June 30, 2020
Nancy Koehn was on track for an administrative leadership role at Harvard Business School, where she taught the history of leadership to the world’s best and brightest. But a series of personal crucibles — the death of her father, a divorce that came without warning and decimated her finances, a cancer diagnosis — caused the floorboards of her personal and professional lives to crumble beneath her. Her career aspirations drydocked, her sleep interrupted nightly at 1 or 2 a.m., she sought solace in the love of her intellectual life: history. When she picked up a book on Abraham Lincoln to help pass the agitated hours, she discovered in the trials of the 16th president that there was not only a way through her setbacks but a way beyond them. In this interview with BEYOND THE CRUCIBLE host and Crucible Leadership founder Warwick Fairfax, Koehn explains how her search for lighthouses of hope in the lives...
June 30, 2020
Nancy Koehn was on track for an administrative leadership role at Harvard Business School, where she taught the history of leadership to the world’s best and brightest. But a series of personal crucibles — the death of her father, a...
June 16, 2020
Life has not always been easy for Warwick Fairfax. That’s a statement many in his native Australia never would have associated with the fifth-generation heir to arguably the country’s most influential media empire. But then he launched a multi-billion-dollar takeover...
June 9, 2020
Growing up in Communist East Germany, Cathleen Merkel was taught her value came from doing what others expected of her, working hard and not upsetting the established order of things. Then the Berlin Wall fell, and she grew from a girl into a...
You are more than your failures and setbacks. We share stories of leaders who have moved beyond life’s most difficult moments to lead lives of significance, and insights on how you can do the same.
Warwick Fairfax is the founder of Crucible Leadership, a philosophical and practical breakthrough in turning failures and setbacks into the fuel for igniting a life of significance. He has been hailed by Forbes as offering “compelling insights for anyone who would like to wake up feeling inspired by their work, but doesn’t.”
Fairfax was only 26 when, as the fifth-generation heir to a media empire bearing his family name, he led — and lost — a public takeover bid. The result? The company founded by his great-great-grandfather slipped from family control after 150 years, at a cost of AUS $2.25 billion. He was left to examine not only his own shortcomings and losses, but also his life’s principles. Lessons he learned from family members who came before him and some of history’s greatest leaders helped him as well. It has been by shaping these insights, as a leadership adviser and executive coach, that Fairfax has enabled others to learn from what he describes as their own “crucible moments” and emerge to lead a life rooted in who they are.
Fairfax holds an undergraduate degree in Philosophy, Politics and Economics from Oxford University and earned his MBA from Harvard Business School. He is an International Coach Federation (ICF) certified executive coach and an Elder at Bay Area Community Church.
He lives in Annapolis, Md., with his wife, Gale. They have three children who are in the process of developing their own unique paths to lives of significance.
Gary Schneeberger’s three decades in journalism and public relations fuel his passion for — and success in — strategic marketing and communications.
He is communications director for Crucible Leadership, assisting founder Warwick Fairfax with strategic multimedia outreach to help leaders live lives of true significance. As founder and president of ROAR, he helps individuals and organizations engage audiences with the boldness and creative clarity that ensures they are heard. He has advised Hollywood studios (Universal, Warner Bros., 20th Century Fox), TV networks (USA, History, The CW), global ministries (Focus on the Family) and publishing houses (Simon & Schuster).
Schneeberger is the author of the best-seller BITE THE DOG: Build a PR Strategy to Make News That Matters (Niche Pressworks, 2018), a guidebook to the effective practice of public relations hailed by critics as “helpful and hilarious” and recommended by colleagues as “smart, clear, cogent, actionable and always thoroughly entertaining.”
He and his wife, Kelly, live in Camp Lake, Wis., with their two children.
