Ed O’Malley is a noted author and is President/CEO of the Kansas Health Foundation.    (Wikipedia, LinkedIn)

Ed is visiting Australia in March 2026 - in his personal capacity - as part of his global contribution to community and health leadership. The information below is collated by Australia's Leading Progress initiative and provided for the background information of Australians engaging with Ed during his visit. Multi-modal summaries of three of Ed's key books are provided below; these summaries have been created by Leading Progress and are selected adaptions of Ed's work, tailored to an Australian context.

Ed O'Malley is Harvard-qualified in adaptive leadership – a close friend of Harvard’s Marty Linsky and Ronnie Heifetz - and is the author of multiple books, including Leading Health  (2025), When Everyone Leads (2023) and Your Leadership Edge (2022, 2nd edn)

Ed was the founding CEO of the Kansas Leadership Center in 2007.  KLC is a major system-wide community-based organisation encouraging leadership across all sectors and demographics, primarily focusing on the people of Kansas. 

Ed connected with Australia’s Richard Dent OAM - the founder of Leading Progress - in 2012 when he and Richard were attending Harvard and Richard had just commenced as CEO of Leadership Victoria.   

Ed first visited Australia in 2015 and has continually engaged with Australians for more than a decade. Ed’s “Your Leadership Edge” adaptive framework continues to be utilised by multiple Australian organisations including in Leadership Victoria’s noted Williamson Program.  

Ed is committed to community health and wellbeing.  He is a former state legislator, an Aide to the Governor, a father of three, a social entrepreneur, a leadership development expert, and has  chief executive experience building innovative organisations and mobilising networks and communities to bring about positive change.

Ed brings international health and community perspectives and a sense of genuine curiosity about shared learnings for Australian and worldwide issues.