Mark Lipton

Biography

Mark Lipton is a Professor Emeritus and formerly a graduate management professor at The New School and Parsons School of Design in New York City. For over forty years, he has advised Fortune 500 corporations, think tanks, philanthropies, not-for-profits, and start-ups.

His diverse entrepreneurial client base includes founders of transformative start-ups in technology, manufacturing, media, education, health care, finance, and marketing. His coaching skills and leadership development programs are engaged by C-level executives across all sectors of the economy, and his development of corporate and nonprofit boards allows them to govern more effectively. In the not-for-profit realm, he has consulted with and led leadership development initiatives for organizations ranging from multibillion-dollar philanthropic game-changers to local community-based social service providers to the world’s largest international NGOs. Much of his work to infuse progressive leadership practices into the NGO and not-for-profit world has been made possible by significant grants from the Ford, Rockefeller, Mott, and Charles H. Revson Foundations, among others.

His work over the years as a consultant and professor has inspired his writing for such publications as Harvard Business Review, MIT Sloan Management Review, and Journal of Management Consulting. His previous book, Guiding Growth: How Vision Keeps Companies on Course (Harvard Business School Press, 2003) has become a leading field guide for CEOs and their executive teams for creating an actionable vision story. A leading authority on the founders’ dilemma, the strong and often dysfunctional psychological forces that organizational founders experience when they are pressured to step down, Mark has been a media commentator to discuss Founder/CEO transitions in the corporate and not-for-profit sectors. He remains a frequent commentator on CEO personality and behavior for cable news channels, national print media, podcasts, syndicated radio programs, and streaming media.

He was selected in 2024 as one of thirty Global Management Gurus.

Mark holds a PhD from the School of Management at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst and was an Erik Erikson Visiting Scholar-in-Residence in 2009 at the Austen Riggs Center. He lives in New York City and the Berkshires of western Massachusetts.

More about Mark can be learned by visiting his website.