Bestselling Author to Be Honored at New Student Convocation

Aug 10, 2009

Chris Lowney, award-winning author of Heroic Leadership: Best Practices from a 450-Year-Old Company that Changed the World, will receive an honorary degree from The University of Scranton on August 22.

Lowney will receive the honorary degree during a New Student Convocation for the Class of 2013 and their families being held in the Byron Complex at 4 p.m. The Convocation marks a symbolic beginning to the academic career of the incoming class. It will include addresses by Lowney and Rev. Scott R. Pilarz, S.J., president of the University, and the presentation of the class banner.

Formerly a Jesuit seminarian, Lowney was named a managing director of J.P. Morgan & Co. while still in his thirties, and held senior positions in New York, Tokyo, Singapore and London until leaving the firm in 2001. He served successively on Morgan's Asia-Pacific, Europe, and Investment Banking Management Committees.

His first book, Heroic Leadership, was the #1 ranked bestseller of the Catholic Book Publishers Association and was named a finalist for a 2003 Book of the Year Award from ForeWord magazine. It has been translated into ten languages, Lowney has presented its principles in numerous U.S. cities and in non-U.S. locations as diverse as Indonesia, Venezuela, the Philippines, Spain, and Chile.

His second book, A Vanished World: Medieval Spain’s Golden Age of Enlightenment was nominated for La Coronica award. Lowney appeared in the PBS-aired documentary, Cities of Light, which echoed many of the book’s key themes.

His just-published new book, Heroic Living: Discover Your Purpose and Change the World, is a life strategy that marries age-old spiritual wisdom to the modern management ideas. Incoming freshmen at The University of Scranton were required to read this book as their “freshman read” project and will participate in a discussion with the author during Fall Welcome Weekend.

In 2006, Lowney undertook a 500-mile walking pilgrimage, cut short by illness, to Santiago de Compostela to raise money for “Pilgrimage for Our Children’s Future,” a non-profit organization that provides education opportunities young children such as AIDS orphans in Nairobi slums and children raised in the shadow of the Philippines’ largest garbage dump.

He is a summa cum laude graduate of Fordham University, where he also received his M.A.  Lowney holds honorary Doctoral degrees from St. Louis University, Marymount Manhattan University and the University of Great Falls.

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