Richard E. Thomas
Richard E. Thomas is a culture change and organizational effectiveness expert with extensive experience as an executive in consumer package goods and cable television industry companies, and with over 20 years of organizational and executive development consulting work with Fortune 500 companies. In addition to serving as a Founder and Partner in Battlefield Leadership, Thomas is currently partner in charge of governance, leadership and management for an innovative outpatient surgery center development and management company with properties in nine states, and is CEO of the Outpatient Surgery Center of Hilton Head in South Carolina.
From 1992 until 2001, Rich was President and CEO of the Millennium Consulting Group, Inc, a New Jersey and Pennsylvania-based firm whose executive and team development work concentrated on leadership behavior as a primary leverage point for managing organizational change. Millennium’s clients included such leading global companies as: American Express, AT&T, Colgate-Palmolive, Disney, Du Pont, Eli Lilly, HBO, Johnson & Johnson, Lehman Brothers, Lever Brothers, Merrill Lynch, MetLife, Pfizer, PSEG, SmithKline-Beecham, Time Warner, UBS, Warner-Lambert and Weyerhauser. Earlier, Mr. Thomas was a partner in the Maryland-based Renaissance Leadership, Inc, and has held executive positions with QVC Network, Comcast Cable Communications, Home Box Office (HBO), Canada Dry International, and PepsiCo.
Rich holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Asian Studies with special concentration in Cultural Anthropology from Princeton University, and he completed graduate field work in primitive tribal culture with Thammasat University (Thailand). A Vietnam veteran and former Army Intelligence specialist in Special Operations, he speaks the Mandarin dialect of Chinese and Thai. As a lifelong learner and longtime military history buff, Thomas is an accomplished historian and Civil War and WW II scholar in his own right.
Testimonials
On behalf of International Paper, please accept my thanks for a great job in taking us through the Gettysburg experience. Your enthusiasm and deep knowledge about the subject made for a rich experience, and your energy kept everyone going through a very busy day. As leaders, our challenge is to take these new learnings and use them to motivate our people to help us take our company to the next level. Thanks again, and well done!
John T. Dillon
Chairman
International Paper
[Your leadership insights] were no less than outstanding. I learned more these past two days of leadership training than any other course I have ever attended.
Ken Gills
Bayer HealthCare
Bayer Corporation
Experiential education and team-building at its best, the Gettysburg Experience led by Battlefield Leadership is a transformational undertaking for leaders at any level in any organization, and especially for leadership teams. By walking the historic battles of Gettysburg and deconstructing the decisions made under fire, the relationships between leaders and subordinates, and the examples of inspired vs. confused communication, the facilitators bring historic moments to life and make it extraordinarily relevant to the “battles” modern leaders fight every day.
Patrick F. Bassett
President
National Association of Independent Schools