Organizations planning Veterans Day events in November have three Stellant Group speakers whose military careers inform how they teach leadership under pressure: Mike Hayes, Raquel Bono and Paul Nielsen.
Mike Hayes, a Managing Director at Insight Partners, spent 20 years as a Navy SEAL officer, finishing as Commanding Officer of SEAL Team TWO. He commanded a 2,000-person Special Operations Task Force in Afghanistan and served as Director for Defense Policy and Strategy at the National Security Council under Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama. His two national bestsellers, Never Enough: A Navy SEAL Commander on Living a Life of Excellence, Agility, and Meaning and Mission Driven: The Path to a Life of Purpose, build frameworks around excellence, agility, purpose and navigating major transitions. He was previously Chief Operating Officer of VMware, leading worldwide operations through the company's $94 billion acquisition into Broadcom.
Raquel Bono, a retired U.S. Navy Vice Admiral and board-certified trauma surgeon, was the first woman surgeon in the U.S. military to hold that rank. From 2015 to 2019 she was CEO and director of the Defense Health Agency, integrating a $50 billion worldwide military health enterprise. She served in combat arenas during Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm and held directorships at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda. In March 2020, Governor Jay Inslee named her head of Washington state's COVID-19 health system response team. "Giving orders to make change happen is a failure of leadership," Bono argues. She advises leaders to ask questions and make requests rather than direct with unilateral orders.
Paul Nielsen is the director and chief executive officer of Carnegie Mellon University's Software Engineering Institute, a federally funded research and development center advancing software, cybersecurity and the engineering of AI systems, a role he has held since 2004. He previously served in the U.S. Air Force for 32 years, retiring as a major general and commander of the Air Force Research Laboratory. In 2024 he received the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics Distinguished Service Award and was inducted into the Cyber Security Hall of Fame. He is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering.
Each is exclusively represented by Stellant Group for speaking engagements including keynotes, fireside chats and panel discussions with leadership teams thinking through building organizations that perform under pressure, leading through crisis and transformation, and making complex systems trustworthy and enduring. For our consulting or advisory offerings, please reach out through stellantgroup.com for a custom proposal.
