Bob Stone is an internationally known author and speaker on leading change and on ethical leadership.

He was born and raised in Delaware and earned bachelors and masters degrees in chemical engineering at MIT. He spent eleven years practicing engineering in the private sector, then went to the Pentagon, where he spent the next twelve years strengthening bureaucracy.

For his efforts he was promoted to Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Installations, where his re-education started. He saw super-smart managers at headquarters handcuffing —often inadvertently—top leaders in the field and at the front lines, and he saw how innovation and change were powerfully inhibited by central control. He saw how the systems of management at the center were even keeping front-line workers from getting the tools they needed to do their work.

He became a radical decentralizer and passionate advocate of excellence. He fought a guerilla battle to get authority in the hands of front line workers and, especially, base commanders. He was inspired and taught by the greatest military leader of the last 60 years, Air Force General Bill Creech.

Bob determined to battle the dysfunctional Pentagon bureaucracy and for the next twelve years moved forcefully (and sometimes sneakily) to weaken it. He radically decentralized authority, cut regulations, and started a quality revolution that improved military effectiveness while raising the standard of living for military men and women. He became recognized as one of the top public sector managers in America.

He then spent six years at the White House as Al Gore’s right-hand man in his campaign to spread customer service, empowerment, and trust throughout the U.S. government. This campaign to reinvent government was the most successful federal government reform ever.

He retired from Federal service in 1999 and started his next career writing, teaching, and consulting, His first book, Confessions of a Civil Servant: Lessons in Changing America's Government and Military, told the stories of what he learned in thirty years of trying, often successfully, sometimes not, to change the huge organizations that are the Defense Department and the entire U. S. Government.

Tom Peters wrote a cool foreword, in which he calls it "the best text ever on making it in government, and maybe the best text ever on large-scale organization change. Anywhere." It’s also been praised by leaders in government, politics, the military, and business, and has been used as a textbook at Harvard’s Kennedy School, SUNY-Albany, Washington State University, and at the Universities of Texas , Southern California, and Montana.

Bob served on the board of the Ukleja Center for Ethical Leadership at Cal State University, Long Beach, and co-authored with Mick Ukleja a second book, The Ethics Challenge: Strengthening Your Integrity in a Greedy World. This breezy, story-filled guide to becoming a more ethical person explains why ethical behavior is a winning strategy, then lays out six things everyone can do to keep strong and to follow their good intentions. It has been widely praised, including by Ken Blanchard, Gov. George Deukmejian, Philip Howard, and heads of Mattel, Ernst and Young, and the U. S. Chamber of Commerce.

He taught business ethics at the University of Redlands for five years, and spent four years (at $1 per year, or two cents per pay period, direct deposited to his checking account) in the office of Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti. He found the L.A. city bureaucracy tougher to crack that the Federal government, but struggled to a few wins against it. His biggest contribution to Los Angeles government was designing and conducting the city’s official ethics training for about 700 new supervisors.

Bob has lectured at dozens of universities, and advised or taught national and local government executives all over the US and in Europe and the Middle East.

He and his wife, Roxane Stern live in Los Angeles, near their four children and seven grandchildren.

He still practices revolution by storytelling.