Short description: How does one who does not consider himself a leader, has never studied or been trained in leadership, and does not aspire to leadership roles find himself in such roles? When this happens, how does this person manage these unintentional leadership roles and unintentional leadership responsibilities? In this talk, the author will share his experiences with unintentional leadership and a retrospective on what he has learned through these experiences about leadership.

Bio: James J. Cochran is professor of statistics, the Rogers-Spivey Research Fellow and Associate Dean for Research with the University of Alabama’s Culverhouse College of Business. He is also a Research Associate with the Alabama Transportation Institute. He has been a Visiting Scholar with Stanford University, the University of South Africa, the Universidad de Talca, Pôle Universitaire Léonard De Vinci, the University of Limpopo, and the University of Namibia. He holds honorary faculty appointments with the University of KwaZulu Natal and the University of Limpopo. Dr. Cochran’s research focuses on problems at the interface of statistics and operations research, and he has taught a wide range of statistics and operations courses from the introductory undergraduate level through PhD seminars. He has published seventeen book chapters, over fifty research articles, and almost 100 other articles. He is coauthor of eight textbooks in statistics, operations research, analytics, and data visualization. He has served on the editorial boards for eighteen journals and as Editor-in-Chief of INFORMS Transactions on Education from 2007-2012. Dr. Cochran is the founding Editor-in-Chief of the Wiley Encyclopedia of Operations Research and the Management Sciences, Wiley Series in Operations Research and Management Science, Oxford Anthology of Statistics in Sports series, and INFORMS Analytics Body of Knowledge. He has served as a consultant to a wide variety of corporations, government agencies, and not-for-profit organizations around the world. Dr. Cochran established an international teaching effectiveness colloquium series and has organized these events in Uruguay, South Africa, Colombia, India, Tanzania, Argentina, Kenya, Nepal, Cameroon, Croatia, Cuba, Estonia, Fiji, Mongolia, Moldova, Bulgaria, Tunisia, Grenada, and Sri Lanka. He was a founding co-chair of Statistics without Borders and a founding committee member for the INFORMS Pro Bono Analytics initiative. He has delivered keynote addresses to conferences in twenty-five nations. Dr. Cochran has received the INFORMS Prize for the Teaching of OR/MS Practice, Mu Sigma Rho Statistical Education Award, Waller Distinguished Teaching Career Award, and Karl E. Peace Award for outstanding statistical contributions for the betterment of society. He is a two-time finalist for the Innovative Applications in Analytics Award. He is also a Fellow of both the American Statistical Association and INFORMS, and he has received both the American Statistical Association’s Founders Award and the INFORMS President’s Award.