January 5, 2024
Colloquium Topic: 2020’s – Will This Be The Defining Decade of the 21st Century?
Do you ever get to the end of your week and feel completely ‘full’? Do you ever crave a slower-paced world? Do you ever wonder if we as a society can ‘keep up’ with the pace of change we all see and feel going on all around us? I believe there are examples throughout human history where our capacity for ‘being’ and for ‘keeping up’ have been tested, and in most cases, there were technological advances that allowed humanity to not only keep up but to rise to a new level of performance and productivity. I believe we are at one of those inflection points today. In this upcoming discussion, I will lay out some historical examples of how technology has allowed us to ‘keep up’ and what I see as some key technologies that will if we get it right, allow us to advance to a new level as a society in the 21st century. But as we know, nothing is assured and today, there are several forces arrayed against us – from climate change to geopolitical forces that are not aligned with our democratic and free market ideals to the continued rapid acceleration of technological change. Join us on 5 January for a rich discussion!
Colloquium Speaker: Lorin Selby
Rear Admiral Lorin Selby, USN (ret), is an accomplished senior executive whose service is highly respected as a gifted and well-rounded leader, a submarine officer, an acquisition professional, a nuclear engineer, and one of the most technically talented executives and innovators in the Navy. Throughout his service, Lorin’s expertise has been consistently sought to solve many of the most complex and challenging problems the Navy and USMC face, particularly when non-linear, innovative, critical thinking is called for. He has generated success after success, breaking the mold, using his unique trouble-shooting skills and superb communications to drive toward solutions. He is adept at developing cohesive and collaborative partnerships within and outside of an organization while applying executive leadership and business acumen to create and execute an enterprise vision, strategy, and tactics. A driver of change, Lorin draws on a superb record of success in Navy leadership roles and superb interpersonal and communication skills to build resilient, high-performing teams whose actions are directed by a strong sense of values and ethical behavior.
Lorin served as the Navy’s Chief of Naval Research until the summer of 2023. In that role, he led a distributed team of 3800 personnel and developed leading-edge technologies for the Navy and Marine Corps, overseeing a $4B budget. A stand-out achievement in this role was his massive overhaul of STEM outreach by adopting social media, virtual engagements, and a video series featuring diverse scientists and engineers, demonstrating his skill as a public speaker and strategic communicator.
Lorin served in several high-profile positions throughout his career, achieving significant impacts as a Navy leader. Notably, he was the first non-Engineering Duty Officer selected as the Chief Engineer of the Navy, brought in to drive innovation, optimize performance, and generate new ways of doing business. He excelled as Commander, Naval Surface Warfare Centers, again the first submarine officer assigned to a surface warfare R&D hub, again for the same reasons. His command at sea was USS GREENEVILLE (SSN 772); he also served ashore in high-visibility roles such as Deputy Director, Navy Office of Legislative Affairs, U.S. House of Representatives.
Lorin is known for his ability to work through chaos to redefine problems, develop unique executable solutions, build high-performing teams, build and leverage coalitions to implement change, and deliver the leadership and management experience to realize the vision and create an executable strategy.
Lorin holds a B.S. in Nuclear Engineering from the University of Virginia, an M.S. in Nuclear Engineering and Nuclear Engineer Degree from MIT, and has completed extensive executive business coursework. His achievements have been recognized by numerous personal and unit awards.