UWF hires ex-NAS Pensacola leader Capt. Tim Kinsella to create new Center for Leadership

When U.S. Navy Capt. Tim "Lucky" Kinsella retired from the military earlier this year after three years as commanding officer of NAS Pensacola, he found himself in an unfamiliar situation.

All of a sudden, he had a choice of where to live. After bouncing from base to base for 33 years in his military career, Kinsella could choose to settle down and live in any city that he wanted.

He chose to stay in Pensacola, and that decision has already led to securing his next big professional venture. The University of West Florida's College of Business has hired Kinsella to create and direct the new Center for Leadership on the UWF campus.

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The Center for Leadership will add an Executive MBA program to UWF's academic offerings and host routine professional development seminars for working professionals in the business field.

Additionally, Kinsella hopes the center will also one day become a meeting place for students and community leaders to come together and engage in nonpartisan dialogue about possible civic and societal changes in the area.

"He's a good fit for a lot of reasons," said UWF President Martha Saunders. "Certainly, he has had strong leadership experience, and he just has a passion for education. I think that is going to be a real signature aspect of his leadership in the center and his impact on the campus. He just cares about education at all levels, and I think that is going to make a big, big difference."

As the commanding officer of NAS Pensacola, Kinsella led the base through a deadly terrorist attack that killed three people and wounded eight others, Hurricane Sally that brought $500 million worth of damage to its infrastructure and a global pandemic.

But at the end of his tenure as leader of NAS Pensacola, Kinsella said it was a family decision about whether to remain in the city or move elsewhere.

"When we came to Pensacola, we came here with an open mind. We didn't come here with the intent to settle, really just to enjoy our time here," Kinsella said. "But the longer we spent here, the longer we realized that this was home really, and it was the people that sold it for us."

The friendships that Kinsella and his family made when they first moved to Pensacola eventually blossomed into relationships they expect will last a lifetime.

"And the things that I have been through on the base, I feel have drawn not just me but my family closer to the community and to a lot of the people here in the town," Kinsella said. "About a year ago, we were kind of reaching terminal velocity on our decision when we realized, why are we even bothering to look other places when we're so happy here?"

When Rick Fountain, dean of the UWF College of Business, approached Kinsella last year, saying that "he had an idea for a Center for Leadership and thought that I should be the person to run it, it was like everything coalescing at once," Kinsella recalled.

The Center for Leadership's overarching mission will be to teach the skills and qualities needed to be a good leader in the business world. And if there was one sure thing that he learned in his decades-long naval career, Kinsella said, it was that leadership is the paramount force behind successful endeavors.

"If you look at the output of one infantry unit compared to the other or one ship compared to another ship, it may be drastically different because of the leadership. The leadership is what makes a difference. The leadership is what makes a change," Kinsella said. "Great leadership creates an environment for people to reach their fullest potential, and that's what leadership is all about. That's when the magic happens."

How the Center for Leadership will operate

The Center for Leadership is a three-pronged enterprise. Its first purpose will be to offer an executive master's of business administration degree to UWF students.

The program will be geared toward people who are already mid-career or perhaps even already mid-level managers within their respective companies, allowing them to get an MBA without having to go to school full time.

"It's got a sort of a leadership flavor to it that I think is more germane to what these types of people are trying to do," Kinsella said. "They are already experienced in the business world or a profession and they are looking for that little bit of edge — or even their company is looking for that little bit of an extra edge — to take them to the next level."

Secondly, the center will offer executive leadership seminars.

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The approximately one- to two-week seminars will provide instruction to working business professionals about how to improve their already existing leadership skills, advance their workplace abilities and provide a place for self-reflection.

"It's really a chance for them to come, learn about themselves, understand themselves a little bit better and how they can interact with their organization a little bit better, think big thoughts and go back to their organization recharged and ready to be those agents of change that their company pays them to be," Kinsella said.

The center will bring in experts from a myriad of different sectors of the business world to instruct the seminars.

"They will be taking personality tests to learn more about who they are, how they interact with other people," Kinsella explained about the students. "Most of the folks who do this would be a little bit older, and so, we will also teach: How do you take care of yourself using things like mindfulness or yoga or other techniques?"

The third planned component of the center will be focused on community.

"The core of the Center for Leadership is really the first two things that we've talked about. Those are really the tangible bits that are going to allow the center to be sustainable and provide a tangible result to the workforce, things that you can touch and feel and say, 'I went here and I did that,'" Kinsella said. "The community bit is a little less tangible."

The center will strive to be a nonpartisan meeting place where UWF students and the greater Pensacola area's civic, business and community leaders can come together to discuss the ways and means of potential, positive, local social and civic changes.

"One of the things that we want to teach is corporate responsibility and that responsibility means building communities and giving back to the community that you are essentially taking from. So, how do you do that as leaders?" Kinsella asked rhetorically. "In order for us to teach that, I think it's important for us, the center, to also practice that — that we are engaged with civic leaders, with business leaders, with community leadership to be, not necessarily an engine for change, but maybe a forum for them."

The university is in the preliminary stages of planning the new center, and there's no estimated completion date at this early juncture. But now that Kinsella has been hired to anchor the new venture, UWF officials' next steps will be hiring support staff to round out Kinsella's leadership team and identifying the optimal location to build the new center.

"It won't happen overnight," Kinsella said of the new center.

Luckily, he's not planning on going anywhere.

Colin Warren-Hicks can be reached at [email protected] or 850-435-8680.

This article originally appeared on Pensacola News Journal: NAS Pensacola's Tim Kinsella hired to create UWF Center for Leadership