Tom Hughes

Tom helps individual leaders, teams and organizations achieve greater success and performance by improving their ability to create and sustain the environments and mindsets that support performance—environments that are safe, supportive, inclusive, that have clarity of vision and that promote innovation, agility, connection and growth. He has spent many years developing leaders’ ability to lead through the most difficult of challenges: during heightened uncertainty, ambiguity and change. He helps organizations and their people transform themselves to stay ahead of future challenges.

Appian Leadership and 751grow, sister companies dedicated to professional and personal development, are the most recent of Tom’s entrepreneurial ventures. He has previously founded or co-founded four companies focused on various domains of the leadership development industry, ranging from advanced leadership communication to high-impact, high-intensity experiential learning.

Tom was previously a Managing Director at Duke Corporate Education, one of the world’s leading providers of customized executive education.  Prior to his time at Duke CE, he was a Senior Associate in Booz Allen Hamilton’s award-winning corporate university.

Tom’s academic career is varied—he holds a Master’s degree from Columbia University in Organizational Psychology with a focus in Organization Development consulting; a conservatory certificate in Acting from the American Repertory Theatre’s Institute for Advanced Theatre Training at Harvard; and a Bachelor’s degree in English from Harvard University.  He has written several fiction and non-fiction books, and published articles in the Encyclopedia of Career Development and the journal, Dialogue. His most recent publication is The Leadership Check-Up, which he co-authored with Jared Bleak.

Tom has had the good fortune to work with many exceptional organizations across many sectors and industries, including many well-known global brands. All told, he has worked with clients in 31 countries on 6 continents.