Les Joynes, PhD, MBA

“I am passionate about leadership, education and coaching. A consultant and creativity specialist, I am a Leadership Coach and Entrepreneurship Coach at Columbia Business School, Entrepreneurship Coach At Academic Coach to PhDs at University of Melbourne and Entrepreneurship Coach at the New School in New York.”

About: Les Joynes (b. Southern California) coaches executives and global leaders at Columbia Business School and initiated the Cultural industries coaching series at Yale Museums and coaches creative entrepreneurs at University of Melbourne. Recipient of the Fulbright Professional and Academic Excellence Award (2022) he founded India’s first coaching and mentoring initiative to tribal communities in Nagaland in India’s Northeast. He is a Scholar on the Futures of Coaching at the Department of Organization and Leadership at Teachers College, Columbia University.

Les is a New York University certified coach, professionally credentialed by the International Coaching Federation (ICF). Teaching since 1999, he is Visiting Faculty at Renmin University and Peking University’s Institute for Cultural Industries and was Visiting Associate Professor at Visva Bharati University in West Bengal, India.

Les has experience since 1989 in management consulting and has worked with global Fortune 500 organizations including 3M, GE, DuPont, General Motors, Dow, Exxon and Bayer. Les possesses an M.Sc in Managment from Boston University and the Vrije Universiteit Brussels Faculty of Economic and Social Sciences; MA from University of London; and MA from Musashino Art University, Tokyo. He completed his PhD in the Faculty of Art, Environment and Technology, Leeds Metropolitan University, UK and Post-Doctorate at University of São Paulo, Brazil. During his MBA from California State University he studied under Organizational Behavior scholar Abraham Rami Shani, with whom he co-published research on parallel learning systems and technology transfer models.

He is recipient of the 2021 Fulbright-Nehru Academic and Professional Excellence Award; Fulbright Mission China Award; Taiwan Ministry of Education Huayu Scholarship; Renmin University Merit Teaching Award; US Department of State/ACMS Field Research Fellowship; Fulbright US Public Diplomacy Award for Mongolia; and the Japanese Ministry of Education and Culture Scholarship.

He has served ICF New York as a Membership Ambassador and initiated the ICF Global Chapter Connect Series bringing ICF chapters together via Zoom across borders. He is former New York Chair for the Society of Competitive Intelligence Professionals and serves on the Editorial Board for Projectanywhere, a journal at University of Melbourne and Parsons School of Design.