Aaron McDaniel

Aaron McDaniel is a globally recognized corporate manager, entrepreneur, teacher, speaker and author with a passion for helping companies innovate at global scale. McDaniel is the co-author of The Wall Street Journal and National Bestseller, Global Class, a playbook for how to build a global company, developed through interviewing more than 300 executives from 50+ countries who have scaled the world’s fastest growing companies.

McDaniel is currently a faculty member at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business (where he is also an alumnus), and is the co-founder of 10X Innovation Lab, an international consulting firm and accelerator helping corporations and governments across 4 continents build and leverage innovation ecosystems. He is also the managing partner of Grow Scale, a real estate private equity firm.

McDaniel began his corporate career at AT&T, as part of its flagship Leadership Development Program. He rose to become one of the youngest to serve as Regional Vice President (at age 27) and was an AT&T Diamond Club honoree, being part of the Top 1% of sales managers worldwide (out of an organization of 10,000+). McDaniel is also a serial entrepreneur, having founded 3 companies that were acquired (Pong360, Tycoon, Access Invest), one of which he turned down an offer for on ABC’s Shark Tank.

He is also the author of The Young Professional’s Guide to the Working World (an international top 10 listed book printed in multiple languages, with a foreword by New York Times Bestseller Marshall Goldsmith) and The Young Professional’s Guide to Managing (foreword by co-author of The Leadership Challenge, Jim Kouzes), has been featured in numerous media outlets including: Forbes, The Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal, Inc., Bloomberg BusinessWeek, CBSRadio, Entrepreneur, and US News & World Report, and is trusted by top companies including: Microsoft, the Ritz-Carlton, Deloitte Consulting, Wells Fargo, Principal Financial and UnitedHealth Group. McDaniel is the Vice Chairman of Project Giving Kids, a non-profit helping kids learn empathy through age-appropriate volunteering opportunities, and lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.