Richard Callahan, Ph.D
Dr. Richard Callahan is full-time faculty, as a tenured Professor at the University of San Francisco. He is also a Principal and Partner in TAP International, a consulting firm for training, analytics and program evaluation. His presentations, research, teaching, and consulting focus on strategies and leadership behaviors that are effective in complex, demanding, and dynamic environments in the public and nonprofit sectors, particularly at the state level of government. He has also had leadership positions in government operations and policy in city and county government. He is currently the lead consultant for the Milbank Fund’s national Emerging Leaders Program for state legislators and executive staff in health policy and population health from over 42 states since 2016 and also is a consultant for the National Association of Medicaid Directors
Dr. Callahan is an elected Fellow and on the Board of Directors of the National Academy of Public Administration (NAPA). He currently co-chairs a NAPA working group studying the intergovernmental dimensions of homelessness responses. He previously chaired co-chaired a NAPA Working group on the intergovernmental dimensions of the COVID-19 response. He recently completed serving as Editor-in Chief for six years of the International Journal of Public Leadership, published by Emerald Publications, United Kingdom.
He has designed, and delivered leadership programs for elected and appointed officials in state and local government and nonprofit programs for over 25 years, Internationally, he has lectured by invitation in Nepal, Mexico, Turkey, Vietnam, Madagascar, and the United Kingdom.
. He worked closely with over 300 community and government leaders as co-director of the Sierra Health Foundation Leadership Program for 15 years. Callahan was co-designer and co-director, as well as faculty for the University of Southern California’s Executive Master of Leadership degree. He directed and designed leadership programs for legislative staff for the National Conference of State Legislatures, state executives for the California State Government Leadership Institute, and the California Institute of Mental Health. He was Associate Dean and Director of the University of Southern California’s Sacramento Public Affairs Center from 1998-2011. He has served at the University of San Francisco on the USF Board of Trustees, as well as Director of the Master of Public Administration, the Co-Director of the Master of Public Health at the Sacramento Campus, and Academic Director of the Master of Public Leadership, USF Washington, D.C. campus.
He has co-authored most recently an essay and a book chapter on positive public administration, as well as author of more than 40 peer review articles, journal articles, book chapters, and reports. He was the Visiting Scholar 2017-18 for the Center for California Studies at CSU, Sacramento; Keynote speaker for the U.S. Air Force 2009 annual Academy Faculty Award Ceremony; Keynote Speaker for the Symposium on Leadership and Policy, 2019, in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam; and Fulbright Specialist Fellow in 2011 at Istanbul Aydin University, Turkey and visiting researcher at Oxford University, 2016. He is a graduate of Georgetown University. He also attended Tenri University, Japan. His master and doctorate degree are from the University of Southern California.