2026 Live. Learn. Lead. Symposium

Register for the 2026 Live. Learn. Lead. Symposium!

Join us on Thursday, February 26, 2026, for a campuswide conversation on leadership, collaboration, and personal growth.

Symposium Registration Link

Keynote Speaker Registration Link

Schedule Overview

This event is open to all students at Vanderbilt University, faculty, staff, and community members. The Symposium will be an in-person event with no virtual component. You must register for the event and receive confirmation in order to attend.

Symposium Schedule: Thursday, February 26, 2026

10 am - 11 am: Registration and Check-in
Carmichael College Conference Center

11 am - 12:30 pm: Welcome & Lunch with Chris Krause ('88)
Carmichael College Conference Center

12:45 pm - 1:45 pm: Session 1: Practicing Leadership Habits with Francesca Schuler
Carmichael College Conference Center

2 pm - 2:45 pm: Session 2: Alumni Panel moderated by
Erin S. Calipari, PhD
Carmichael College Conference Center

3 pm - 4 pm: BREAK

4 pm - 5 pm: Keynote Address by Coach Clark Lea with an introduction by Candice Storey Lee
Langford Auditorium*

*Note that all events take place at Carmichael College, except for the keynote with Coach Clark Lea, which will be in Langford Auditorium.

Speaker & Panelist Bios

Clark Lea

Clark Lea is the head football coach at Vanderbilt University and a proud alumnus, serving as the university’s 29th head coach since December 2020. Under his leadership, Vanderbilt achieved a historic 2025 season, earning its first 10-win campaign and six SEC victories, along with back-to-back bowl appearances and a nationally ranked finish. That season cemented Coach Lea’s reputation as a transformational leader, earning him multiple honors including SEC Coach of the Year and the FWAA Eddie Robinson National Coach of the Year Award.

A Nashville native and “Double Dore,” Coach Lea earned both his undergraduate and graduate degrees from Vanderbilt and played football for the Commodores after beginning his collegiate athletic career in baseball. Prior to returning to Vanderbilt, he built an extensive coaching career at institutions including Notre Dame, Wake Forest, Syracuse, UCLA, and Bowling Green, developing nationally recognized defensive units and student-athletes at every stop.

Beyond competitive success, Coach Lea is widely respected for his emphasis on culture, discipline, and academic excellence. His teams have consistently excelled in the classroom, earning national academic recognition and setting program records for team GPA and graduation rates. Coach Lea’s leadership philosophy centers on accountability, growth, and legacy—principles that continue to shape both the Vanderbilt football program and the broader campus community.

Chris Krause

Chris Krause is an entrepreneur, author, and the founder of NCSA College Recruiting (now Next College Student Athlete), which has helped more than 300,000 student-athletes commit to colleges and earn over $ 5 billion in scholarships. A former Vanderbilt football player on a full athletic scholarship, Krause turned his personal experience into a lifelong mission to make the recruiting process more accessible for families nationwide. He is the author of Athletes Wanted and an active member of Entrepreneurs’ Organization (EO) and Young Presidents’ Organization (YPO). Today, besides coaching Entrepreneurs he’s building a hospital, growing youth sports communities, and investing in AI sports technologies, serving on boards and helping drive leadership development initiatives at Vanderbilt University. He lives in Manhattan Beach, California, with his wife and two children and is an avid surfer.

Erin S. Calipari, Ph.D.

Dr. Erin Calipari is the Director of the Vanderbilt Center for Addiction Research and an Associate Professor in the Department of Pharmacology at Vanderbilt University. She is a neuroscientist whose work focuses on understanding how the brain’s reward and motivation systems adapt to experience, and how these processes become dysregulated in addiction.

Dr. Calipari received her PhD in Neuroscience from Wake Forest University School of Medicine in 2013, where she studied how drugs of abuse alter dopaminergic signaling to shape addictive behaviors. She then completed her postdoctoral training at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, using advanced genetic and molecular approaches to investigate how drugs remodel brain circuits and influence behavior. Across her career, she has integrated behavioral, circuit-level, microcircuit, and molecular techniques to uncover the mechanisms that govern adaptive and maladaptive learning. Her work has led to more than 100 peer-reviewed publications and numerous honors, including the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) from The White House.

As Director of the Vanderbilt Center for Addiction Research, Dr. Calipari leads a multidisciplinary group of faculty, trainees, and staff working to identify the biological, environmental, and developmental factors that confer risk for addiction. Under her leadership, the center also engages in targeted outreach to inform and empower communities through evidence-based education on the science of addiction.

Francesca Schuler

Francesca Schuler is a CEO and Board Director with deep experience across both the private and nonprofit sectors. Francesca brings a distinctive leadership lens—grounded in operational excellence and a growth mindset, paired with a deep commitment to leadership development and cultivating high-performing, values-driven cultures. Francesca is currently the Executive Director of Dialogue Vanderbilt, a campus wide initiative at Vanderbilt focused on building future leaders with deep capabilities in working with diverse teams and driving impact in a complex and changing world. Prior to joining Vanderbilt, Francesca held executive and board roles in public companies, private equity–backed firms and non-profit sector across industries including fitness, retail, and consumer goods. Francesca’s civic leadership is a vital part of her professional journey. Francesca was selected as a 2025 Presidential Leadership Scholar, a cross-sector program founded by four U.S. presidential centers to support leaders tackling society’s most pressing challenges. She also serves on the California Governor’s Council on Physical Fitness and Mental Well-Being, advancing statewide efforts to increase access to physical activity for all Californians. Francesca is a bilingual Chilean-American. She holds an M.B.A. from The Wharton School and a B.A. with honors in Comparative Literature from Brown University.

Live. Learn. Lead. Academy