Our Leadership
Bruce Babashan
CEO: LeaderBridge.
Bruce is a visionary and veteran in the executive search industry, as well as an athlete and coach.
A former senior leader at one of the five-largest senior-level executive search firms in the country, Bruce brings extensive experience in a range of CEO issues, including: management, sales, recruitment, retention, training, operations, strategy, Web business and dispute resolution.
Bruce’s executive search practice has primarily focused on “C” level and “impact” positions. His client organizations have spanned a wide spectrum of industries, including: media, venture capital, real-estate, technology, professional services, telecom, financial services, gaming, hospitality, sports, entertainment, software and consumer packaged goods.
A recognized industry leader, Bruce has been quoted in various media, including: Variety Magazine, The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Business Journal. He also carried out CEO assignments for high-profile clients, such as Hollywood actor/producer Danny Devito and Las Vegas developer Steve Winn.
Bruce is a former radio show host and popular speaker, frequently addressing national audiences, on topics such as personal leadership, team-building, corporate excellence and success.
A competitive athlete, Bruce is a former champion bodybuilder, amateur boxer, and training camp sparring partner for boxing professionals. He is a certified USA Boxing Coach and the current coach for the Georgetown University Boxing Team (NCBA).
Lee Stillwell
Managing Director: Global Life Sciences Practice- Healthcare, Healthcare Services, Medical Technologies, Pharmaceuticals and Biotechnology.
Other areas - Public Affairs, Not-for-profit, Associations and Foundations, Media and Communications, Legislative and Governmental Affairs.
Managing Director: Global Life Sciences Practice - Health Care, Health Care Services, Medical Technologies, Pharmaceuticals and Biotechnology.
Other areas - Public Affairs, Not-for-Profit Associations and Foundations, Media and Communications, Legislative and Governmental Affairs.
Lee Stillwell is one of the most influential leaders in the Life Sciences industry today. For more than 18 years Lee served as chief lobbyist for the American Medical Association. Lee, as senior vice president of the AMA Advocacy group, managed a staff of more than 120 employees in Chicago and Washington, D.C. with an annual budget of $22 million.
At the AMA , Lee’s duties also included research and policy initiatives and coordination with all of organized medicine and other life sciences areas. He also spearheaded development of an elite unit to monitor the private health care marketplace.
As founder and CEO of The Stillwell Group, a full-service global public affairs company with a strong life sciences practice, Lee’s connections to leaders in these areas have grown and his reputation enhanced. His commitment and expertise to these areas has led to his involvement as a member of a national health-related board and also appointment as chair of a global health policy think tank.
His devotion and experience will help clients in the life sciences areas to meet the challenges that lie ahead.
Greg E. Walcher
Managing Director: Global Energy and Natural Resources Practice - Oil and gas, emerging technologies, utilities, agriculture, water, public lands, mining land development.
Other areas - Not-for-profit associations, foundations, academics, retail, legislative and governmental affairs.
Greg Walcher is one of the most recognized and respected national leaders in natural resources policy.
He serves as Managing Director for Global Energy and Natural Resources at LeaderBridge, is a senior associate in the global public affairs firm, The Stillwell Group, and in the respected environmental permitting firm of Dawson and Associates. He brings to his clients a lifetime of experience, institutional knowledge, contacts, and advocacy on natural resources and environmental policy and issues. He specializes in energy, water, endangered species and wildlife, forest management, public lands and private property rights.
Walcher served in the Governor’s Cabinet, leading the Colorado Department of Natural Resources, a department of 2500 employees, 8 divisions, 14 boards and commissions, and a $180 million budget.
His national colleagues elected him president of the national organization of natural resources/environment cabinet secretaries, and he has been a national leader in conservation policy debates.
Leveraging a decade of Capitol Hill experience, Walcher spent ten years as President and CEO of a large non-profit association whose budget and membership tripled during his tenure. He also served on the national policy committee for the American Society of Association Executives.
Walcher was the 2004 Republican nominee for Congress in Colorado’s 3rd District, a race that attracted national media attention as the top targeted House race in America (over $8 million). He won a hotly-contested five-way primary and shattered previous Colorado records for congressional fund raising and organization. Despite a razor-thin loss, Walcher remains a frequent and popular speaker in the State and around the country. He is the author of Backlash: the Theft (and Pending Recovery) of the Conservation Movement, slated for publication in 2009.
Natural resource issues are also personal to Walcher, who owns a peach orchard, direct marketing and fresh fruit shipping business with customers in over 40 states. The company was featured in Gourmet magazine as a cutting-edge example of quality niche marketing.
Al Angulo
Managing Director: Latin America
Practice focus - International banking and finance.
Al Angulo brings international expertise to LeaderBridge. He started life in Madrid Spain and has been “at home” in Paris, Caracas, Mexico City, Rye, NY, Philadelphia, Houston and currently Washington, DC.
His career spans four and a half decades of work on a global basis, from international banking and project finance, corporate treasury and international marketing to public service in Washington and Latin America. He has just retired from nearly two decades of public service where he served as the Regional Director for Latin America and the Caribbean at the U.S. Trade and Development Agency (TDA). In that position, he was instrumental in creating over $100 million in grants for infrastructure development in Latin America which have led to the creation of nearly half a million jobs in the region.
At the March 2006 Latin American Leadership Forum, his work was recognized through the Lifetime Achievement Award which he received before a standing ovation of over 400 Latin American experts. He is the first TDA official to have been so honored.
His familiarity with the official U.S. trade promotion agencies (Ex-Im Bank, OPIC, USTDA, AID, etc.), multilateral finance institutions (World Bank Group, Inter-American Development Bank Group [IDB], Andean Development Corporation [CAF] enable his clients to get to the issues that matter in an effective and expeditious manner. He knows how business is conducted in Latin America and can help clients get to the deal quickly and with positive results.
He is often referred to as “Mr. Latin America.”
Thomas D. Quinn
Managing Director: Global Security Practice - Homeland and Corporate Security
Thomas D. Quinn was appointed as the Director of the U.S. Federal Air Marshal Service, Department of Homeland Security in January 2002, shortly after the tragic events of 9/11, and retired in February 2006. Formerly, the President of Quinn & Associates, Inc., an international protective security and training firm, and a retired U.S. Secret Service official.
Director Quinn was responsible for the unprecedented standup of today’s Federal Air Marshal Service, where he worked closely with the administration, the congress, and the aviation industry to create a federal law enforcement organization to counter terrorism in the aviation and transportation domain.
Mr. Quinn began his law enforcement career as a Special Agent with the U.S. Secret Service in 1969 and served in a variety of management and executive positions until his retirement in 1989. Mr. Quinn served as an Inspector; the Overall Coordinator for the Democratic and Republican National Conventions in 1988; the Special Agent in Charge of Protective Operations; the Assistant Special Agent in Charge of Presidential Protective Division; and as the Deputy Assistant Director for the Office of Training. Additionally, he was the principal liaison for the Secret Service with the Military Counter-Terrorist Units of the United States and the United Kingdom for over 10 years.
Mr. Quinn holds a Bachelor of Science Degree in Business Administration from the University of Maryland and is a graduate of the National War College, National Defense University. He is a recipient of the Department of Transportation 9-11 Medal for meritorious service in the aftermath of the events of 9-11 and the Air Line Pilots Association Bravo Zulu 2005 National Security Award for his significant contributions to airline security.
Mr. Quinn is a member of the International Association of Chiefs of Police, the National War College Alumni Association, and the U.S. Special Operations Warrior Foundation Board of Directors. Currently, Mr. Quinn serves as the Vice Chairman of the Board of Datamaxx Group.
Rick Milter
Chief Learning Officer and Program Designer: High Performance Teaming
Rick Milter, Ph.D. is professor of management at the Carey Business School of Johns Hopkins University. Rick has held previous teaching positions at Ohio University, Boston College, Universiti Teknologi MARA (Shah Alam, Malaysia), the University at Albany, Loyola University of Chicago, and Janus Pannonius University (Pecs, Hungary). His personal management experiences include positions in the construction, retail, education, housing, and consulting industries.
Rick has worked with faculty teams in several institutions around the globe in developing inquiry based, action learning, and project-based leadership development programs. He has also delivered keynote presentations, seminar courses, symposia, and workshops on educational strategies and action learning across the US, Asia, Russia, and Europe. Serving as a training facilitator or organization effectiveness specialist, Rick has consulted with dozens of corporations and government agencies. He has directed executive development seminars across the U.S., Europe, and Asia. His research and publications have paralleled his consulting activity in the areas of executive judgment, strategy, group decision-making processes, management information systems, negotiation strategies, managerial ethics, leadership, high performance teaming, and innovative learning platforms. Rick co-designed and served as director for a project-based action learning MBA program that achieved award recognition for “best practice” by the International Association for Management Education (AACSB) and “creative excellence” by the University Continuing Education Association (UCEA). He is currently a lead developer on a national program to create learning models to develop team leadership skills for professionals in healthcare information technology.
Past chairman of EDiNEB, an international network of business education innovators, Rick currently serves as associate editor of the Springer Publishing series Advances in Business Education and Training, and serves on the editorial boards of the Information Age Publishing series Research in Management Education and Development and the Springer Verlag Publishing series Innovation and Change in Professional Education.
Richard L Schaeffer:
Managing Director: High Performance Team Training Services
For more than 30 years Richard (Rick) L. Schaeffer has been a leader in the fields of business, government, education, sports and entertainment.
Currently, Mr. Schaeffer teaches in the Johns Hopkins University Carey School of Business MBA Fellows Program.His areas of concentration are leadership and high performance teaming, public policy, critical thinking, persuasive writing, and negotiations. He has previously lectured at the University of Pennsylvania, George Washington University, University of Maryland School of Law and the Smithsonian Institution.
Prior to teaching at Johns Hopkins, Rick accepted Governor Robert L. Ehrlich’s invitation to join his administration as the Managing Director of Film, Television and Sports for the state of Maryland in its Department of Business and Economic Development. In that capacity, he took the point on successfully enacting legislation to provide monetary incentives for film and television companies to shoot in Maryland.He also negotiated, produced and/or hosted events including: The Miss USA Pageant (co-owned by Donald Trump), the Volvo Round the World Ocean Race, PGA and LPGA golf events.In addition, he hosted visiting dignitaries from China who were on a fact finding mission in the tourism industry.
Mr. Schaeffer has long been active in international relations.In 1990 he was a member of a peace delegation comprised of, among others, former presidential candidate John Anderson, former US Senators and Congressmen, and members of Canadian Parliament.The group, comprised of Christians, Moslems and Jews, all dedicated to a two state solution, met with President Hafez el Assad in Syria, Foreign Minister Boutros Boutros Ghali in Egypt, King Hussein of Jordan, Shimon Peres in Israel and after returning to Washington, DC, Yasser Arafat and the widow of and the widow of Yitzhak Rabin.
In 1995 Rick conceived the concept of reciprocal games between a Major League Baseball team and the Cuban National Team as a mechanism to improve bilateral relations. He joined forces with Scott Armstrong (nationally recognized journalist and former partner of Bob Woodward) to bring the idea to Peter Angelos, owner of the Baltimore Orioles. In the ensuing years they worked with National Security Advisors Anthony Lake and Sandy Berger, the US departments of State and Treasury, the Cuban Foreign Minister at the Cuban Interests Section, INDER (the Cuban Sports Ministry), Major League Baseball, the Major League Baseball Players Association, NBC television and Cuban radio and television. The four year effort culminated in games in Havana in March of 1999 and in Baltimore two month later.
In 2000 Rick returned to Cuba with World Team Sports and a group of outstanding physically challenged and able-bodied athletes who competed in the Havana Marathon. To this end, Mr. Schaeffer arranged introductions to Cuban Officials, helped WTS obtain a license and organized activities in Cuba.
Rick had previously served as a Registered Foreign Agent for the Mexican government under President Jose Lopez Portillo to whom he drafted monthly reports. In that capacity, he worked on Capitol Hill and White House executive agencies under Presidents Ford and Carter on issues ranging from a prisoner exchange to agricultural imports, temporary worker visas, and border and drug enforcement issues. This activity led to his representation of the Mexican Cattleman’s Association before the International Trade Commission in regard to cattle and beef imports.
Soon after Poland’s conversion from Communism, Mr. Schaeffer traveled there to represent a number of parties with various agendas that included financing and build a new soccer stadium, beer and soft drink breweries, and confection manufacturing facilities. In that regard he meant with federal and local officials, union leaders and entrepreneurs.
Much of Rick’s career has focused on negotiated transactions. Among his clients is RDP, Inc of Seattle, Washington. Its majority shareholder is Roger D. Percy, the son of Senator Charles Percy and the brother-in-law of Senator Jay Rockefeller. RDP invented and patented a technology that measured outdoor advertising via GPS. In a two year negotiation, Mr. Schaeffer obtained a contract with Nielsen, the television ratings company that was then owned by the Dutch multinational VNU.
Rick has also worked extensively in the field of professional sports. He negotiated with Donald Trump on behalf of football player Herschel Walker what was, at the time the most lucrative contract in the history of the sport.
In 1991, Rick was appointed Counsel for the U.S. Olympic Gymnastics Trials, which was held in Baltimore in June of 1992. The Trials selected the team that competed in Barcelona on behalf of the United States. In this capacity, he negotiated with sponsors (including, among others, the U.S. Post Office), licensees, vendors, and providers of hotel accommodations, food and other services, as well as the Baltimore Arena, which housed the event, and NBC, which carried the event on its national broadcast. He was also Counsel for the U.S. Olympic Whitewater Canoe and Kayak Trials held on the Savage River, in Western Maryland in May 1992. Rick was a founder and General Counsel for the Maryland Sports Corporation, which brought other events to the state including Professional Beach Volleyball. Rick helped create the coalition between Baltimore and Washington in their effort to become the U.S. candidate city to host the 2012 Summer Olympic Games.
Prior to forming his own company, he worked for two firms regarded as world leaders in the sports management field - International Management Group (IMG), and ProServ, and served as counsel for the National Football League Players Association (NFLPA), recognized as the most active sports labor organization in the country.
But, perhaps Mr. Schaeffer’s most remarkable sports related achievement began with a tragedy. In a game on November 29, 1992, Rick’s client Dennis Byrd, a football player with the New York Jets, sustained a career ending injury, which left him paralyzed. Rick spent the following weeks consulting doctors and assisting Dennis’ family to obtain the best possible care. As is now well known, Dennis made a miraculous recovery. Rick then undertook two primary tasks, creating financial stability for Dennis, despite his truncated career, and employing the tragedy to touch and inspire as many people as possible. To that end, Rick implemented a media strategy that led to major television segments with Bob Costas (live from the Super Bowl), Tom Brokaw (”NBC Nightly News” and “The Today Show”), and Diane Sawyer (ABC’s “Prime Time Live”). This publicity laid the groundwork for Rick to negotiate a book deal with HarperCollins. For Rise & Walk. The Trial and Triumph of Dennis Byrd. Mr. Byrd received the highest advance ever paid an athlete for a book. Rick then sold the movie rights to the FOX TV network and personally Executive Produced the movie. Rick then negotiated a series of high profile speaking engagements, as well as a contract for Dennis, as an NFL color commentator for CBS. He also negotiated a remarkable settlement with the Leon Hess owner of the New York Jets and the Amerada Hess Corporation. Rick continues to work for Dennis in regard to pension and worker’s compensation. Rick helped found The Dennis Byrd Foundation and works closely with Dennis in achieving the goal of constructing and operating a summer camp facility for disabled children.
Rick has remained active in the movie and television business including co-writing a number of screenplays. He has partnered with well known actors such as Nick Nolte and Mike Farrell in regard to various projects. He also studied screenwriting with the renowned Robert McKee. That led to his study of the works of Joseph Campbell who traced the universal nature of storytelling. Mr. Schaeffer has taken this full circle by teaching storytelling and the power of the narrative to improve business communications.
Mr. Schaeffer’s volunteer activities include:
Lawyer’s Committee Against Apartheid
Co-Founder Black/Jewish Young Leadership Group
Delegate- at-large Baltimore Jewish Council
Board Member World Team Sports