In contrast to the many books on leadership featuring broad principles and prescribed steps, Scott Cowen’s Lead and Succeed is unique in inviting listeners to engage in a process of personal development as they begin to build their careers.

With honesty and candor, Cowen describes his own complicated and, at times, thorny path to becoming dean of the Weatherhead School of Management at the age of thirty-eight, president of Tulane University during the Hurricane Katrina crisis, and interim president of Case Western Reserve University during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as serving on several corporate boards during his fifty-year career.

Along the way, Cowen has met and worked with all kinds of leaders, and has seen leadership—and its challenges—in all its shapes and forms. He is clear-eyed, speaks from the heart, and knows what the next generation of leaders need to know in order to start making a lasting positive difference in the world.

Lead and Succeed is also an interactive workbook, with sections at the end of each chapter for writing akin to journal entries. “Reflection Prompts” ask listeners to write about their own values, strengths, and vulnerabilities, and “Action Prompts” encourage them, in specific daily acts, to conquer fears, overcome setbacks, and act on deeply held beliefs. The back-and-forth between Cowen’s thoughtful memoir and the listener's own unfolding story is the essence of this inspirational book, which shows listeners not only how to “be” a leader, but how to become a truly outstanding one.