Jenifer Mackby is a Consultant at the National Academy of Scientists and the InterAcademy Partnership, where she is co-director of a project on a Biological Weapons Convention Scientific Advisory Body. She is also a Non-Resident Executive Fellow at the Geneva Centre for Security Policy, and a Senior Advisor at the Partnership for a Secure America. Previously, she was a Fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Senior Fellow at the Federation of American Scientists, and a Senior Political Affairs Officer at the United Nations. She has led projects on U.S.-U.K. Nuclear Cooperation, Asian Trilateral Nuclear Dialogues, Debating 21st Century Nuclear Issues, and a Russian-European project on bioterrorism, among others. She served as Secretary of the negotiations on the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT), the Working Group on Verification of the CTBT Organization Preparatory Commission, a Review Conference of the Biological Weapons Convention, a UN Conference on Outer Space, and the Environmental Modification Convention Review Conference.

Ms. Mackby was selected as Rapporteur for numerous international meetings, including the OSCE, European Commission Interparliamentary Conference, Wilton Park, and a study on Strengthening the IAEA. She has written extensively on international security and non-proliferation and co-authored or contributed to eight books, including: The Nuclear Tipping Point: Why States Reconsider their Nuclear Choice; Detect and Deter: Can Countries Verify the Nuclear Test Ban?; The Final Test; Global Biosecurity: Towards a New Governance Paradigm. She has written articles for theNew York Times, Newsweek, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, The Nonproliferation Review, Arms Control Today, and other journals. She is fluent in French and Spanish, and has spoken on the above subjects at meetings in Austria, Canada, Chile, China, Japan, Jordan, the Netherlands, Qatar, South Korea, Switzerland, the U.K., and the U.S.

Mary (¨Mara¨) J. Waller (Ph.D., Univ. of Texas at Austin; MS, Univ. of Colorado - Denver; BBA, Univ. of Oklahoma - Norman) is Senior Research Scholar at the Department of Management, Colorado State University, past Senior Fellow at the U.S. Army Research Institute for Behavioral & Social Sciences, Professor Emerita at York University (Canada), and the 2024 INGRoup McGrath Award recipient for lifetime achievement in the study of groups. Her program of research centers on improving our understanding of team effectiveness during crises and critical situations.

"Crisis-Ready Teams: Data-Driven Lessons from Aviation, Nuclear Power, Emergency Medicine, and Mine Rescue” coauthored with Seth Kaplan. Published by Stanford Business Books (2024).

Have you ever wondered how feeling powerless can impact your behavior? It turns out that although we more often study those with high power—or those we think have high power, such as leaders—there’s a lot we do know about the effects of low power. In particular, a growing body of research suggests caution is warranted: powerlessness changes people’s behaviors in a variety of undesirable ways, such as telling self-promotional lies, competing covertly, justifying a flawed organizational system, and failing to leverage one’s BATNA in negotiations. However, relative power and status differences are ever-present, so it’s important that we learn how to manage and mitigate these downsides of low power. Listen to this episode for some fascinating and thought-provoking recent work on the realities we are likely to face in experiencing and being a part of situations that involve power differences between people, and how you can more effectively manage yourself in these situations.

Dr. Jessica Li bio:

Huisi (Jessica) Li is an Assistant Professor of Management and Organization at the University of Washington. Li’s research on the corruptive and undesirable effects of lacking power complements established findings on the corruptive nature of power itself. She also examines how power and status hierarchies impact team performance, especially within diverse and dynamic teams. Li employs diverse methodologies, including field surveys, experiments, archival data, and qualitative methods. Her work has been published in top journals, including Organization Science, Journal of Applied Psychology, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, and Research in Organizational Behavior. She has collaborated with organizations like the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, Darden, etc. She serves on the editorial boards of Organization Science and Management and Organization Review and as a rep-at-large for the Conflict Management Division of the Academy of Management.

Articles referenced in the episode:

• Zhong, Y & Li, H. (2023) Do Lower-Power Individuals Really Compete Less? An investigation of Covert Competition. Organization Science. https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2023.1684
• Li, H., Wang, X., Williams, M, Chen., Y.-R., & Brockner, J. (2023) My Boss is Younger, Less Educated, and Shorter Tenured: When and Why Status (In)congruence Influences Promotion System Justification. Journal of Applied Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1037/apl0001086
• Li, H., Chen, Y.-R., & Hildreth, J. A (2022). Powerlessness also Corrupts: Lower Power Increases Self-Promotional Lying. Organization Science. ttps://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2022.1630