Why an Executive Coaching Practice for Jesuit Higher Education?

All presidents and executives have challenges. Not enough time – for reflection, for planning, for self-care, for family, and the list goes on. Many presidents and executives do not know how to ask for help. Many presidents and executives desire to grow and enhance their leadership, deepening areas of strength or developing an area where they have blind spots or less experience or competence. Most presidents and executives want better results and maximum performance from themselves, their teams and for their institutions.

Pressures are mounting. Presidential tenures are shortening. Fewer leaders are aspiring to institutional leadership and the presidency. Executive coaching is a powerful process for current and aspiring presidents and executives to make sense of and traverse the important and difficult work of leading colleges and universities. 

LaStorta Leadership Group was established to support presidential and executive colleagues in their well-being and leadership of Jesuit colleges and universities. 

In addition to coaching over 100 higher education leaders, I have had an executive coach or spiritual director for the majority of my administrative and presidential career. They helped me grow, create space for reflection, plan, maintain perspective during difficult times, boost my confidence in times of uncertainty, and served as neutral and detached thought partners on knotty issues.

As a product of Jesuit higher education, there are few, if any, institutions as grounded in mission and identity and committed to the human experience than Jesuit colleges and universities. Jesuit colleges and universities have a unique clarity of the values that advance and animate the missions of these distinctive institutions: 

Magis | Cura Personalis | Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam | Finding God in All Things | Faith that Does Justice | Women and Men For and With Others | Reflection and Discernment | Unity of Mind and Heart 

Ensuring and preparing an executive pipeline for Jesuit colleges and universities is imperative. Also imperative is supporting and sustaining current presidents and executives in Jesuit colleges and universities.

The Origin of LaStorta

LaStorta Leadership Group is named after a small rural town about eighteen miles northwest of Rome, Italy. La Storta has practical, physical, symbolic and spiritual meaning. The road from La Storta to Rome is well-known for its curves, twists and bends. In fact, “la storta” is an Italian word meaning twist, bend or curve. In exercising leadership, the road ahead, let alone the outcome, often is unknown and uncertain and full of unexpected twists and turns. 

The town of La Storta also is well-known as a place of vision and inspiration. Ignatius of Loyola, a 16th-Century nobleman from the Basque region of Spain, was an organizational and spiritual leader far ahead of his time. Ignatius was on a long and arduous journey with two companions to Rome in November, 1537. Before reaching Rome, these companions paused at a small church in the town of La Storta. It was here that Ignatius had a life-changing vision. His vision led to, among many things, the founding of the Society of Jesus, a practical and accessible spirituality for discernment and decision-making, and the establishment of some of the finest universities in the world.

LaStorta Leadership Group was founded in this spirit: to be a practical place of pause, inspiration and vision, and of action for Jesuit college and university presidents and executives.

About Steven Titus
Founder, LaStorta Leadership Group

Dr. Steven E. Titus is an executive coach and spiritual director serving presidents and senior leaders in colleges and universities. He is founder of the LaStorta Leadership Group, an executive coaching initiative serving Jesuit colleges and universities. Additionally, Steve currently is on sabbatical as Senior Fellow and Special Assistant in the Office of Mission and Ministry at Creighton University. He is a seasoned certified executive coach called to form, develop and companion conscious leaders, and he holds a particular concern for the interiority of leaders exercising leadership. 

An experienced higher education executive, Steve is President Emeritus of Iowa Wesleyan University and previously served as the 13th president of Midland University. Additionally, Steve has held executive roles at Saint Mary’s University of Minnesota, Pacific Lutheran University, and Gustavus Adolphus College.

Steve is past associate with the Center for Leadership Formation at Seattle University and he is co-creator and former co-director of the Thrivent Fellows Program (now LECNA Fellows), a national executive development program designed to identify and equip candidates of promise for executive roles in Lutheran agencies and institutions. Steve earlier served as a tenured professor of leadership studies and organizational behavior at Southwest Minnesota State University (SMSU) in Marshall, MN, where he founded and directed the leadership studies program and the Leadership Development Institute. 

Steve’s leadership philosophy is formed by Jesuit values, guided by the Catholic Intellectual Tradition, and inspired by Ignatian Spirituality. He values the development of the whole person, the cultivation of the human imagination, and the exploration of what it means to be fully human. He is guided by the complementary and interdependent relationship between faith and reason. And he is inspired by a deeply relational spirituality, grounded in generosity, gratitude and action, calling us forth to be women and men for and with others, and encouraging us to find God in all things. 

An attorney and commissioned officer, Steve served in the U.S. Army Judge Advocate General’s Corps from 1990-1995. He held several positions while on active duty, including legal advisor to the Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Army, labor and employment law attorney on the Department of the Army Staff at the Pentagon, and as civil law attorney and criminal trial defense counsel with the 3d Infantry Division in Wuerzburg, Germany during Operation Desert Storm. Steve was appointed by U.S. Secretary of the Army Louis Caldera to serve as Minnesota’s Civilian Aide to the Secretary of the Army (CASA) from 1999-2002, and he was awarded the United States Army Outstanding Civilian Service Medal in 2002. 

Steve holds the B.S. degree in business administration from Southwest Minnesota State University, the J.D. degree from Marquette University Law School, and the Ph.D. degree in higher education and strategic leadership from the University of Virginia, where he was a Governor's Fellow. He holds a certificate in Jesuit Studies from Boston College and is currently pursuing the M.A. degree in Christian Spirituality at Creighton University. Steve holds a diploma from the U.S. Army Judge Advocate General’s School and certificates from the Advanced Leadership Education Program at the Kennedy School of Government and the Institute for Educational Management at the Graduate School of Education at Harvard University. Steve is a certified practitioner of The Leadership Circle, a professionally certified executive coach through The Coaches Training Institute and the Center for Executive Coaching, a Gallup Certified Strengths Coach, a trained spiritual director through the Hesychia School of Spiritual Direction, and a member of the International Coach Federation, Spiritual Directors International, and the International Leadership Association.

Steve and his wife, Sara, have two daughters and live in Omaha, Nebraska.

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