37th Annual Leopold Lecture
Admiral (ret) Lisa M. Franchetti '85, U.S. Navy
33rd Chief of Naval Operations
Thursday, October 8, 2026 | 4:30 p.m.
Galvin Recital Hall
Tickets will be available soon.
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
A native of Pittsford, New York, Lisa Franchetti is an experienced military leader, global strategist, and national security expert. She most recently served as the 33rd Chief of Naval Operations, retiring in March 2025 after nearly 40 years of dedicated service to the Navy and the Nation. As the Navy’s senior military officer and a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Franchetti advised the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of the Navy, and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff on national security matters. She ensured the Navy’s over 600,000 Sailors and Civilians were ready to execute the Nation’s missions in peace, crisis, and war.A 1985 graduate of Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism, Franchetti commissioned through the NROTC program at a time when roles for women in the military were constrained by the Combat Exclusion Act and limited to non-combatant ships and aircraft in the Navy. When Congress repealed that law in 1993, she was among the first women to a serve on combatants and went on to lead at every level. With nearly 20 years of at-sea experience, Franchetti commanded USS Ross, Destroyer Squadron 21, U.S. Naval Forces in Korea, two Aircraft Carrier Strike Groups, U.S. SIXTH Fleet, and Striking and Support Forces NATO. Ashore, she served as the Deputy Chief of Naval Operations for Force Development, the Director, Strategy, Plans and Policy on the Joint Staff (J-5), and the 42nd Vice Chief of Naval Operations.
Known for her visionary leadership, Franchetti focused the Navy on warfighting, warfighters, and building the foundation needed to support both. As CNO, she mobilized the Navy to meet the threat posed by the People’s Republic of China through her Navigation Plan for America’s Warfighting Navy. She drove efforts to grow the size of the Navy’s Fleet, integrate robotic and autonomous systems, improve shipyard maintenance performance, resolve long-standing manpower and infrastructure challenges, modernize command and control centers, and improve the quality-of-life for Sailors, Navy Civilians, and their families.
Franchetti is the founder of Franchetti Strategic Solutions, LLC, and serves as a strategic advisor to Kearney, Lockheed Martin, ServiceNOW, the Center for Naval Analysis, Defense Unicorns, and Corridian. She is an Independent Board Director at Cincinnati Financial Corporation and serves on the Advisory Council of the Leadership Council for Women in National Security. Passionate about developing the next generation of leaders, she is a Fellow at the University of Chicago and will be a Distinguished Practitioner in Residence at Northwestern University’s Roberta Buffet Institute for Global Affairs in 2027.
Franchetti holds a Bachelor of Science in Journalism from Northwestern University and a Master’s Degree in Organizational Management from the University of Phoenix. She completed the Harvard Kennedy School’s National and International Security Program and was an MIT Seminar XXI Fellow. She is a member of the Council of Foreign Relations, was awarded the Northwestern Alumni Medal in 2019, received the Naval War College Distinguished Graduate Award in 2024, was inducted into the Medill School of Journalism Hall of Achievement in 2024, and was awarded an honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters by Northwestern University in 2025.
2025 LECTURE RECORDING
Richard W. Leopold Lecture
The Leopold Lecture series has brought a variety of distinguished speakers to the Northwestern campus, including U.S. Senators Russ Feingold and Richard Lugar, presidential nominee George McGovern and former Mexico President Vicente Fox.
Professor Leopold’s undergraduate students established the Richard W. Leopold Lectureship within the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences in 1990 to honor the late eminent diplomatic historian and dedicated educator. For more than 40 years, most of them at Northwestern, Leopold distinguished himself as an attentive teacher.
Generations of undergraduate students, many of whom enjoy successful careers as educators, writers, lawyers and public officials, remember Leopold’s scholarship, teaching and friendship. The lectureship honors Leopold’s contribution to the University and recognizes his enduring influence on the lives of his students.
About Richard W. Leopold
Richard W. Leopold, William Smith Mason Professor of History Emeritus, enjoyed a distinguished career as a scholar and teacher. Graduating from Princeton University in 1933, he received his doctorate in 1938 from Harvard University. After 11 years on the Harvard faculty and as a naval officer in Washington, D.C., he came to Northwestern University in 1948.
In subsequent years, he became a member of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton and a Northwestern University President’s Fellow. In 1976, he received a distinguished teaching award in the College, a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship, and was elected president of the Organization of American Historians. Leopold wrote The Growth of American Foreign Policy: A History; Elihu Root and the Conservative Tradition, and Robert Dale Owen: A Biography, as well as many articles and reviews. His work has been recognized by the Organization of American Historians, which established the bi-annual Richard W. Leopold Prize for a distinguished book by a government historian and in 1992 gave Leopold its Distinguished Service Award. In addition to his work within the University, Leopold served on numerous government committees concerned with preserving historical data. Professor Leopold passed away in Evanston in 2006 at age 94.