Roger Krone thought he was retiring when he stepped away as CEO of Leidos in 2023. Instead, he found himself circling back to help rebuild the organization that — decades earlier — helped build him.
A lifelong Scout who once stumbled through canoe trips and campfire cooking, Krone’s peers considered him one of the least likely people to ever lead Scouting. But as someone with experience steering large organizations through cultural transitions and financial wounds, Krone is now leading Scouting America through one of the most consequential chapters in its 115-year history.
When Scouting emerged from bankruptcy, leaders approached him in 2023 about stepping in as a transformational CEO. Krone didn’t see himself as the obvious candidate.
“I don’t view myself as a great Scout,” he said. “I’m really a corporate CEO guy — that’s what I know.”
But that skill set — not backcountry finesse — was exactly what Scouting America needed.
“I felt I had something I could bring to the organization,” he said.
As a child, Krone began as a Cub — the youngest tier of Scouting — and advanced all the way to Eagle through a vocational program called Exploring. Krone later enrolled all three of his children in Scouting. Corporate life eventually consumed much of his time, but the program never left him entirely, even during the long stretch when his professional world and Scouting rarely intersected.
He saw the CEO role as a chance to give back to the same movement that shaped his early life — one that offered opportunity and adulthood skills disguised as fun.
Krone didn’t want retirement to turn into inactivity, and the invitation pulled him back into meaningful work.
“I really think the country needs strong nongovernment organizations that teach youth about values and leadership, and being able to work with the kids and the volunteers is really what brought me back,” he said.
Lessons that hid in plain sight
Only when interviewing for the job did Krone realize just how much Scouting had formed him. He remembered youth-led troop life: planning camps, drafting duty rosters, budgeting for meals, organizing logistics. It was leadership training without ever calling itself leadership training.
“I didn’t realize how much I learned in Scouting until I went through the interview process for this job,” he said. “We got to go canoeing, climbing, hiking and we camped outside. We made fires and did all this developmental stuff and learning, but I didn’t know any of that was happening when I was in the program. I just thought we were camping.”
His first major project in adulthood — managing cost and resources — echoed the same lessons he learned buying eggs for a weekend campout. The realization hit fully during the interview when he discovered he could still recite the Scout Oath and Law without hesitation. And he sees young people today needing what he once absorbed almost unconsciously.
As a boy, Krone imagined Iron Man-style aerospace careers — and remarkably, he lived them. He’s held leadership roles at Boeing, Leidos, and now Scouting — three dream jobs in one lifetime.
“I’ve had an amazing career,” he said. “I’ve been really fortunate to be able to do a lot of the things that I wanted to.”
At his 50-year high school reunion recently, half the people he camped beside as teenagers were there. They remarked he was the least likely Scout among them to run the organization. If someone in 1968 had predicted it, he said, everyone would have laughed.
“I think my mom would be shocked,” he added.
A cousin emailed after the announcement: Are there two Roger Krones?
“No, no,” Krone replied. “This is me.”
Running Scouting like — and not like — a Fortune 500
Krone now oversees roughly 3,000 professional staff and 400,000 volunteers, a scale far larger than many nonprofits but distinct from a corporate structure.
“Building alignment, creating a vision, being enthusiastic, being passionate, being a visionary is really, really important because there are 400,000 people who volunteer every day because they’re aligned with the vision and mission,” he said. “And if you don’t get that right, you lose your volunteers.”
Execution still matters as it did at Boeing or Leidos, but Scouting lives and dies on a shared mission. Krone’s first major priority is clarity and safety.
“We have to be the world’s best at running safe programs and protecting the kids who are entrusted to us,” he said. “It’s job No. 1.”
His second focus is relevance for today’s youth. Scouting once served 5 million young people; today enrollment is around 1 million. Competing with screens means adapting delivery — more digital, more visible, more accessible — without losing the mud-and-campfire heart of the experience.
“When I was in Scouting, we had not welcomed girls into our program at that time,” Krone said. The organization now includes them and is reshaping how it presents itself to families who may not know the door is open.
Membership growth and financial stability are also at the top of Scouting’s list of priorities.
“There’s a lot written about the younger generations, and it’s so important for them to have an organization like Scouting where you put down your small screen devices, you get out into the woods with other kids, you’re social without the media, and you learn to get along with and have respect for others, and you build resiliency,” he said.
Krone, who has spoken openly about the opioid epidemic and loss among friends, believes youth-serving organizations are essential — Scouting among them, but not uniquely. 4-H, YMCA, Boys & Girls Clubs, FFA — all help anchor kids in real life rather than the digital. For Scouting specifically, that grounding comes through service.
“As you go through the Scouting program, you really get the sense that you’re part of something bigger in the world, and you have a responsibility to give back to the community,” he said.
Where camping still matters in a digital world
When Krone stepped in, Scouting was four and a half years into Chapter 11 bankruptcy with more than $300 million in remaining debt. Over $100 million has since been paid down. Now, the focus is forward motion: sustainable programs, growing membership and long-term resilience for the next century.
“I just want Scouting to be around another 115 years,” he said. “I will be judged not so much by what happened while I was there but by how I moved the organization along in its journey.”
Risk management from the corporate world now lives inside Scouting’s national structure. Rebranding from Boy Scouts of America to Scouting America signals that girls are part of the future, not just welcomed but expected.
Krone sees Scouting answering problems parents worry about most — isolation, anxiety, lack of practical skills, fragile resilience. He points to data showing kids have fewer friends, less unsupervised outdoor play, more online exposure. Scouting counters all of that.
“If you’re in our program for a year or two, you are better at everything that a parent and a family wants for their youth,” he said. “You are more social, you get along better, you have more empathy, you have more initiative, and you’re a self-starter.”
He likes that Scouting does not eliminate difficulty; it teaches how to move through it.
“It’s not a bad thing to go on a campout and get soaked to the skin in rain and realize you can still put up a tent and start a fire and dry out your clothes, and it will be OK,” he said.