LANE BALDWIN JOINS SPEARS CENTER BOARD

"Lane is multi-talented musician-business consultant-writer," said Spears. "I also greatly admire his work in founding Foodstock, a non-profit organization committed to ending hunger."

For twenty-seven years, Baldwin has pursued tandem careers as a professional musician and as a specialist in service-based business. He credits Spears as the person who inspired him to champion servant-leadership as his core philosophy.

"Larry has been an extremely important mentor," Baldwin said, "and an inspiration. I'm really looking forward to working more closely with him."

Many of today's top management specialists, including Stephen Covey (7 Habits of Highly Effective People), Ken Blanchard (Who Moved My Cheese?), Max DePree (Leadership is an Art), Peter Senge (The Fifth Discipline), and many others, are servant-leaders who credit Spears for his many years of work building the movement, introducing the concept to a far wider audience.

"For twenty years, Larry has been the central hub of the servant-leadership community," said Baldwin. "He's the servant that leaders follow."

After a year of on-going contact between Spears and Baldwin during a project for Men's Wearhouse (founder George Zimmer is a servant-leader), the two maintained e-mail and phone contact. Over the years, Spears has encouraged Baldwin to continue and expand his writing, eventually accepting an early essay for inclusion in the forthcoming book, The Spirit of Servant-Leadership (Paulist Press, Shann Ferch and Larry Spears, editors). Spears and Baldwin will be working on several other projects in the coming months.

"Larry has invited me to write essays for future editions in his series," said Baldwin, "and we want to do a book together. It's all an incredible opportunity to work with the pre-eminent leader in the field."

For his part, Spears is looking forward to having Lane on the board. "Lane Baldwin brings a wealth of knowledge and wisdom to The Spears Center. He is a welcomed addition to our Council of Equals (Board of Trustees)."

Based in Indianapolis, IN, the Spears Center is a non-profit organization that promotes servant-leadership as first espoused by Robert K. Greenleaf. Its mission is to create a more caring and serving world through the understanding and practice of servant-leadership. Larry Spears is an internationally-renowned writer, editor and speaker, with more than three hundred articles and a dozen books to his credit. For further information, see www.spearscenter.org.

In addition to maintaining a consulting practice - Servant-Leadership Solutions - Lane Baldwin is also VP, Sales & Relationships for David Nordschow Amplification, founded by music industry icon David Nordschow; VP, Sales & Outreach for The Learning Dock, a groundbreaking new educational company; and, Ambassador-at-Large for the Rick Turner Guitar Company. Baldwin is also the creator of the True Service method and the Write Yourself a Raise sales training system. His servant-led band Deeper Blues uses music to promote the healing power of the Blues and to serve their community, most notably through Danville Foodstock, of which Lane is founder and executive director. For further information, see www.lanebaldwin.com.