About Dr. Keith

Dr. Kent M. Keith is the President of Carlson Keith Corporation, a family company based in Honolulu (www.carlsonkeith.com). During his career, he has served as an attorney, Hawaii state government official, high tech park developer, YMCA executive, full-time author, and president of two universities—Chaminade University of Honolulu and Pacific Rim Christian University. From 2007 to 2012 he was CEO of the Greenleaf Center for Servant Leadership in the United States, and from 2012 to 2015 he was CEO of the Greenleaf Centre for Servant Leadership (Asia) in Singapore.  

Dr. Keith graduated from Roosevelt High School in Honolulu in 1966. He earned a B.A. from Harvard University, an M.A. from Oxford University in England, a Certificate in Japanese from Waseda University in Tokyo, a J.D. from the University of Hawaii, and an Ed.D. in higher education from the University of Southern California. He is a Rhodes Scholar.

Dr. Keith has given more than a thousand speeches and workshops in the United States and thirteen countries in Europe, Asia, and Africa. He has appeared on more than a hundred TV and radio programs in the United States, the United Kingdom, Japan, Korea, Australia, and Kenya. He is the author of the Paradoxical Commandments (www.paradoxicalcommandments.com), which have been used by millions of people all over the world, including Mother Teresa.

Dr. Keith is passionate about servant leadership. His publications include The Case for Servant Leadership (2008); Servant Leadership in the Boardroom (2011); Questions and Answers about Servant Leadership (2012), and The Christian Leader at Work: Serving by Leading (2015). He also served as the editor of The Contemporary Servant as Leader (2016). More than 250,000 copies of his ten books on the Paradoxical Commandments and servant leadership have been sold worldwide.