Visiting Associate Professor

Colonel Tom Kolditz is Professor and Head of the Department of Behavioral Sciences and Leadership at the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York. Kolditz has served in an array of military tactical command and technical staff assignments worldwide, and as a leadership and human resources policy analyst in the Pentagon. His department is responsible for teaching, research, and outreach activities in leadership, psychology, sociology, and management at West Point.

Colonel Kolditz has published more than 30 articles across a diverse array of academic, military, and leadership trade journals, including Leader to Leader, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Journal of Personality, Japanese Human Resource Journal, Performance, Armed Forces and Society, Perception and Psychophysics, and Military Review, and serves on the editorial and advisory boards of several academic journals. He is a fellow in the American Psychological Association and in the Inter-University Seminar on Armed Forces and Society, and is a member of the Academy of Management and the Society of Psychologists in Management.

Since 2001, Colonel Kolditz has served as a coach and mentor to the U.S. Military Academy Sport Parachute Team. An accomplished parachute instructor with more than 1,000 jumps, he weaves his personal experiences and abilities as a soldier, skydiver, and scholar into the first-hand study, analysis, and practice of leadership in dangerous circumstances — in extremis leadership — and how such leadership can inform the practice of leading in more ordinary settings, across the private, public, and social sectors. His teaching and research efforts center on applied social psychology and leadership. In 2003, Colonel Kolditz and a small team of researchers traveled throughout Iraq to study cohesion for the Army’s chief of personnel. His most recent work, a book titled In Extremis Leadership: Leading as if Your Life Depended on It, was published in 2007 by Jossey-Bass.

A frequently requested speaker, his audiences have included the World Business Forum and executive audiences from Goldman Sachs, Anheuser Busch, Citigroup, and EDS. As a professor, he has led academic seminars or given lectures to students from Babson, Wellesley, and Olin Colleges, Columbia University, Duke University, Yale University, Peking University, the Beijing International MBA program, the U.S. Army War College, and the U.S. Military Academy. Kolditz has been quoted by Fast Company, the Associated Press, Marine Corps Times, Air Force Times, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the Toledo Blade, National Defense magazine, the Psychiatric Times, CNN.com, CNNMoney.com, and interviewed by Kirsten Cole on WCBS TV as well as John Grayson, CBS Radio. Colonel Kolditz’s military and law enforcement engagements have included the DEA Group Supervisors Institute, the New York Governor’s Law Enforcement Leadership Series, National Defense Academy of Japan, the Army Medical Command, the 4th Infantry Division, and the New Jersey State Association of Chiefs of Police.

He holds numerous degrees, including a bachelor’s degree in psychology and sociology from Vanderbilt University, as well as masters and PhD degrees in social psychology, a master of military arts and science, and a masters in strategic studies.