Kevin Mullaney
Dr. Kevin Mullaney is the emeritus chair of the United States Naval Academy’s Leadership, Ethics, and Law department and an executive leadership coach at the Harvard Business School. A retired senior Naval officer with 30 years of active military service, he currently serves as the Dave and Amy Dawson ‘88 Director of the Naval Academy’s Center for Leadership Research and Assessment, where he consults with national and international military organizations and non-profits in the design, execution, and assessment of leadership education and development programs.
Mullaney has coached executive leadership clients globally from a broad range of industries, including banking and finance, healthcare, energy, transportation, consumer products, real estate, construction, and telecommunications. His program of research seeks to untangle the complex dynamics of leadership and the character of leaders by examining traits, behaviors, situations, relationships, and outcomes as they emerge over time. He instigated an institution-wide longitudinal assessment of leadership and character development beginning at the Naval Academy and extending throughout the Naval career, and developed a phone-based app, the Leader’s Compass, to optimize the integration and use of data for both development and assessment.
Educated and trained as a nuclear engineer, Mullaney began his career as a submarine officer, serving in a wide range of leadership roles on four submarines, both operationally at sea and in heavy industrial environments, completing seven strategic and theatre deployments. Transitioning to academia, he earned his doctorate in Industrial/Organizational Psychology and served as the chair of the Naval Academy’s Leadership, Ethics, and Law department, designing courses on personality, decision making, and ethical development and serving as the primary architect of the core leadership courses delivered to a third of all commissioning Naval officers. He is a lead author of the NATO Marshall Center’s Leadership and Ethics Reference Curriculum for partner nations and advises the Institute for Defense Analyses and DARPA on the ethical implementation of artificial intelligence on the battlefield.
An avid genealogist and ancient history buff, he enjoys traveling, art, architecture, and spending time with his grandchildren.
