginia Youth Soccer Association State Champions in the U12 Boys group! Congrats to the entire team and their coaches for this fantastic tournament weekend! With this win, it’s now off to Philadelphia in June for the 2023 U.S. Youth Soccer’s President’s Cup…
Ever since my old friend and mentor Christoph invited me to a talk by Jacques Herzog in Switzerland many years ago, I always loved it when an expert in a field manages to invite the audience into his/her mind. This is also why I had so much fun listening to David Kyle Johnson’s course on “Sci-Phi: Science Fiction as Philosophy.” As part of “The Great Courses,” this audio course discusses contemporary and classic science fiction–from Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Dr. Who, and Star Trek, to my personal favorite, Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar–to explore key questions of philosophy.
Thrilled to announce that I received the 2023 Dean’s Teaching Award! Thanks to Dean Anuj Mehrotra and Vice Dean Jiawen Yang for this great honor!
With Sophia being a rising high school junior, I am starting to wrap my head around the fact that we will have to make some plans for college soon. After almost two decades of being a university professor, “The price you pay for college” by Ron Lieber was incredibly helpful for me to see the college landscape from a student (and parent!) perspective and understand what empirical evidence we have about college choices and outcomes.
Had a fantastic experience spending the long weekend in Lexington, KY, for this year’s Intraorganizational Networks Conference organized by the University of Kentucky’s LINKS Center, which featured some of the most prolific and influential social networks researchers in the world.
Big thanks to my coauthor Ajay Mehra (center) for organizing this conference and for his kind invitation!
Short, but fantastic trip to my hometown Munich with Max during Spring Break. It was especially exciting to watch Bayern Munich play Augsburg in the impressive Allianz-Arena in Munich.
Congratulations to Sophia’s high school swim & dive team! The PVI Panthers came it first for girls and second for boys at the Northern Virginia Catholic Championships, and Sophia achieved qualifying times for States in 50m freestyle and 400m freestyle relay!
With a heavy heart, I had to say good-bye to my first and biggest hero. May you rest in peace, Dad.
Jorge Walter's Blog 