The Bending Steel Podcast: Conversations with Leaders Shaping the Future with Dr. Antonio Oftelie

Antonio Oftelie
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This podcast looks at breakthrough ideas and innovations, and gets in the trenches with real life leaders to show how they think about and move forward innovation and change. These leaders and organizations are breaking from hardened ways of working and, as like bending steel, transforming their approaches to deliver breakthrough outcomes and value.

  1. 12/18/2025

    A Year in Review: Antonio Oftelie and Lauren Hirshon Look Back on the Summits of 2025

    In this season-closing episode of The Bending Steel Podcast, Dr. Antonio Oftelie is joined by colleague Lauren Hirshon to reflect on the leadership lessons that defined 2025 and to celebrate a year of learning alongside leaders from across sectors. Drawing on insights from The Public Safety Summit, The Human Services Summit, The Supply Chain & Operations Reinvention Summit, and The Kresge NextGen Frontline Innovators cohort, the conversation highlights a shared reality leaders faced throughout the year: extraordinary pressure to improve outcomes, build trust, and lead change amid sustained uncertainty. The episode distills the season’s insights into an encouraging leadership framework centered on sensing the future, building organizational capabilities, evolving culture, and strengthening personal leadership capacity as the force that brings it all together. Through hopeful, real-world examples, the conversation emphasizes progress, possibility, and the discipline of action in uncertain times. As the season comes to a close, the conversation invites leaders to reflect on what has been learned, what has changed, and what it will take to sustain momentum in the year ahead.

    1h 17m

  2. 11/25/2025

    When Courage Finds Its Voice: Reflections on Leadership with Harvard Business School's Dr. Nancy Koehn

    In a time marked by relentless volatility, rising uncertainty, and a sense of “perma-crisis,” leaders are searching for ways to stay steady, clear-headed, and connected to what truly matters. Today’s challenges demand not just sharper strategic thinking, but also deeper emotional grounding. It’s not just the mind, but the heart that has to lead. In this episode, Harvard Business School professor and historian Dr. Nancy Koehn joins host Dr. Antonio Oftelie to bring these concepts to life. Drawing from her book Forged in Crisis and her research on figures like Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, and civil rights figures, Dr. Koehn shares how great leaders confronted turbulence, grew their capacity in real time, and guided others through uncertainty. Together, they reflect on practical approaches for cultivating resilience, communicating with honesty and hope, and sustaining oneself while offering grounded insight for anyone striving to exercise leadership today.

    54 min

  3. 09/08/2025

    From Promise to Practice: AI and the Future of Supply Chains with Accenture's Patty Riedl

    Artificial intelligence is moving rapidly from promise to practice — no longer just a potential tool, but a true partner in how organizations operate. Supply chains, once considered back-office cost centers, are now at the forefront of strategy, resilience, and growth. Together, AI and supply chain reinvention are reshaping how companies adapt to disruption, make smarter investments, and prepare talent for the future. On this episode, Patty Riedl, Managing Director – North America Supply Chain and Operations Lead at Accenture, shares her perspective from the front lines of this transformation. She explores how AI can function as a teammate to human leaders, what it means to build adaptive and autonomous supply chains, and the skills leaders need to thrive in this new landscape. From preparing the next generation of supply chain talent to reimagining boardroom conversations, Patty offers both a vision of what’s coming and practical insights leaders can act on today.

    33 min

  4. 06/17/2025

    Embracing Reinvention with Stanley Black & Decker Chief Supply Chain Officer Tamer Abuaita

    In this episode, we explore what it takes to launch and sustain a high-stakes transformation inside a global company with our guest: Tamer Abuaita, Global Chief Supply Chain Officer and President of Industrial at Stanley Black & Decker. Tamer shares his experience leading a team of more than 33,000 employees on spearheading one of the most ambitious supply chain overhauls in the company’s history, while balancing the demands of operational excellence today with the vision required to build the supply chain of the future. This transformation began at a moment of crisis. In the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, Stanley Black & Decker was struggling to meet demand, prompting new CEO Don Allan to call for sweeping change. He made clear that without a bold reinvention of the supply chain, the company’s broader goals—simplification, innovation, and stronger customer relationships—would be out of reach. Tamer reflects on how he and his team responded, the progress they’ve made, and the pressures they now face as they navigate an increasingly uncertain global landscape.

    51 min

  5. 05/27/2025

    Rethinking Albuquerque Public Safety with Mayor Tim Keller

    In this episode, we sit down with Mayor Tim Keller to explore how Albuquerque became a national leader in public safety transformation. Confronted with a federal consent decree over police misconduct and the urgent calls for change following the 2020 social justice movement, Keller and his team launched the Albuquerque Community Safety (ACS) department — a first-of-its-kind initiative that sends trained, non-police responders to behavioral health, homelessness, and substance use crises. Mayor Keller shares how his team reimagined what was possible, took bold risks, and built an entirely new model of emergency response — all while maintaining day-to-day city operations. This candid conversation reveals the challenges, breakthroughs, and lessons from one city’s ambitious effort to redefine public safety.

    1 hr

  6. 04/17/2025

    Lauren Hirshon and Antonio Oftelie on How We're Bending Steel

    In this special kickoff episode of Bending Steel, host Dr. Antonio Oftelie flips the script and becomes the guest. Interviewed by longtime collaborator Lauren Hirshon — Director of Learning and Development at Leadership for a Networked World at Harvard — the two explore the vision behind the podcast and why now is the time for bold ideas in the public and social sectors. Together, they reflect on the urgent need for new frameworks, principles, and leadership tools in a world teetering between potential progress and persistent challenges. This introductory episode sets the tone for the season ahead — one designed to help leaders navigate complexity and drive meaningful change.

    34 min

  7. 08/12/2022

    Forging a Brighter Future with Dr. Cynthia Croom and Metro Action Commission

    Leading a ground-up transformation is hard. Coming into an organization and doing it as an outsider is even harder. The challenge of forging relationships, understanding the community, and fostering a change in culture and mission is difficult enough when the stakeholders know you. That challenge when you’re a newcomer? Monumental. Yet that’s exactly where this episode’s guest found herself. In this episode, we’re talking with Dr. Cynthia Croom, Executive Director of the Metro Action Commission (MAC) in Nashville, Tennessee. Dr. Coom was charged with turning MAC around, and to “break the cycle of poverty in our community.” Cynthia and all the people in the organization had to reinvent their services and programs, collaborate in new ways, and most importantly – grow their capacity to sustain long-term innovation and change.

    1h 4m

  8. 03/24/2022

    Live Well San Diego and Leaning in on a Pandemic

    Breakthrough outcomes often need a catalyst – a way to see not only challenges on the horizon, but also solutions that will make the world better. A case in point is the “Live Well San Diego” initiative in San Diego County California, which helped officials respond to the COVID-19 pandemic in novel ways and created a platform to improve equity and health in the future.  In this episode, we’ll learn from Nick Macchione, Director of Health and Human Services for San Diego County, about his leadership experience during the pandemic, and how he and other leaders built the systems, structures, and overall collaboration of the Live Well San Diego Initiative.

    40 min
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This podcast looks at breakthrough ideas and innovations, and gets in the trenches with real life leaders to show how they think about and move forward innovation and change. These leaders and organizations are breaking from hardened ways of working and, as like bending steel, transforming their approaches to deliver breakthrough outcomes and value.

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