Doug Paxton is a learner, educator, writer and coach who is passionate about what humanity has to learn from connecting with one another, our values, and the natural world. Doug has been working in leadership, teaching, facilitation and coaching for over thirty years within the private, public, and nonprofit sectors. He holds a BA in Economics/Government from Georgetown, an MBA from the Yale School of Management, and an Ph.D. in Transformative Learning from the California Institute of Integral Studies. His focus on leadership grew out of a lifelong passion for helping people bring more of their unique gifts and talents to their work and lives, in service of being more effective and impactful.
Currently, Doug is the Co-Director of the Saint Mary’s College Leadership Center, and faculty in the MA in Leadership program, one of the first stand-alone MA degrees devoted entirely to leadership. The central focus of his teaching includes values, ethics and sustainable organizational change. Prior to teaching, he was the founding Program Director of the Presidio Graduate School MBA in Sustainable Management, the Director of People and Organizational Development at Business for Social Responsibility and the Executive Director of Indochinese Housing Development Corporation.
His wide-ranging training and learning has included Action Research, Cooperative Inquiry, MBTI, the Enneagram, Systemic Team Coaching, Immunity to Change, Transformative Learning, T-Groups and extensive work around equity and justice in leadership. His doctoral work explored how white people can work more effectively to foster social and racial equity and justice in their lives and organizations. In addition to his focus on business and leadership curriculum, he has also studied and worked as a vision quest guide in wilderness areas using the Medicine Wheel as an indigenous model for human development. He fosters the integration of business strategy, quantitative analysis and finance with attention to how love and vulnerability show up in leadership.
He is an accredited Hall-Tonna Values executive leadership coach, who has worked with over 500 clients in all sectors of the economy, with diverse roles ranging from Corporate CEOs to Police Officers. He lives in San Francisco with his husband Joe.
