About Dr. Terri Egan

My name is Terri. I'm associate professor of applied behavioral science at Pepperdine Graziadio Business School and the first class that I was a part of was prime.

The program really changed my life completely. I came into the program as a very young faculty member, and they had this process whereby new faculty members were vetted by going through part of the experience the students would go through. I showed up the first week and I was in a group where we were learning more about ourselves with students. The faculty basically stayed away from me just so I would have an experience of what it was like to be a student, and they could have an experience of seeing me and if I would be able to do the work, because this isn't for everybody.

That very first week I met a man named Pat Williams, who is the founder of the program. Pat helped me understand more about myself in a week than I had understood up to that point with all the other great work that I'd been doing, and so I was hooked. And from that moment on, this program has been the primary place where I learned about who I am, so that I can be of service to others. The faculty here are my closest friends and colleagues, and truly, it has been a gift to be part of this.

MSOD has changed the trajectory of my life by showing me a path to becoming a better version of myself and a process for doing that.A process that I've used throughout my entire professional life.

The one thing I would like people to know about me, and I imagine that's what you would call a legacy, is that I believe the work that I do is to help other people liberate their potential. And so the legacy that I have really lives in all of the students I've had any contact with. 

I’d also like to be remembered as someone who integrated neuroscience discoveries and an emphasis on the whole person, including our spiritual nature, into the program curriculum. 

In the next 10 years, the contribution that I'm longing to make is to create opportunities for people to learn more about who they are in ways that allow them to support thriving organizations in service of a world that is a place where there's more justice, more peace. And for them to feel that this is something they can carry on and continue. Yeah, and  I'd like to make sure that that's available to people who don't traditionally have access to those kinds of programs. I'm really interested in working with community organizations and working in ways that are sustainable over the long haul.

I would add that this program is unique in that the work that we're doing as a faculty, and with our students, and with people that we bring in from the outside community to help us support our students, is a combination of the best of human development, and the best of strategy and business development. And so that unique combination makes us a place where there are real differences that can happen across all kinds of organizations, and I think that's special and important.