Speakers
Stephen Wehrenberg
Stephen B. Wehrenberg, Ph.D., is the Chief of Human Resource Strategy and Capability Development, United States Coast Guard, and Director of Future Force, an ambitious ten year effort to overhaul human resource systems and processes to support line managers and the workforce in the pursuit of Coast Guard missions. With 26 years on active duty and now 12 years as a senior civilian analyst and program manager, he brings a broad portfolio of lessons learned to any forum. He has recently been appointed by the Coast Guard’s Vice Commandant as her principal agent for executive development.
Dr. Wehrenberg has initiated, led, or been a key participant in numerous strategic planning efforts in the public and private sector. Within the past six years he has helped guide a scenario-based planning effort that resulted in a new breed of Strategic Plan for the Coast Guard -- a plan that makes an intentional assertion about the future, not merely a contingency plan. In an integrated effort, he created and documented a Business Model for Coast Guard Human Resources that describes how the HR system adds value to the Coast Guard's missions, and served as the stepping off point for an HR Roadmap, a capability-based HR strategy and set of high level measures that are linked to a continuously evolving Coast Guard Readiness Management System that measures the Coast Guard's value to the Nation -- in the development of which he was a key contributor.
Dr. Wehrenberg attended the Federal Executive Institute program Leadership in a Democratic Society in 2003, and is a Fellow of MIT’s Seminar XXI: Foreign Politics, International Relations, and the National Interest. Since 2005 he has worked with the Pentagon’s Office of Force Transformation on identifying interagency competencies, and energy security issues.
Dr. Wehrenberg is a Professorial Lecturer in Organizational Sciences in the Graduate Organizational Sciences Program at The George Washington University. He created GWU's Strategic Human Resource Planning and has conducted seminars in organizational theory and behavior for 15 years. He was a contributing editor to Personnel Journal (now Workforce) from 1982-1990.
His military career covers the bases. He was a Chief Sonar Technician, a Warrant Electronics Specialist, a Warrant Personnel Specialist, and received a commission as a LT in 1986. He taught at the Navy's Fleet Sonar School and the Coast Guard Leadership and Management Program; served in McCulloch (WHEC 386) and Gallatin (WHEC 721), where he earned his permanent Cutterman's Pin; served as Chief of Organization Development; created the workforce planning staff, spent a year in G-M working on MSO staffing standards; worked in Reserve Program Planning; and served on the Gilbert II, Streamlining, and Training Infrastructure studies.
