President and Chief Executive Officer
O. Alfred Granum Chair in Management
Areas of Expertise:
Crisis Management, Risk Assessment, Leadership
Larry Barton, PhD, is the eighth president and chief executive officer of The American College. Dr. Barton has a long and distinguished career spanning both higher education and industry.
Prior to joining The American College, Dr. Barton served as president and chief executive officer of Heald College, a not-for-profit institution with 11 campuses in California, Oregon, and Hawaii. Before this, he served as president of DeVry University in Phoenix, Arizona.
From 1995-1999, Dr. Barton served as vice president of communications and public affairs for Motorola, Inc., where he led public affairs and crisis strategies for one of the world's leading technology companies, managing regional teams in London, Geneva, Hong Kong and Tokyo.
A former professor of management and business at Pennsylvania State University Graduate Center at Great Valley, Dr. Barton has also served on the faculties of Boston College and Harvard Business School. He was named Teacher of the Year in the College of Business and Economics at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas in 1992, ranking first among 92 faculty members. He was also named 1992 Ascendant Scholar of the Year by the Western Academy of Management.
As a scholar, Dr. Barton is the author of four books devoted to enhancing and expanding understanding of risk/crisis management and the prevention of workplace threats and workplace violence: Crisis In Organizations (1990: Thomson); Ethics: The Enemy in the Workplace (1995: Thomson); Crisis in Organizations II (2001: Thomson) and Crisis Leadership Now (2008: McGraw-Hill). Crisis Leadership Now was named One of The 30 Best Business Books of 2008 by Soundview Executive Books. Dr. Barton is also subject advisor for Crisis Management: The Essentials from Harvard Business School Books (2004). He has forthcoming works that include "Managing Communications After Workplace Threats and Violent Acts" from The American Bar Association and "Crisis Communications and Risk Management Dynamics" from Oxford University Press (2009).
Dr. Barton received a coveted Senior Fulbright Scholarship in Crisis Management to Japan from the U.S. Information Agency in 1987. Since 1995 Dr. Barton has served on the editorial board of the Journal of Business and Economic Perspectives at the University of Tennessee and since 2005 for The Journal of Contingencies and Crisis Management (Blackwell Publishing, U.K.)
Dr. Barton enjoys an international reputation as one of the world's leading experts in risk and crisis management. His clients include British Petroleum, Nike, The Walt Disney Company, Cigna, Honda, ExxonMobil, American Family Insurance and Emerson. Dr. Barton has offered keynote speeches and presentations at more than 200 conferences in nearly 20 countries, including programs sponsored by the National Association of Personal Financial Advisors (2003), American Association of University Administrators (2003), United States Army War College (2002), The FBI Training Academy (since 2007) and many others.
His articles have appeared in The New York Times, The Boston Globe, USA Today, and more than 40 academic journals worldwide. Dr. Barton has been interviewed on CNBC, ABC News This Morning, CNN, Public Radio's "Marketplace", and other network programs on issues related to financial services and crisis prevention. He has been profiled in The Wall Street Journal and other publications. For the past six years, Insurance Newscast has recognized Dr. Barton as "One of the 100 Most Powerful People in Insurance."
Dr. Barton holds an AB degree, magna cum laude, in speech and communications from Boston College, the MALD (Master of Arts in Law and Diplomacy) degree in international business from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, and a PhD degree in public affairs and international communications from Boston University.
Dr. Barton is married to Eliza Alden and they have two sons, Matthew and Mark.
Back to Faculty List
