5 Reasons to Know... Lissa Young, Second Year Doctoral Student

Her dream was to one day be the dean of West Point. But after earning a degree from the prestigious training academy for Army officers and teaching there for several years, and after nearly 20 years of military service, Lissa Young was forced to resign under the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. Instead of fighting back, she decided to embrace her dismissal as an opportunity to start over again, at age 40. She started with Raytheon, selling air traffic control systems in the Middle East. Then she decided to go back to school. Last fall, with golden flight wings hanging on a chain around her neck, Young drove to Cambridge on her Harley and started the doctoral program, focusing on a hot area: leadership development.

1. She’s helping the next group of students interested in leadership. Last summer, she was part of a committee at the Harvard Graduate School of Education that is exploring the creation of a new leadership degree for practitioners. Last fall, she was a teaching fellow for Leadership, Entrepreneurship, and Learning, a course she designed with Associate Professor Monica Higgins.

2. Although proven as a leader, she says she knows when to lead and when not to, and at the Ed School, “I’m comfortable not stepping in to that role for now. It would feel pretentious since I have so much to learn.” Instead, she’s letting others step up, especially younger classmates who, she says, “need to experiment with their own leadership.”

3. Despite being kicked out of the Army, Young is determined to return to West Point to teach, as a civilian professor. “I believe in their mission.”

4. Although she seems to move through life at high speed, she is here at the Ed School, she says, to “slow down” and to figure out how to merge her interest in leadership development with philosophy and deep reflection.

5. Her Harley goes wherever she goes. “It’s my freedom,” she says. A gift she gave to herself during flight school, she says that riding it is the closest you can get to flying, which she misses. “I miss the edge, that tiny line that separates you from life and death.”

photo by Martha Stewart

About the Article

A version of this article originally appeared in the Fall 2008 issue of Ed., the magazine of the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

Respond to this story with an e-mail to the editor.