Tim Sanders is the Vice President of Customer Insights at Upwork, driving their customer-centric approach to help businesses solve their talent gap problems. As a strategic consulting for leading global brands, government agencies, and trade associations, he has helped individuals and organizations tackle marketing innovation, sales performance, talent management, leadership development, and organizational culture. He’s served on advisory boards for several startups, including the social reading website Goodreads, which was purchased by Amazon.
Tim is the author of five books, including the New York Times bestseller, Love is the Killer App: How to Win Business and Influence Friends. His publications have over one million copies in print with bestseller status in India, South Korea, Italy, Brazil, and Denmark.
Throughout his career, he’s been on the cutting edge of innovation and change management. Fresh out of graduate school, he was deeply involved in the quality revolution, which disrupted manufacturing in the 1980’s. He joined the cellular phone industry the year it debuted in North America. He was an early stage member of Mark Cuban’s broadcast.com, which had the largest opening day gain in IPO history. He went to Yahoo! when they acquired Cuban’s company for almost six billion dollars and rose to the Chief Solutions Officer position and later was named the company’s leadership coach.
Tim credits his passions of research, critical thinking, and public speaking to his high school days, where he was the captain of the debate team, and then later in college, a national champion. He points to his years of fronting a rock band as the epicenter of his innovative approach to marketing.
Today, his mission is to bring all of his life experiences and his unconventional, disruptive – yet inspired strategies and perspectives to thousands of people every year, helping them to boost their leadership effectiveness, human connection, and business performance.
