Bio

My Mission

My mission is to help restore American (and global) culture of sustainability and stewardship from expecting deprivation, sacrifice, burden, and chore to expecting rewarding emotions and lifestyles, as I see happen with those I lead to act for their intrinsic motivations.

In my case the emotions have been joy, fun, freedom, connection, meaning, and purpose.

Everyone’s experience will be unique to his or her experience, but I know we all love nature so I don’t have to change anyone. I reveal what’s already there.

This blog, my workshops, my podcast, my public speaking, and my books are strategic elements serving that mission.

[Photo by Azael Montejo, Jr]

Short bio

[Feel free to cut sentences from the bottom for space]

Joshua Spodek PhD MBA is the premier voice in sustainability leadership. His workshops change lives. He hosts the award-winning This Sustainable Life podcast, is a four-time TEDx speaker, bestselling author of Sustainability Simplified, Initiative, and Leadership Step by Step, professor at NYU, and leadership coach.

He holds a PhD in astrophysics and an MBA from Columbia, where he studied under a Nobel Laureate and helped launch a satellite. He left academia to found a venture to market an invention that showed animated images to subway riders between stations.

He teaches and coaches leadership and entrepreneurship at NYU. He has spoken at Harvard, Princeton, West Point, Google, IBM, The New York Academy of Science, Children’s Aid Society, and other renowned institutions.

He has been featured in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, on the Daily Show, and published in The New Yorker, TIME, Inc., Quartz, and Psychology Today. Featured in pieces on every major network, he has been called “best and brightest” in Esquire’s Genius issue, “astrophysicist turned new media whiz” by NBC, and “rocket scientist” by Forbes.

He visited North Korea twice, swam across the Hudson River twice, has done burpees daily since 2011 (250,000 and counting), hasn’t filled a load of garbage since 2019, hasn’t flown (by choice) since March 2016, unplugged his refrigerator since September 2021, disconnected his apartment from the electric grid in May 2022, and his carbon footprint is about 1 ton per year. He blogs daily at joshuaspodek.com.

He speaks on leadership, entrepreneurship, and environmental leadership at institutions such as Boston Consulting Group, Google, IBM, PwC, S&P, Children’s Aid Society, The New York Academy of Science, NY Public Library, Harvard, Princeton, West Point, MIT, Stanford, Rice, USC, Berkeley, INSEAD, the NY Academy of Science, and more.

He holds a PhD in astrophysics and an MBA from Columbia, where he studied under a Nobel Laureate, after formative childhood years in a gang-ridden neighborhood of Philadelphia. He helped build an X-ray observational satellite with the European Space Agency and NASA.

He left academia to found a venture to market his invention—a technology to show motion pictures to moving subways—installing displays on four continents. He holds six patents and founded two education ventures.

He has been featured on the front page of the New York Times metro section, on the Daily Show and published in The New Yorker, TIME, Inc., Quartz, Ars Technica, and Psychology Today. He has been called “best and brightest” (Esquire’s Genius issue), “astrophysicist turned new media whiz” (NBC), and “rocket scientist” (Forbes).

His clients include start-up founders, executives of publicly traded companies, and employees of McKinsey, Bain, BCG, Deloitte, JP Morgan Chase, Google, IBM, Exxon, and the US Navy and Army, as well as graduates of Harvard, MIT, Stanford, and others. He has appeared in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Washington Post, Forbes, Esquire, Entrepreneur, Nikkei Shimbun, the South China Morning Post, ABC, CBS, NBC, NPR, Fox, and CNN.

He credits his stellar reviews to his experiential, active, project-based technique with minimal lecture or reading or writing papers.

As an artist he has installed public works in Bryant Park (NYC), Union Square (NYC), and Amsterdam’s Dam Square. He has had solo shows in New York and group shows nationwide, including Art Basel Miami Beach. He studied Meisner Technique at the William Esper Studio. He has taught art at Parsons and NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program. He devoted years to learning and practicing the social and emotional skills of attraction and dating, becoming the #1 coach in the #1 market for the #1 guru. Since those years were in his late 30s and early 40s, he tended to coach men and women in long-term relationships or newly single from them.

He ran six marathons (3:51 best), rowed two, competed at the world and national level of Ultimate (#5 at nationals, and #11 at worlds), including the first ultimate tournament in North Korea. He swam across the Hudson River twice, did over 250,000 burpees, wrote over 5,300 blog posts, took over 800 cold showers, and jumped out of two airplanes. He visited North Korea twice and swam across the Hudson River twice.

You cannot lead others to live by values you live the opposite of, nor do you know what you’re doing if you don’t practice. Therefore, he hasn’t filled a load of garbage at home since 2019, hasn’t flown (by choice) since March 2016, unplugged his refrigerator since September 2021, disconnected his apartment from the electric grid in May 2022, and his carbon footprint is about 1 ton per year. He has picked up at least one piece of litter per day since April 2017.

He has lived in Paris, Ahmedabad (India), Philadelphia, and Shanghai. He lives in New York and blogs daily at joshuaspodek.com.

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