Leonard Marcus, PhD
Founding Director School/organization Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
Dr. Marcus is the founding Director of the National Preparedness Leadership Initiative at Harvard University. In his over twenty years at the helm of the NPLI, his research, teaching, and consultation have played a key role in national and international preparedness for crisis and emergency response leadership. He is the lead author of the book, “You’re It: Crisis, Change, and How to Lead When It Matters Most” (New York: PublicAffairs Press, 2019 and 2021).
He and his colleagues pioneered development of the conceptual and pragmatic basis for “Meta-Leadership”– overarching leadership that strategically links the work of different government agencies as well as sectors of society; “Connectivity” – the coordination of people, organizations, resources, and information to best catch, contain, and control a terrorist or other threat to the public’s health and well-being; the “Walk in the Woods,” a systematic methodology to incorporate interest-based negotiation into complex problem-solving; and “Swarm Leadership” a practice to incorporate social instinct that rallies people to engage and collaborate in times of crisis.
Recent research activities have taken him to the center of emergency preparedness and response through direct observation and immediate interviews with leadership during and after: the 2020 COVID response; the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings; the early H1N1 response; the 2009 and 2006 wars in Israel; the 2010 BP oil spill; in 2005, Hurricanes Katrina and Rita on the Gulf Coast; the MPox outbreak of 2023-4; and the Baltimore Key Bridge Collapse in 2024 and many more. He led a seven-year CDC project at Harvard, as well as a three-year project with the CDC Foundation and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, to bring preparedness training to 36 locations across the country through the “Meta-Leadership Summits for Preparedness.” At the invitation of the President’s staff, he has lectured at the White House on meta-leadership to a cross-section of senior federal department officials from across the government during the Bush, Obama, and Trump administrations.
Prior to being recruited by the federal government following 9/11, Dr. Marcus’ primary work was in health care negotiation and conflict resolution. Dr. Marcus is the founding Director of the Program for Health Care Negotiation and Conflict Resolution at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. He is the lead author of the primary text in the field, Renegotiating Health Care: Resolving Conflict to Build Collaboration, Second Edition (2011). The book was selected as co-recipient of the Center for Public Resources Institute for Dispute Resolution “Book Prize Award for Excellence in Alternative Dispute Resolution” in its first edition (1995). In 1994, he co-authored Mediating Bioethical Disputes: A Practical Guide. Along with colleagues, he is now at work on a book on Meta-Leadership.
Dr. Marcus has directed numerous projects and authored papers to advance the fields of leadership, negotiation, collaborative problem-solving, and conflict resolution applied to health-related issues. At the School of Public Health, he has been Principal Investigator on grants from, among others, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the National Institute for Dispute Resolution, and the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, to develop a curriculum, research agenda, and conceptual and applied framework for the field.
An enthusiastic teacher, speaker, and storyteller, he is the recipient of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health “Excellence in Teaching Award for Executive and Continuing Professional Education.”
Dr. Marcus completed his doctoral studies at The Heller School of Brandeis University in 1983. He was selected as a Fellow for the Kellogg National Leadership Program from 1986 to 1989. In his spare time, Lenny plays clarinet, enjoys flamenco, is a cartoonist, and loves to travel.
