Columbia University is proud to announce the appointment of Adam Bryant, a veteran journalist, author and managing director of Merryck & Co., an executive mentoring firm, as the  senior advisor to the Reuben Mark Initiative for Organizational Character and Leadership.

The Initiative was established with a gift from Reuben Mark, former chairman and chief executive officer of the Colgate-Palmolive Company, with a goal to leverage the intellectual capital of Columbia Business and Law Schools to build courses and programming that impart lifelong leadership lessons and teach the mechanics of creating exceptional organizational character.

In this new role, Bryant will contribute to understanding the relationship between exemplary business leadership and a strong organizational culture through a cross-functional and multidisciplinary approach. This role strengthens the connection between theory and practice, offering faculty, staff, and students insights into the practicalities of practitioner-based findings.

Working with faculty leaders from both the Business and Law Schools, Bryant also will provide guidance on the strategic direction and implementation of the Initiative, including creating articles and other content related to the mission of the Initiative; facilitating panel discussions among leaders from Columbia and the fields of business and law; teaching workshops pertaining to the initiative’s goals; and developing course materials for the curriculum.

“We are truly overjoyed to welcome Adam to the team,” says Katherine W. Phillips, Reuben Mark Professor of Organizational Character at Columbia Business School. “His breadth of knowledge and extensive experience in this field is unparalleled, and we look forward to utilizing his keen intellect to build out the direction of this very important initiative for Columbia Business and Law Schools.”

Bryant brings a wealth of real-world insights on leadership to the senior advisor role. He is the creator of the “Corner Office” column in The New York Times, and interviewed more than 500 CEOs over a decade about the most important leadership lessons they had learned, and how they had worked to build high-performing teams and cultures.

He wrote two books based on the themes that emerged from those interviews: “The Corner Office: Indispensable and Unexpected Lessons from CEOs on How to Lead and Succeed,” which was a New York Times best-seller, and “Quick and Nimble; Lessons from Leading CEOs on How to Create a Culture of Innovation.” Since 2017, he has been managing director of Merryck & Co., an executive mentoring and senior leadership development firm, working with C-suite leaders of multinational corporations.

“Columbia has long been at the forefront of driving insightful conversations about leadership and the subtle factors that set some leaders and companies apart from others,” Bryant said. “I’m thrilled to be working with the team at Columbia Business and Law Schools to help drive this important initiative established by Reuben Mark.”