A few months ago, we were honored that Gonzaga University in Spokane, Washington, named the week of October 13, 2025 "Chapman Leadership Week." That week, their School of Business Administration hosted the inaugural Chapman Lecture on Truly Human Leadership, named in honor of Barry-Wehmiller Chairman Bob Chapman.

It was the culmination of a partnership our outreach team has had with the university to bring the principles of Truly Human Leadership to their classrooms, as well as their training of educators and staff.

The speaker at this inaugural Chapman Lecture was, fittingly, Kyle Chapman, Barry-Wehmiller President and CEO and Bob's son.

Kyle used this opportunity to talk about how Barry-Wehmiller is changing the game of business by showing that economic and human vibrancy can exist in harmony. And he issued a challenge to these future leaders at Gonzaga to demand more from their future workplaces and join us in our goal of building a better world through business.

So on this podcast, we want you to hear Kyle's challenge at Gonzaga and give you the opportunity to join us as well.

In addition to this podcast, which you can watch the the link in the header image or through your favorite podcast host, you can watch a video summary of Chapman Leadership Week through the video below:

Over the years, we've talked about the Harvard Case Study that was written about Barry-Wehmiller in 2016. It's a best seller, taught in over 200 universities to more than 30,000 students.

On an earlier podcast, we talked to the authors of the case study, one of which is our guest today, Harvard Professor Jan Rivkin.

The earlier episode kind of dealt with the how and why the case study was written, but on this episode, we want to go a little deeper.

The Harvard Case Study of Barry-Wehmiller deals with layoffs, a subject that is very prominent in people's minds today. So, on today's episode, we talk with Professor Jan Rivkin about this issue and we also dive into the subject of business education and how leadership is taught and how students are thinking about leadership and how they react to the Barry-Wehmiller case study.

It's a wide-ranging discussion, but one that is very pertinent to many issues we are facing today.

Aaron Witt started his career as a kid who loved construction. But over the years, he's built something bigger than he could have ever envisioned to support the industry he loves.

Aaron is the founder of Build Witt. You can find out more about them at buildwitt.com and Aaron has his own website at aaron-witt.com. Build Witt is a company that creates microlearning software for the critical infrastructure industries, they operate the online community Connect and they host the Ariat Dirt World Summit. BW Chairman Bob Chapman was actually a speaker at the first Dirt World Summit.

Aaron invited Bob to speak after reading the original version of Bob's book, Everybody Matters: The Extraordinary Power of Caring for Your People Like Family. In fact, here's what Aaron had to say when he endorsed the recently released revised and expanded edition of the book:

"Discovering Everybody Matters as a 20-something business leader has saved me heartache and, more importantly, given me a roadmap to make an enormous difference in countless lives. This book is a MUST-READ for anyone leading people, especially up-and-coming leaders!"

Just as Barry-Wehmiller has shown that you can have Truly Human Leadership in the manufacturing industry, Aaron Witt wants to show that the same can exist in the construction and infrastructure industries and that it can also help those businesses flourish.

On this episode, we have a conversation with Aaron about how he is trying to make this happen.