Tom Zender: CEO Mentor, Author, Speaker

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Summary

Tom Zender is a professional Mentor, Coach, and Leadership Developer for the CEO’s of small-medium and large businesses, and nonprofits in the Phoenix area. His clients include Arizona State University, Intelemark, Center for Entrepreneurial Innovation, Goodwill Industries, Biosensing Instruments, and Workers Compensation Corporation of America.

He held leadership roles at General Electric and Honeywell, and has been a senior vice president in publicly held corporations, New York Stock Exchange and NASDAQ listed.  

Additionally, he was the CEO of a startup technology company. And, he was president and CEO of a global nonprofit that serves over two million people.  

Tom’s corporate board experience includes NASDAQ, Toronto Stock Exchange, and OTC listed public companies. He held nonprofit board positions with Ottawa University, the Forum for Corporate Directors, Unity, and Evolutionary Leaders.

As CEO and senior vice president he has held responsibility for:

  • Strategic Business Development
  • Marketing, Sales and Customer Support
  • Information Technology Development and Deployment
  • Finance, Accounting, Human Resources, Production, Facilities Management

He is a graduate of Ottawa University with a B.A. in Business and focus areas of Leadership, Marketing, and Information Technology.

His first two books were Amazon bestsellers in business ethics. Four subsequent books about leadership have been published: “The Bottom Lines 2019: 52 Lessons in Leadership” plus the 2018, 2017, and 2016 editions. Tom writes a weekly column about leadership and business for the Phoenix Business Journal. He has spoken to audiences of over 1,000 people in over 20 countries about numerous business topics.

Tom lives in Phoenix, Arizona with his wife, Wendy Zender, Ph.D., Educational Technology from the University of Southern California.

Business Experience

General Electric (NYSE listed)
Manager Technical Support; large-scale computers; marketing and sales in manufacturing, financial, and technology industries; designed systems and software.

Honeywell (NYSE listed)
Manager of Worldwide Large Systems Support; networked large scale systems; support development, marketing and sales; Manager of Large Systems Product Requirements.

ITT (NYSE listed)
Vice President of Customer Service; computer display systems; provided field service and support to several hundred customers worldwide with a base of 30,0000 systems.

GenRad (NYSE listed)
Director of Marketing; electronic test systems; strategic planning, marketing, key customer sales and support (e.g., IBM, Kodak, GTE, U.S. Army, Xerox).

MAI Systems (NYSE listed)
Senior Vice President of Strategic Development; business applications systems; strategy, program management, managed acquisitions (including Bell Atlantic Service).

Encore Computer (NASDAQ listed)
Senior Vice President of Marketing and Business Development; massively parallel systems; planning, introduction; distribution; company sold to Sun Microsystems.

Unity (501c3 nonprofit)
President and CEO; global nonprofit serving 2 million people; functional responsibility for 500 employees engaged in every aspect of business, including fund raising.

Corporate Board Experience

SAMSys Technologies (Toronto Stock Exchange listed)
Producer of radio frequency identification systems (RFID); member of compensation and governance committees.

Peerless Systems (NASDAQ listed)
Provider of computer imaging hardware and software; member of compensation committee.

GoSolutions (Over-The-Counter listed)
Producer of cloud-based communications systems for enterprise networks; member of compensation and audit committees.

Nonprofit Board Experience

Forum for Corporate Directors, Ottawa University, Evolutionary Leaders, Unity.

Community Involvement

Tom mentors students and faculty at Arizona State University’s SkySong business startup incubator; mentors in the ASU EPICS student engineering program; provides leadership courses for the Maricopa County Community College District’s Center for Entrepreneurial Innovation; serves on the President’s Community Advisory Council at Paradise Valley Community College, board member of his spiritual community in Phoenix; guest lecturer at Northern Arizona University.