Today's guest is Heather Dyer. Heather is CEO and general manager of San Bernardino Valley Municipal Water District, [email protected].

Heather Dyer is CEO of the San Bernadino Valley Municipal Water District. She is the first woman to lead this agency that brings water to over 800,000 people in one of the fasting growing parts of water-poor Southern California.

She is the first and perhaps only endangereed species biologist to lead such and organization in the country.



She is also my former student. What makes this episode especially powerful for me is that the transformation she underwent as a result of our work together and how it directly informed her talents and effectiveness as a leader.



She offers a fresh, exciting and powerful perspective on how to be an effective leader in an era of continual disruption and adaptation. She shares what endangered species can teach us about leadership and our relationship to ourselves, to each other and how we can productively face change (from changes in ourselves to changes in the planet’s climate).



Heather outlines a view of leadership that moves beyond coercion, command and control to one that is fundamentally based on quality of connection and mature adult relationships.

Her principles empower, trust and ennoble the teams she works with. She helps them become islands of calm in a sea of chaos. This results in a profound commitment and abillity to find solutions to our most pressing problems.

The best part of this is that, this worldview arises from her own personal exploration of the challenges she faced to live an effective life. She can speak with authority because she’s already lived it.

We’re going to bring this to you in 2 parts so you have time to let her message sink in more deeply.