Jason Wingard

Dr. Jason Wingard is one of the most authoritative voices at the intersection of leadership, talent strategy, and the future of work — a scholar-executive whose career has bridged the world’s most demanding corporate and academic institutions. He earned his undergraduate degree in sociology with honors from Stanford University, where he competed as a Division I athlete in football and track, before accumulating advanced degrees from Emory, Harvard, and the University of Pennsylvania, where he completed his PhD in Education, Culture, and Society.

His professional path runs through some of the most prestigious institutions in America. At Goldman Sachs, he served as Managing Director and Chief Learning Officer, overseeing the firm’s acclaimed Pine Street Leadership Development Group and Goldman Sachs University — one of the most sophisticated corporate learning operations in the world. He subsequently led the Division of Executive Education as Vice Dean at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, before becoming Dean of Columbia University’s School of Professional Studies, where he held the Professor of Human Capital Management chair. Today, future of work speaker Jason Wingard serves as Senior Advisor at Harvard University, where he advises senior institutional leaders and leads a research agenda on workforce transformation and innovation, while also serving as Executive Chairman of The Education Board, Inc., his management consulting firm specializing in executive coaching and leadership strategy.

Four Books, One Clear Argument: Learning Is the Only Sustainable Advantage

Wingard has built one of the most coherent intellectual bodies of work on talent and organizational learning of any executive thinker working today. His four books — Learning to Succeed (2015), Learning for Life (2016), The Great Skills Gap (2021), and The College Devaluation Crisis (2022), the latter two published by Stanford University Press — chart a sustained argument: that organizations and institutions which treat learning as a strategic priority will outcompete those that do not, and that the gap between the skills workers have and the skills the economy needs is not a talent problem but a leadership failure. He is also a Senior Contributor to Forbes, where he writes regularly on leadership strategy, workforce development, and the structural challenges facing higher education.

Beyond his primary roles, Wingard serves as Senior Advisor at the Social Finance Institute, on the boards of Kroll, JUST Capital, Roundabout Theatre Company, and Fulbright Canada, and is founder and chair of the Potomac Community Foundation, a Maryland-based nonprofit focused on youth education and workforce development.

As a speaker, Jason Wingard delivers something that is genuinely rare on the conference circuit: the combined credibility of a Goldman Sachs CLO, an Ivy League dean, a Harvard advisor, and a prolific researcher — all translated into practical, actionable insight for senior leaders. His talks address how organizations build learning cultures that drive performance, how the skills gap is reshaping talent strategy, what AI and technological disruption demand of leadership, and why the institutions that will win the next decade are those investing in human capital now. Audiences leave not just informed but equipped.