Dr. Walter Earl Fluker
2026 Beautiful Are Their Feet Awardee
Walter Earl Fluker is the founder of Walter Earl Fluker & Associates. He serves as Distinguished Professor of the Howard Thurman Center, Hartford University for Religion and Peace; Dean’s Professor of Spirituality, Ethics and Leadership, Candler School of Theology, Emory University; Professor Emeritus of Ethical Leadership (formerly the Martin Luther King, Jr Chair) at Boston University and the editor of the Howard Thurman Papers Project.
Dr. Walter Earl Fluker
Walter Earl Fluker is the founder of Walter Earl Fluker & Associates. He serves as Distinguished Professor of the Howard Thurman Center, Hartford University for Religion and Peace; Dean’s Professor of Spirituality, Ethics and Leadership, Candler School of Theology, Emory University; Professor Emeritus of Ethical Leadership (formerly the Martin Luther King, Jr Chair) at Boston University and the editor of the Howard Thurman Papers Project. He was founding executive director of the Andrew Young Center for Global Leadership Center and the Coca-Cola Professor of Leadership Studies at Morehouse College. Dr. Fluker is a featured consultant, speaker, lecturer and workshop leader at foundations, businesses, corporations, colleges, universities, governmental and religious institutions, nationally and globally. Among his honors and awards, Dr. Fluker was named a recipient of the 2023 Roosevelt Institute Freedom of Worship Award along with fellow laureates, speaker emerita Nancy Pelosi, the late Ady Barkan, U. S. Representative Bennie Thompson, and Tracie Hall, former executive director of the American Library Association.
Known as an expert in the theory and practice of ethical leadership, in 2016, Professor Fluker developed a Massive Online Operating Course (MOOC) entitled Ethical Leadership: Character, Civility and Community. Over 14,000 participants around the globe have engaged the course which explores theoretical and practical elements of ethical leadership through engagement with prominent leadership theorists and leaders in the areas of education, business, government, philanthropy, and global citizenship. He continues this work through his organization, Walter Earl Fluker & Associates, https://www.walterearlfluker.com
Fluker has served on numerous committees and boards, including the Urban League of Rochester, NY; the National Selection Committee for U.S. News & World Report America’s Best Leaders; the Board of Liberal Education (the flagship quarterly for the Association of American Colleges and Universities). Dr. Fluker has served as a consultant and workshop leader for organizations as diverse as Democratic Leadership Council National Conversation, Goldman Sachs Global Leaders Program, the US Army Chaplains Corps, the Department of Education, the Department of State, the Boys and Girls Clubs of America, Historically Black Colleges and Universities, and the US Commission for The Social Status of Black Men and Boys.
His international experience includes serving as consultant to youth development initiatives in Sierra Leone, West Africa and South Africa sponsored by the Ford Foundation and as a lecturer for the Martin Luther King, Jr. Center in Havana, Cuba. He has served as faculty for emerging global leadership at the Salzburg Global Seminar in Austria and the Global Friends Initiative in Hong Kong; emerging African leaders in the Johannesburg, South African City Council; lecturer for the U.S. Embassy Speaker/Specialist Program in South Africa, Nigeria, India and China; Distinguished Lecturer to the International Human Rights Exchange Programme; visiting professor for the Graduate School of Business, University of Cape Town, South Africa; and has worked with the African Presidential Center at Boston University and the Transatlantic Roundtable on Religion and Race (Birbeck College, University of London and the University of Pretoria, South Africa).
His publications include Ethical Leadership: The Quest for Character, Civility and Community (2009); The Ground Has Shifted: The Future of the Black Church in Post-Racial America (2016) and the multi-volume series entitled The Papers of Howard Washington Thurman, published by University of South Carolina Press. He is also the editor of the recently released, The Unfinished Search for Common Ground (2023).
He earned a Ph.D. in Social Ethics from Boston University, a Master of Divinity degree from Garrett-Evangelical Seminary, a bachelor’s degree in philosophy and biblical studies from Trinity College and the Doctor of Humanities, Honoris Causa, Lees-McRae College, Banner Elk, North Carolina. He is married to Dr. Sharon Watson Fluker and is the father of four children and seven grandchildren.
