Gill Robinson Hickman
Gill Robinson Hickman is Professor of Leadership Studies Emerita at Jepson School of Leadership studies and winner of the 2016 ILA lifetime achievement award. Compelling common purpose would be three words at the core of Gill’s institution building work in leadership studies, her life and her research. As one of the inaugural faculty members of the Jepson School of Leadership Studies, one of the first institutions in the world with a multidisciplinary faculty devoted to the study of leadership, Gill joined forces with her colleagues to build a leadership studies program from the ground up. She published Leading Change in Multiple Contexts which has become a standard in a field that has experienced incredible growth since those first Jepson faculty gathered with their compelling common purpose more than 20 years ago. She grew up as a black woman in Birmingham, Alabama during the Civil Rights era where she experienced the power of people coming together in common cause.
