Linda Pittenger Brings Wall Street Experience to Worldwide
Molly Justice
Molly Justice
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Molly Justice
Jan 06, 2015, 2:28 PM
Imagine having to tell a manager that he needed to personally pay a $30,000 hotel bill knowing the company no longer could reimburse him, or overseeing an employee whose spouse needed brain surgery and didn’t know if the employees at the bankrupt investment bank still had health insurance. These were very real situations faced by Dr. Linda M. Pittenger in her role as managing director and global head of human resources for technology at Lehman Brothers when the 158-year-old company went bankrupt in 2008.
“At the end of the day, all I could do was rely on my integrity and have empathy,” said Dr. Pittenger, an associate professor who teaches in the Master of Science in Leadership program in Worldwide’s College of Business. “Even though Lehman Brothers was bankrupt, we were required to keep all of the systems operational. As a leader, I had to encourage employees who had just experienced a devastating loss of personal savings and their employment to come to work.”
“Selling” people on the notion of working 18- to 20-hour shifts with no promise of incentive or pay was a true test of Dr. Pittenger’s leadership abilities. “The company that these employees worked at for 10-20-30 years was gone. Their stock accumulation had zero value, 401K plans were compromised, and they no longer had health benefits or a job,” she said. “They all did come back to work because they loved the place and knew it was the right thing to do. And in the end, the bankruptcy judge paid them!”
Dr. Pittenger now brings her corporate knowledge and Wall Street experience to business students at Embry-Riddle Worldwide. After the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy, she formalized her passion for teaching by earning a doctorate in management from Case Western Reserve University in 2012.
In 2011, IEEE voted Dr. Pittenger’s dissertation research – which focused on the behaviors of IT professionals – one of the top 15 technology management papers in the world. She’s currently conducting university-funded research that examines what behaviors differentiate superior performing aviation and aerospace leaders from average performers at several large organizations.
“I love teaching and sharing with students both theory and how I personally applied that theory when I was an executive,” said Dr. Pittenger, a former chief information officer and vice president at AT&T.
And one of the most important leadership characteristics she’s obtained and now instills in her students is that leaders must act like leaders at all times.
“If they turn in a paper with grammar issues, I ask them to think if this was a memo to employees, how that might reflect on them as a leader,” she said. “I push students to think beyond their comfortable boundaries, challenge them to consider and respect viewpoints that differ from theirs, task them to think critically and strategically and encourage them to be self-aware.”
Read more from Dr. Pittenger on the state of leadership today.
Media Contact
Molly Justice, Director of Communications, University Marketing, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, (386) 226-7089, Molly.Justice@erau.edu