by Leah

I want to sincerely congratulate John Bryson on his recent receipt of the McKnight Presidential endowed professorship. Prof. Bryson taught me a great deal when I was a student at the Humphrey Institute, including to have fun when working complex issues involving a lot of players with divergent interests. Dean Atwood asked if I would write a letter about Prof. Bryson for his nomination for a faculty award. In my letter, I said (among other things):

"I particularly enjoyed learning from Professor Bryson’s broad view of stakeholders and their importance in strategic planning initiatives. He had an intuitive understanding of how stakeholder engagement can strengthen a strategic planning process by ensuring goals are broadly based in the current context, building support for resulting strategies and ensuring a level of accountability for the benchmarks or outcomes set in the process. This lesson in particular has stayed with me in my professional years; stakeholder engagement is one of the areas I emphasize in my own professional work and continue to search for creative ways of building those relationships between organizations and their stakeholders... "

“Because I learned so much from Professor Bryson, I am truly grateful to have the opportunity to support him for the Regents Professorship. I owe much of the philosophy that underlies my work to his teaching.”