How One Leader Overcame Career-Ending Adversity

Cold Call

In the spring of 2021, Raymond Jefferson (MBA 2000) applied for a job in President Joseph Biden’s administration. Ten years earlier, false allegations had been used to force him to resign from his prior U.S. government position as assistant secretary of labor for veterans’ employment and training in the U.S. Department of Labor. Jefferson filed a federal lawsuit against the U.S. government to clear his name and used his entire life savings to pursue the case for eight years. Why, after such a traumatic and humiliating experience, would Jefferson want to work in government again?

Harvard Business School senior lecturer Anthony Mayo traces Jefferson’s personal and professional journey from upstate New York to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point and eventually to President Obama’s administration. Mayo also discusses how Jefferson faced adversity at several junctures in his life, and how resilience and vulnerability shaped his leadership style in the case, “Raymond Jefferson: Trial by Fire.”