Rachel Carson and Her Book That Changed the World by Laurie Lawlor

This episode originally aired on HBR IdeaCast in March 2020. You’ll learn how to strengthen your resilience, how to gather your energy and skills, and why caretaking is an act of leadership. Carson’s story has lessons for any leader facing an overwhelming challenge. In this episode, a shy woman armed with little more than a pen takes on some of the most powerful industrial companies and changes the world. Today, we bring you a conversation with Harvard Business School historian Nancy Koehn about the life, legacy, and often overlooked leadership of environmental trailblazer, Rachel Carson. HANNAH BATES: Welcome to HBR on Leadership, case studies and conversations with the world’s top business and management experts, hand-selected to help you unlock the best in those around you. Discover 100 years of Harvard Business Review articles, case studies, podcasts, and more and HBR.org.Listen to the original HBR IdeaCast episode: Real Leaders: Rachel Carson Seeds the Environmental Movement (March 2020).HBR On Leadership curates the best case studies and conversations with the world’s top business and management experts, to help you unlock the best in those around you. Key topics include: leadership, leadership qualities, personal productivity, overcoming obstacles, introverts, personal purpose and values, and personal resilience. In addition, Carson’s ability to carry out her work, despite family commitments shows that caretaking is an act of leadership.

And yet she had more impact than most presidents.”Ĭarson’s story has lessons for any leader facing an overwhelming challenge that requires resilience and real-time skill-building. That’s what leaders do,” Koehn tells IdeaCast guest host Adi Ignatius. “She exercises such a profound impact on other people. Harvard Business School historian Nancy Koehn argues that she also should be remembered as a great leader.Ĭarson’s 1962 classic book Silent Spring revealed the dangers of DDT (dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane) and led to an almost global ban on organic synthetic pesticides within 15 years of its publication. Rachel Carson is known as a gifted science writer and a trailblazing environmental activist.

Rachel Carson and Her Book That Changed the World by Laurie Lawlor