Col. Casey Haskins

Casey Haskins spent 30 years as an Army officer, retiring as a colonel in 2012. He commanded everything from a platoon to a brigade, across five countries and seven different states. He also served in numerous staff assignments, including two in which he got to be a roving troubleshooter. In Iraq, after seeing how poorly prepared its Cold War-style training had left the military, he dedicated himself to turning that around. There, then at the Infantry School at Fort Benning, and eventually at West Point, he developed an entirely new training approach. The results were spectacular, but it required a more innovative culture than people were used to, and that naturally made many uncomfortable. Despite a lot of skepticism, he did it five times with five separate organizations, proving that it could be done—and along the way, he probably gained more experience at changing cultures than any other officer of his generation. After retiring from the Army, he worked for a while training senior leaders, then as an innovation consultant, and later as a partner in a biotech startup. Always open to new experiences, he’s worked with groups ranging from NASA to the principals in one of Georgia’s largest school districts, to big-city police captains; with companies in the Fortune 50 and Silicon Valley startups; and he’s addressed a wide variety of audiences, to include Wall Street bankers, cardiac surgeons, city planners, and a stadium full of people at the Chautauqua Institute. Over the past two years, he has worked as a full-time researcher on complex systems and how they relate to society.