The cost of leadership

Leadership always has a cost. Leaders are often misunderstood, disliked, and attacked. For Black leaders in particular, these costs can be deeply personal, following them into their private lives. Last month, I highlighted the legacy of Dr. Flournoy Coles. Dr. Coles worked to improve access to capital and to increase the odds of success for Black entrepreneurs. As a founding faculty member of the fledging Owen School and Vanderbilt’s first tenured Black member, he created curriculum on economic development and helped bring Owen to life. He was also a leader in Nashville’s Black community, catalyzing opposition to the routing of I-40 interstate through the Black business district of Jefferson Street. His legacy is remembered today in Owen’s impact investment fund, managed by MBA students. My article on Dr. Coles's legacy received some wonderful alumni responses, and after hearing from many 1970s alumni who shared memories from that time, I dug deeper into Dr. Coles’s professional and personal life, soon learning that his leadership came at a significant cost.

After joining the new Vanderbilt Graduate School of Management (later named the Owen School) in 1969, Dr. Coles became part of a movement of change in business education. The new school was intentionally diverse from the beginning. The first class included women, Black Americans, and international students. The founding dean, Igor Ansoff, passionately articulated a vision to produce “effective managers of change” in a rapidly changing society. He argued that businesses should not only generate profits, but also help remediate societal challenges like poverty and racism. Dr. Coles’s record of scholarship, and his direct involvement in the change of the late 1960s, made him uniquely suited to help build Owen. He also had a passion for students—particularly diverse students who were trailblazers themselves. Edward D Alston, Jr. , a member of Owen’s first graduating class in 1971, recalled the kind guidance that Dr. Coles provided students, noting that Dr. Coles “was directly responsible for my first job with Minority Contractors Assistance Project [MCAP] in DC after finishing Vanderbilt GSM.”?

But Dr. Coles's leadership—and in some cases, Dr. Coles himself—was not always welcome.

Settling into his third year at Vanderbilt, Dr. Coles and his wife decided to build their dream home in Goodlettsville, the far North (white) suburb of Nashville. The building process wasn’t smooth. The builder was threatened for selling the house to a Black family, and vandals periodically damaged the construction—to the point that the builder began spending nights in the home until its doors and windows could be secured. Arriving just one day before moving furniture into the finished house, Dr. Coles found that it had been doused with kerosene and set on fire.[i] The loss was devastating—nearly $40K of damage to the $80K home. The state fire marshal conducted an investigation and, given the scope of the destruction from multiple fires, deemed it the result of arson.[ii]? The visceral racism of the fire was a repeat of an all-too-familiar refrain, from the struggles Dr. Coles endured for his work supporting Black business owners to attacks on his wife, who wasn’t viewed by some as Black enough.?

Dr. Coles decided to quietly rebuild in a different neighborhood. Despite the racism he endured, he didn’t give up on the hope of change in Nashville or stop believing in the struggling Owen School and its mission to change business education. Jackie Shrago (MBA’75) remembered him as “always gentle and gracious,” someone who “ALWAYS offered an encouraging word when times were tough.” Even after Dean Ansoff left and Owen’s future was uncertain, “Flournoy always had a kind and generous word to offer each person, encouraging all of us to keep striving.” Dr. Coles heeded his own advice, producing a string of articles encouraging Black entrepreneurship; creating a women’s business training course for the Nashville community;[iii] and traveling the world to lecture on the promise of economic development, as a means of improving the human condition.

Throughout the 1970s, Dr. Coles spent his summers traveling throughout Africa, advising and teaching business skills to country leaders.[iv] He became an external examiner for the University of Ghana, helping them to build curriculum and to develop business leaders who would spur economic development. Amy Conlee (MBA’77) recollected how he brought those experiences into his Vanderbilt course on Underdeveloped Countries, noting the lessons that analyzed the “difficulty for a country, business, or even a business school to bootstrap its way up. He helped us to deeply understand that without natural resources or human resources, the path of progress is slow and uncertain. Of course, a fundamental part of economics, but one I might not have grasped so readily without him.” ?

Dr. Coles enjoyed the Owen students and exemplified the school’s culture of personal connection. Eric Hall, CFA (MBA’78) described him not only as a favorite professor, but also a friend. “I still remember him inviting my friend, Allison Burns, [and me] over to his home for a traditional Ghanaian dinner of peanut soup. Flournoy was an excellent cook and [it was] an evening I still remember.” Indeed, Dr. Coles's cooking was so well known that The Tennessean shared an article about his global travel and favorite recipes.[v]

Always a sharp dresser, many alumni remembered how carefully Dr. Coles represented himself and the school. Hall noted that Dr. Coles retired during his second year at Owen, and “on our last day of his class, we all wore ties to class, tied in Flournoy’s unique way. He was definitely touched.”?

Dr. Coles believed strongly in Owen, annually supporting the school as it struggled in those early years. In 1978, a note from the new dean, Samuel Richmond, read, “Many, many thanks for your recent contribution to the Owen School. Your continued support is greatly appreciated. We are really rolling now and will continue to do so.” Joe Owens (MBA’79) remembered Dr. Coles as “a very generous person and a stalwart of the school. He was a strong connector to the founding vision as it went through a substantial evolution with the arrival of Dean Richmond and the new faculty members.”?

Even after his retirement in 1980, Coles continued to contribute financially to the school. After Coles died in 1982,[vi] the school created the Flournoy A. Coles Jr. Prize, awarded annually to a graduating student in recognition of outstanding performance in international management studies and contributions to the school.[vii] The scholarship stands as a tribute to his leadership and willingness to bear the cost of trailblazing change.

[i] “Black Doctor Says Arson ‘Told’ Him He Wasn’t Wanted,” The Tennessean, 6/19/72.

[ii] “Amateur Arsonist Blamed in House Fire,” The Tennessean, 6/20/72.

[iii] "Black Women in Business: Can We Overcome the Barriers?", Contact,

Vol. 5, #4 1974 August-October, 16.

[iv] “Spotlight: Flournoy Coles,” Vanderbilt Alumnus, Winter, 1979, 39.

[v] “Dr. Coles’s Travels and Culinary Treats,” The Tennessean, 1/9/75.

[vi] Flournoy A. Coles Jr". Washington Post. Retrieved 2024-01-31.

[vii] Special thanks to assistance from Owen School's Walker Management Library, HD McKay ,and background research conversations with alumni Frank Bumstead ‘72,? John Stein ’75, Marc Fortune ’76., and Eric Van Heyst '80.