Michael Gold

Michael Gold is the founder and president of Jazz Impact, where he develops and conducts interactive seminars that bring together the two seemingly disparate worlds of jazz and business. A dynamic speaker, he has presented keynote programs for over a decade to top Fortune 500 companies and NGOs such as IBM, Microsoft, GAP, Siemens, Aetna Insurance, Starbucks, McGraw-Hill, Thomson International, HSBC Bank, Credit Suisse, BASF, Baxter Healthcare, Blue Cross Blue Shield, General Dynamics, The Hay Group International, Cargill, Accenture, General Mills, and The United Nations. Gold's expertise is in creating customized interactive keynotes and training sessions that reinforce team-building, problem solving, and other management skills by drawing upon live jazz performance and the collaborative techniques of jazz improvisation.

Gold's extensive background in music, business, and academia was essential in developing Jazz Impact. He held various senior management positions in the real estate and financial services industries, holds a Ph.D. in music, and created and ran the first jazz program at Vassar College. He spent nearly two decades as a jazz bassist in New York having performed with such greats as Lee Konitz, Al Cohn, Tal Farlow, Sheila Jordan, Jon Hendricks, and Warne Marsh. In 1995, he received a grant from The National Endowment for the Arts to teach the skills of jazz improvisation to professional orchestral musicians, a first step towards forming Jazz Impact.

In 2008, Gold was selected as The Paul D. Fleck Fellow by The Banff Centre for Leadership for his outstanding work in the field of arts-based learning for business. He uses the art of jazz in a unique approach to teaching leadership development for the Executive MBA and Leadership Development Programs at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University and the MBA Program at Loyola University in New Orleans. He has lectured at the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business, the Richard Ivey School of Business, and the School of Public Health Policy at the University of Minnesota.

He received a Bachelor of Arts from Bard College, a Master's of Arts in African American Studies from the New England Conservatory of Music, and a Ph.D. in Performance from the School of Education at New York University.