John Spence is widely recognized as one of the top business and leadership development experts in the world.
At 26, John was the CEO of an international Rockefeller foundation, overseeing projects in 20 countries. Two years later, Inc. Magazine named him one of America’s Up and Coming Young Business Leaders. John has been 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. He was also recognized on the global list of the Top 100 Thought Leaders in Trustworthy Business Behavior. Other recipients of this award include Richard Branson, Tony Hsieh, Ram Charan, Thomas Freidman, Rosabeth M. Kanter, and Howard Schultz. 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. The prestigious Thinkers50, the definitive global ranking of management thinkers, shortlisted him as one of the top eight in the World for their Distinguished Achievement Award. In 2022 LeadersHum named John one of the top 200 Biggest Voices in Leadership along with Marshall Goldsmith, Adam Grant, Gary Vaynerchuk, and Simon Sinek.
John is a voracious learner who consumes a minimum of 100 business books annually. He has been a guest lecturer at more than 90 colleges and universities, including MIT, Stanford, Cornell, University of Auckland, University of Kraków, and the Wharton School of Business, where he has been a lead instructor at the Securities Industry Institute for more than 20 years.
He has been the owner or CEO of four companies. Currently, he serves as a board member or adviser to several organizations, including his strategic partnership with Pivot & Pace, one of the world’s leading business consultancies based in Christchurch, New Zealand.
Whether addressing an audience of 20,000 business professionals, facilitating a training workshop, or coaching an executive, John readily establishes a strong connection through his honest, open, and approachable style. Combined with his incredible ability to address complex and challenging subjects in a straightforward manner, people always leave his sessions with tangible takeaways they can immediately put into action.
John has built his entire career on “Making the Very Complex… Awesomely Simple.”
