One Major Leadership Challenge — Proven Under Fire

Leadership is not proven when decisions are easy — but when integrity demands standing alone.

On April 19, 2021, as Chief of Staff at North Carolina Central University (NCCU), Assistant Secretary to the Board of Trustees and a member of the COVID-19 Continuity Committee, Al Zow faced a governance. ethics and compliance test on a historic matter of great public constitutional importance and human health consequence.

Leadership Under Pressure

The committee, charged with pandemic continuity planning, voted overwhelmingly to impose an experimental COVID-19 "vaccine" mandate that carried profound and unsafe risks for the institution’s students, faculty, and staff. Outnumbered 20 to 1, AZ cast the lone dissenting vote — not from political impulse, but from legal, ethical, moral and governance obligations. His stance was rooted in law, compliance, bodily integrity and the protection of 9,000+ lives and livelihoods of students and employees entrusted to the university. 

The Chancellor was poised to potentially accept and approve the Committee's overwhelming decision to recommend a mandate for students and employees within 24 hours of the ill-conceived vote.  However, Al was provided with an after-work hours email (in which he discovered approximately an hour before the Chancellor's meeting) from the leadership of the committee which afforded him another opportunity of opposition to the vote. Under great time and professional pressure, Al crafted a well-worded timely [public record] email to the leadership of the committee which resulted in derailing (within an hour) the scheduled official mandate decision by the Chancellor. NCCU reversed course, abandoning the unlawful mandate. The reversal set a precedent across the University of North Carolina System, influencing decisions that arguably and ultimately safeguarded the health of more than 240,000 students and 75,000 employees statewide.

Sacrifice of Courage & Integrity

The personal and professional cost was immediate. Such dissent, particularly in the heat of global crisis, resulted in professional retaliation, invariable reputational risk and subsequent litigation. In the years that followed, AZ’s stand was vindicated.  Public acknowledgment by NCCU's admission to a federal investigatory body; federal litigation nationwide and a 2025 DOJ settlement confirmed that the original course in 2021 would have placed the university — and potentially the system — in violation of governing law. What was once seen as defiance was revealed as foresight and providential.

This moment defines the essence of AZ’s advisory philosophy of servant leadership: clarity under pressure, integrity above expedience, and leadership willing to withstand isolation and substantial monetary damages to protect the lives and livelihoods of others in whom he served.

Today, AZ delivers that same tested leadership to CEOs, boards, and institutions facing their own defining moments.