When the answers aren’t clear and the stakes are still high, what does leadership look like? In this episode of Civically Grown, Dr. Shaniece Criss is joined by Lieutenant Colonel Bobbie Ragsdale, an Army Veteran with combat deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan, a Deputy Commander in the U.S. Army Reserve, a U.S. Military Academy at West Point graduate, a Harvard Kennedy School alumnus, and a Bronze Star Medal recipient, to discuss leadership shaped over time through service. Bobbie reflects on his early leadership experiences across athletics, debate, theater, and student government, and how those formative opportunities helped him learn teamwork, confidence, and adaptability long before military command. He shares how learning to read a room and adjust energy became foundational to his leadership approach. The conversation explores leadership as an incremental practice. Bobbie shares hard-earned insights from military command, including navigating conflict, setting standards, and making uncomfortable decisions in service of the mission. One of the central philosophies of the episode is Bobbie’s reminder that initiative matters. Drawing from military doctrine and life experience, he offers a guiding principle that applies far beyond the armed forces: in moments of uncertainty, leaders must act with purpose rather than freeze. Leadership, he argues, is work, and it often means raising your hand, seeking responsibility, and creating value where you are. When asked to describe his leadership style as a plant, Bobbie chooses seaweed. Below the surface, adaptive, foundational, and essential, seaweed leadership moves with the currents, stabilizes the environment, and supports the ecosystem without needing to be seen. It is a powerful image of leadership rooted in humility, sacrifice, and service. _____ Guest Bio: Bobbie is an Army Veteran of 22+ years, with combat deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan. Initially serving as a Cavalry Officer and Paratrooper with the Regular Army, in 2018 he later transitioned to the Special Operations community and the Army Reserve as a Civil Affairs officer. He is a recipient of the Bronze Star Medal, was the 2013 and 2014 recipient of the Draper Armor Leadership Award, and was part of the team that received the 2022 Hubert Humphrey Award for Service to America. In 2009, he founded Ragsdale Holdings, LCC, through which he has acquired over 16 years of real estate development and investment experience. In 2023, he was appointed by Governor John Bel Edwards as one of three Louisiana State Veterans Affairs Commissioners At-Large. From 2021 to 2025, Bobbie mobilized back onto Active Duty with the 377th Theater Sustainment Command in New Orleans, initially in support of the national COVID-19 response, and later on the Afghan evacuation and resettlement, among other national emergencies and disasters. As of October 2025, he has returned to Reserve status and now serves as the Deputy Commander for 358th Civil Affairs Brigade in Riverside, CA, managing forward deployed battalions across the Pacific theater. Bobbie graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point in 2007 with a BS in American Politics w/ Thesis and a Systems Engineering Track. He was later selected by the Army to pursue a postgraduate degree, graduating from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government with a Master in Public Administration in 2016. He has additionally studied System Dynamics at MIT and Constitutional Law at Harvard Law School. He serves on the boards of Global Leadership University, The Harvard Club of Louisiana, the West Point Society of the Mid-Gulf, and the Isidore Newman Alumni Board, and is the President of the West Point Class of 2007 and President and Chairman of the Board for the Friends of Fisher House of Southern Louisiana. _____ Show Host: Dr. Shaniece Criss
