From Homeless Immigrant to Thriving CEO

About the Guest

Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Amir Ghannad, is a leadership development specialist with over three decades of hands-on experience in leadership and organizational development, and author of The Transformative Leader, which has been purchased and used by leaders in over 30 countries. He is the principal author of The Transformative Leader Blog and host of The Transformative Leader Podcast.

Amir’s corporate career began at Procter and Gamble, where he held a variety of manufacturing leadership positions in the US, Southeast Asia, and Europe. He also served as Plant Director at Sunny Delight Beverages Company, where he led the Atlanta plant operations and the company’s Workplace Excellence efforts, before taking on leading the Global High Performance Organization initiative at Campbell Soup Company. Amir transitioned from his corporate career to his leadership development consulting practice, The Ghannad Group, in December 2016.

As a Registered Corporate Coach and an accomplished trainer of courses such as Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, The Speed of Trust, DiSC, The Five Behaviors of a Cohesive Team, The Mind Gym, and many others, Amir has designed and delivered numerous customized sessions that have helped organizations successfully achieve results in a variety of business situations.

In addition to designing and conducting training sessions, and facilitating numerous workshops in various locations in the US, Asia, and Europe, Amir has effectively led multi-national and multi-functional teams in delivering superior results through his ability to rally teams around a common vision. Having had extensive hands-on leadership experience in a variety of business situations, Amir is adept in using an array of tools and methodologies to facilitate teams through the process of strategy development and deployment, organizational assessment and design, high-performance organization development, transition management, and leadership development.

As a sought-after keynote speaker and a Professional Member of the National Speakers Association, Amir has had the pleasure of speaking on the topic of leadership effectiveness and culture transformation at conferences held in the US and abroad, where he is consistently rated the highest-ranked speaker at the event.

Amir holds B.S. and M.S. degrees in Mechanical Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology and an MBA from Wilmington University. Amir and his wife, Connie, live in Atlanta, Georgia, have been married for 36 years, and have a son and a daughter. He and his family make up The Ghannad Group.