John Spence

John Spence is recognized as one of the top business thought leaders and leadership development experts in the world and was named by the American Management Association as one of America’s Top 50 Leaders to Watch along with Sergey Brin and Larry Page of Google and Jeff Bezos of Amazon. As a consultant and coach to organizations worldwide, from startups to the Fortune 10, John is dedicated to helping people and businesses be more successful by “Making the Very Complex… Awesomely Simple.”

For more than 23 years, John Spence has traveled worldwide helping people and businesses be more successful. He is the author of "Excellence by Design – the six key characteristics of outstanding leaders" and "Awesomely Simple – essential business strategies for turning ideas into action," among other titles. As a business consultant, workshop facilitator, keynote speaker, and executive coach, his client list includes numerous Fortune 500 firms as well as smaller businesses and professional associations. John’s areas of expertise include leadership, high-performance teams, managing change, organizational culture, consultative selling, strategic planning, strategy execution, and the future of business.

At 26, John was the CEO of an international Rockefeller foundation, overseeing projects in 20 countries, and reported directly to the Chairman of the Board, Winthrop P. Rockefeller III. Just two years later, Inc. Magazine named him one of America’s Up and Coming Young Business Leaders. John is recognized as one of the Top 100 Business Thought Leaders in America, one of the Top 100 Small Business Influencers in America, one of the Top 50 Small Business Experts in America, and one of the top 500 Leadership Development Experts in the World. The American Management Association named John one of America’s Top 50 Leaders to Watch along with Sergey Brin and Larry Page of Google and Jeff Bezos of Amazon.

John was named one of eight finalists for the Breakthrough Idea Award for the Thinkers50 2017 Distinguished Achievement Awards. The Thinkers50 celebrates the thinkers who have contributed the most to management thinking and practice over the last two years and whose ideas drive the conversations of the day.

John is a voracious learner and consumes a minimum of 100 business books, countless articles, and blogs a year. He is a guest lecturer at more than 90 colleges and universities including MIT, Stanford, Cornell, Wharton School of Business, University of Auckland, Canterbury University, University of Krakow, and Kozminski University. He was the owner or CEO of six companies and currently serves as a board member or adviser to several organizations and executives. As a professional speaker, John is comfortable with anything from small groups of high-level executives to large scale seminars to keynote speeches at national meetings with as many as 10,000 attendees or more.