Co-founder of Pixar to headline Willow Creek Leadership Summit

The co-founder of Pixar, a Harvard Law professor and the youngest tenured professor at the Wharton School are among the “teachers” at the Global Leadership Summit starting Thursday at Willow Creek Community Church in South Barrington.

Nearly 8,500 people will be on the Willow Creek campus on Thursday for the 21st annual summit. Another 102,000 will watch the summit on big screens at 449 locations around the country, said Steve Bell, executive vice president of the Willow Creek Association.

And in the coming months it will be shown to 150,000 people around the world once the summit is translated into the native languages of 123 countries, Bell added.

“We are taking the lessons to places that don't usually get leadership development,” Bell said. “You don't get communicators like top business and academic leaders to go to Uganda or Myanmar, it just isn't economically feasible.”

Among the summit's speakers this year will be Ed Catmull, the president of Walt Disney and Pixar Animation Studios; Harvard Law professor and author Sheila Heen; and Adam Grant, an author and, at 33, the youngest tenured professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

Bell said his research team gets information on hundreds of speakers every year to make sure they are inviting the best communicators on leadership in the country.

Each year Willow Creek Senior Pastor Bill Hybels, who's also an annual speaker here, interviews one of the featured speakers on stage. These have included Bill Clinton, Colin Powell and Bono.

This year, the subject is Catmull, who recently wrote a book called “Creativity Inc.” about the beginnings of Pixar, which he co-founded with John Lasseter and Steve Jobs in 1986, and the ideals that have led to the studio's success.

“Bill was so taken by the book that he's asked all of his staff at Willow Creek to read it,” Bell said. “They've been going through it together chapter by chapter.”

More than a year of preparation go into each Global Leadership Summit. Bell said he and his team will often fly out to meet and work with the speakers on what they are going to say at the summit.

Bell said they are guided by the thought that if every leader got 5 percent better every year what a better place the world would be.

“Every leader is responsible for his or her own leadership development,” Bell said. “We've found something about that consistent injection of leadership fuel year after year that makes them better and better.”

The summit runs through Friday afternoon. For details, visit www.willowcreek.com/events/leadership/.