Ned Brooks

I was a terrible student. I flunked out of kindergarten. Kindergarten! I also had to repeat the 9th grade. Pitiful. It's been a long, twisted journey from those days to becoming a professor. I began getting my act together as an undergrad at Bates College in Maine. That's where I met Ginny 53 years ago. It's also where I got my first leadership experience. I was student body president. After getting my MBA in health care administration from Cornell in 1967, Ginny and I married and drove to Alaska where I was the director of Indian Health Services hospitals in the bush. Fantastic experience. I learned a lot about leadership out there in a completely different environment than I'd ever known. A few years later I found myself at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. I had three careers there: (1) Researcher and operating officer of a center where we studied access to and cost & quality of health services. (2) Associate Provost with responsibilities for the schools of Dentistry Medicine, Nursing, Pharmacy, and Public Health plus seven research centers and a major library. (3) Faculty member in Health Policy and Administration where I led the founding of the University's first distance doctoral program, the Executive Doctoral Program in Health Leadership.

I am also an artist. I've worked mainly in pencil and silver point. Recently, I've turned to writing. In edition to "Strong, Selfless Leadership," I've written four novels. I'm aiming a publishing one of them by summer 2019.

Ginny and I have two daughters, Laurie and Karen, and five grandkids, Tori, Allison, Olivia, Katie, and Tyler.