Empathy as a Superpower (Discussion with Mori Taheripour and Gary Noesner)

Mori Taheripour teaches Negotiation and Dispute Resolution in the undergraduate and graduate programs at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. She has served on the faculty of the Legal Studies and Business Ethics Department for over fifteen years and is a six-time recipient of awards for excellence in teaching. She co-founded the Wharton Sports Business Initiative (WSBI), a resource for business leaders, faculty, and students that generates research and provides industry insight through educational programs, consulting assignments, and global forums.

A globally recognized executive and experienced connector, Mori leverages her expertise in negotiation, diversity and inclusion (D&I) and athlete education and development for a client list that includes major U.S. sports leagues, Fortune 100 companies, foundations, universities, and professional associations. Current and past clients include Major League Baseball, NBA Players Association (NBPA), NFL, NFL Players Association (NFLPA), Goldman Sachs Foundation, Entrepreneurs' Organization (EO), The Timberland Company, USA Track and Field (USATF), United Parcel Service (UPS), Wasserman, Wells Fargo, and the White House Fellows Program.

Mori serves on the Board of Trustees of the Women’s Sports Foundation, the Advisory Board of Skateistan, and is a founding Advisory Board Member of the Sports Leadership & Administration Undergraduate Degree Program at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. She is a contributor to sports discussions on Wharton Business Daily on SiriusXM and was featured in ESPN’s “30 for 30” documentary, Broke.

Mori earned her MBA from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and a BA from Barnard College of Columbia University. Her first book, Bring Yourself: How to Harness the Power of Connection to Negotiate Fearlessly was published in March 2020.

Gary Noesner retired from the FBI in 2003 following a 30 year career as an investigator, instructor, and negotiator. A significant focus of his career was directed toward investigating Middle East hijackings in which American citizens were victimized. In addition, he was an FBI hostage negotiator for 23 years of his career, retiring as the Chief of the FBI’s Crisis Negotiation Unit, Critical Incident Response Group, the first person to hold that position. In that capacity he was heavily involved in numerous crisis incidents covering prison riots, right-wing militia standoffs, religious zealot sieges, terrorist embassy takeovers, airplane hijackings, and over 120 overseas kidnapping cases involving American citizens.

Following his retirement from the FBI he became a Senior Vice President with Control Risks, an international risk consultancy, assisting clients in managing overseas kidnap incidents. He continues to Consult independently and speaks at law enforcement conferences and corporate gatherings around the world.

He has appeared in numerous television documentaries about hostage negotiation, terrorism, and kidnapping produced by the History Channel, Nat Geo, WE, Discovery, TLC, A&E, CNN, CBS, BBC, American Heroes Network, and others. He has been interviewed in Time, Forbes, the New Yorker, the Washington Post, the New York Times, Roll Call, the Washingtonian Magazine, the Christian Science Monitor, and other publications. He has given speeches at major universities, done interviews on numerous radio and television programs, and was the subject of an hour long interview on NPR’s Fresh Air in 2010.

He has written a book about his FBI negotiation career which was published by Penguin Random House in 2010, entitled: Stalling for Time: My Life as an FBI Hostage Negotiator.