Stephen Covey*

Inducted 2000

Stephen R. Covey is founder and chairman of the Covey Leadership Center, a 200-plus member international firm whose mission is to empower people and organizations to significantly increase their performance capability in order to achieve worthwhile purposes through understanding and living principle-centered leadership. He is also founder of The Institute for Principle Centered Leadership, a non-profit research group dedicated to transforming education and improving the quality of community life.

Dr. Covey has taught leadership principles and management skills for more than 25 years to leaders in business, government, and education. His consulting portfolio contains more than 150 of the Fortune 500 companies, as well as thousands of mid-sized and smaller organizations.

Recent awards include the first Thomas More College Medallion for continued service to humanity (1990), the Utah Symphony 50th Anniversary Award for outstanding national and international contributions (1990), and the McFeely Award from the International Management Council for significant contributions to management and education (1991).

His work in principle-centered leadership has been adopted by thousands of organizations as a foundational inside-out approach to improving quality, leadership, innovation, trust, teamwork, customer-focused service, organizational alignment, and many other strategic corporate initiatives. This approach to building and sustaining high trust cultures ultimately focuses on the relationship between all four levels of organizations—personal, interpersonal, managerial, and organizational.

Covey’s work as an author, keynote speaker, teacher, consultant, television and radio guest, and executive mentor has created international interest in applying principle-centered leadership to many personal, organizational, and societal issues.

Dr. Covey is the author of several books and numerous articles on leadership, personal and organizational effectiveness, and family and interpersonal relationships. His book, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, was number one on the New York Times Bestseller List with more than 1.5 million copies sold. The book is being published in over 20 countries and in a dozen languages, including Japanese, German, French, Chinese and Spanish. His latest book is Principle-Centered Leadership. His leadership advisory magazine, Executive Excellence, is in its eighth year of publication.

Stephen Covey received an MBA from Harvard and a doctorate from Brigham Young University, where he was Professor of Organizational Behavior and Business Management. He has served as an officer and board member of several organizations.

*Deceased member