It is my pleasure today to talk with Greg Thomas, the CEO of the Jazz Leadership Project. Greg has over 25 years of experience as a writer, producer, broadcaster and educator, and has been featured in publications as various as The Root, All About Jazz, Salon, London’s Guardian Observer, the Village Voice, Africana, American Legacy, Savoy, New York’s Daily News as well as the scholarly journal Callaloo. He was the Editor-in-Chief of Harlem World magazine from 2003-2006.

As we all experience the incredible disruption in the world around us, our leadership skills are naturally challenged as our self-contraction and defensive states arise. Greg feels a deep responsibility to bring forth his Jazz Leadership offering in response. He will be giving us much more detail on what that means at the What NOW conference.

In our discussion, we cover what is moving Greg as cultural events unfold, particularly concerning the issues of race and culture. Listen as Greg outlines his improvised response to all that is arising — particularly noticing a lack of moderate voices on both sides of the conversation. Although Jazz Leadership has been his practice for some time, like the rest of us, he is experiencing an acceleration and intensity to the cultural conversation since the 2016 election.

He has also noticed that the now and the future of leadership, even in the military, in still tending to move towards distributed networks rather than the top-down style of the current administration. And he has lots to say about the importance of diversity in our ongoing conversations.

-David Riordan