Tommy Spaulding is president of his own firm that focuses on national leadership development, speaking, training, consulting and executive coaching organization. A world-renowned speaker on leadership, Spaulding has spoken to hundreds of organizations, associations, schools, and corporations around the globe. His new book, It’s Not Just Who You Know (Transform Your Life and Your Organization by Turning Colleagues and Contacts into Lasting, Genuine Relationships), published by Random House, is a New York Times, Wall Street Journal and USA Today national bestseller.

Spaulding rose to become the youngest president and CEO of the world-renowned leadership organization, Up with People (2005-2008). In 2000, Tommy Spaulding founded Leader’s Challenge, which grew to become the largest high school civic and leadership program in the state of Colorado. He is also the founder & president of a non-profit leadership development organization which runs the National Leadership Academy, a national high school summer leadership academy, as well as Kid’s Challenge, Global Challenge and Colorado Close-Up.

Previously, Spaulding was the Business Partner Sales Manager at IBM/Lotus Development and a member of the Japan Exchange and Teaching (JET) program.

Spaulding received a BA in Political Science from East Carolina University (1992); an MBA from Bond University in Australia (1998), where he was a Rotary Ambassadorial Scholar; and an MA in Non-Profit Management from Regis University (2005), where he was a Colorado Trust Fellow. In 2007, Spaulding received an Honorary PhD in Humanities from the Art Institute of Colorado. In 2002, he received the Denver Business Journal’s “Forty under 40 Award.”

In 2006, Spaulding was awarded East Carolina University’s “Outstanding Alumni Award,” the highest distinction awarded to an alumnus of the university. Spaulding is the Chairman of East Carolina University’s External Leadership Advisory Board and is the university’s first “Leader in Residence.”