Larry C. Spears, President & CEO

Larry C. Spears is President & CEO of the Larry C. Spears Center for Servant-Leadership, Inc., established in 2008. From 1990-2007 he served as President & CEO of the Robert K. Greenleaf Center for Servant-Leadership. Spears had previously been Managing Director of the Greater Philadelphia Philosophy Consortium, a cooperative association of 12 colleges and universities in the Philadelphia area. He also served as a staff member with the Great Lakes Colleges Association's Philadelphia Center and with the Quaker magazine, Friends Journal, in Philadelphia, PA.

Spears is also a writer and editor who has published hundreds of articles, essays, newsletters, books and other publications on servant-leadership. Dozens of newspapers and journals have interviewed him, including Fortune, the Indianapolis Business Journal, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Washington Post, Advancing Philanthropy, and many others. A 2004 television broadcast interview of Spears by Stone Philips on NBC’s Dateline helped to introduce servant leadership and Robert Greenleaf to ten million viewers.

Larry is the creator and editor of various books on servant-leadership, as well as the contributing author to many others, found HERE

Larry is also a Series Editor of the Servant-Leadership Essay Series, and he serves as the Senior Advisory Editor for The International Journal of Servant Leadership (2005-Present).

Spears is also a frequent speaker on servant-leadership and a sought-after advisor. The titles of some of his addresses include "Servant-Leadership and the Honoring of Excellence," “Servant-Leadership and Business,” and "Robert K. Greenleaf's Influence on Trusteeship." Among his recent keynote presentations are addresses to the Servant-Leadership Research Roundtable, the Louisiana Office of Mental Health, Gonzaga University, the Greenleaf Center, and Indiana Campus Compact. Since 1990, Larry has given two hundred keynote addresses on servant-leadership on four continents, a dozen countries, and forty states. Larry has been called today’s foremost authority on servant-leadership. He knew Robert Greenleaf and first encountered Greenleaf’s writings on servant-leadership in the early 1980s while working with the Quaker magazine, Friends Journal.  Following Greenleaf’s death in 1990, Larry examined Greenleaf’s personal papers and discovered dozens of previously unknown and unpublished essays written by Greenleaf over a fifty-year period. Many of these essays were later collected and published in 1996 in two volumes (On Becoming a Servant-Leader, and Seeker and Servant).

Among several honors, Spears was the recipient of the 2004 Dare-to-Lead Award given by the International Leadership Network. Larry has thirty years of experience in organizational leadership, entrepreneurial development, non-profit management, and grant writing, having envisioned and authored 30 successful grant projects totaling several million dollars. The newly established Spears Center for Servant-Leadership is committed to enhancing the global understanding and practices of servant-leadership. Larry is a longtime member of the Association of Fundraising Professionals, and a Fellow of the World Business Academy. He and his wife, Beth Lafferty, have two wonderful sons: James, and Matthew.