George Murray

A transformational COO and operating executive who has spent 30 years turning operations around under fire across four continents, and the author of HIRED and The Oath of Excellence

: I'm George Murray — a combat veteran, operations executive, and author — but the real through-line of my life has been leadership. It started on the yellow footprints at boot camp and in the 101st Airborne, where I learned that leading people has nothing to do with rank and everything to do with discipline, trust, and taking care of the person next to you. I carried those lessons into a 30-year business career, rising to COO and President and leading turnarounds across manufacturing, aerospace and defense, and medical devices — and eventually into nine books, including HIRED, on cutting your job search in half, and The Oath of Excellence, on building cultures that perform under pressure. Today I serve as Chief Operating Officer of Minnesota Wire. What I'm most passionate about is business transformation for Private Equity firms and Corporate America and people in transition — veterans trading the uniform for the boardroom, professionals reinventing themselves after a layoff, and leaders trying to build something that outlasts them. I believe excellence is a discipline anyone can build, and that your hardest seasons are usually where your best growth hides. Or as I like to put it: life never throws you the best pitches, so you learn to hit the curveballs.