Michael Thomas Duffy is a manager with extensive experience in the public, private and non-profit sector; currently he is the President of the Great Oaks Foundation, whose mission is to give students access to a quality education through High Dosage Tutoring.
Duffy had previously worked at the New York City Department of Education, under the leadership of Chancellor Joel Klein during the Bloomberg administration. Prior to that, he worked in Boston at two different high schools, one a start-up, the other a turnaround of a troubled school.
Duffy’s efforts in education grew out of his work in the civil rights movement. In 1991 Massachusetts Governor William Weld appointed him to be the Chairman and Commissioner of the Commonwealth's civil rights enforcement commission, a position that he held for six years. In this role, Duffy pioneered the use of undercover investigations to enforce civil rights laws barring race and age discrimination in hiring. During that time Duffy testified before Congress several times and appeared at a White House conference on matters relating to the enforcement of civil rights laws.
Duffy later served in the Governor's cabinet as the Director of the Office of Consumer Affairs and Business Regulation where he oversaw the Division of Banks, the Division of Insurance, and the Department of Public Utilities, among other agencies. In 1997 while the head of Consumer Affairs, Duffy led an investigation into sub-prime mortgage lending, exposing unlawful practices that victimized vulnerable homeowners. In 2005, Duffy was appointed by the Governor to serve on the board of the Massachusetts Educational Finance Authority, a quasi-public agency that finances student loans.
While a resident of Massachusetts, Duffy twice was a candidate for public office and has worked or volunteered on dozens of political campaigns. He has also held leadership positions in the non-profit sector: he served on the Board of Directors of the Human Rights Campaign, for several years as its co-chair; he was the Executive Director of the AIDS Action Committee of Massachusetts; served on the Vestry of St. Bartholomew’s Episcopal Church in Manhattan; and currently chairs the board of the Lyme Academy of Fine Arts, in Old Lyme Connecticut.
Duffy has a Master’s degree in Public Policy from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University where he wrote his thesis on business support for child day care. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Trinity College in Connecticut with a degree in Economics. As an undergraduate, Duffy interned in both the Connecticut Legislature and the British Parliament.
Only open to students in the Executive MPA Program.
Strategic Leadership is an intensive leadership course designed to equip mid-career students with the tools, perspectives, and frameworks for executing high-impact strategy within mission-driven organizations. Course topics are organized around four themes: 1) cultivating purposeful leadership, 2) analyzing conditions to build a theory of change, 3) mobilizing commitment to change, and 4) achieving change. Within this four-part model we will explore conceptual frameworks for understanding high impact organizations and the role of strategic leadership, analytical tools for developing and assessing strategy, approaches to working with stakeholders to mobilize commitment, and methods for leading change.
Only open to students in the Executive MPA Program.
Strategic Leadership is an intensive leadership course designed to equip mid-career students with the tools, perspectives, and frameworks for executing high-impact strategy within mission-driven organizations. Course topics are organized around four themes: 1) cultivating purposeful leadership, 2) analyzing conditions to build a theory of change, 3) mobilizing commitment to change, and 4) achieving change. Within this four-part model we will explore conceptual frameworks for understanding high impact organizations and the role of strategic leadership, analytical tools for developing and assessing strategy, approaches to working with stakeholders to mobilize commitment, and methods for leading change.
This course will help students understand the nuances, complexities and challenges of leading the delivery of services for a public purpose. Through the use of case studies, students will view challenges from the point of view of how various leaders (the President of the MTA in NYC; the Chair of the EEOC; the Mayor of Indianapolis; the Assistant Director of Airport Security at Logan Airport) have handled the optimization of service delivery in an environment where demand from the public is increasing and resources are scarce. The course will introduce key concepts, issues, strategies and analytical methods to prepare students for a leadership role in delivering services to the public.
Specifically, the course is designed to enable students to:
• Gain insight into the dynamics of leading service delivery, with practical lessons that can be readily applied;
• Understand theories of organizational processes and how they apply to the delivery of services to the public;
• Lead issues related to waiting for the provision of public services;
• Become familiar with the opportunities and pitfalls of privatizing public services;
• Understand how positioning the consumers of public services as customers has the potential to increase accountability;
• Learn basic concepts of supply chain management and how they apply to the provision of public services
What does it mean to lead? This course is an exploration of the ideas and theories developed at Harvard University by Ron Heifetz and Marty Linsky over the last 30 years about the work of leaders in mobilizing groups to act to solve complex and seemingly intractable problems. We will contrast Heifetz and Linsky’s notion of leadership with the more traditional theories of leadership.
In this course, students will: (1) learn how to distinguish technical challenges from adaptive ones; (2) understand group dynamics and work avoidance when it comes to facing adaptive challenges; (3) the tactics of adaptive leadership, including pacing, forging partnerships, acting politically and distinguishing between the view from the 'balcony' and the 'dance floor'; and (4) the risks to those who take on adaptive leadership challenges.
After taking the course, students will have a stronger sense of their own opportunity to lead, regardless of the formal authority that they may or may not possess. The Practice of Adaptive Leadership will equip students with both a better understanding of how to approach threats that have resisted past attempts at resolution and a set of practical tools that they can employ in tackling those threats.
What does it mean to lead? This course is an exploration of the ideas and theories developed at Harvard University by Ron Heifetz and Marty Linsky over the last 30 years about the work of leaders in mobilizing groups to act to solve complex and seemingly intractable problems. We will contrast Heifetz and Linsky’s notion of leadership with the more traditional theories of leadership.
In this course, students will: (1) learn how to distinguish technical challenges from adaptive ones; (2) understand group dynamics and work avoidance when it comes to facing adaptive challenges; (3) the tactics of adaptive leadership, including pacing, forging partnerships, acting politically and distinguishing between the view from the 'balcony' and the 'dance floor'; and (4) the risks to those who take on adaptive leadership challenges.
After taking the course, students will have a stronger sense of their own opportunity to lead, regardless of the formal authority that they may or may not possess. The Practice of Adaptive Leadership will equip students with both a better understanding of how to approach threats that have resisted past attempts at resolution and a set of practical tools that they can employ in tackling those threats.