Leonard Lodish Biography

Leonard M. Lodish is the Samuel R. Harrell Emeritus Professor in the Marketing Department of the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania and Leader of the Wharton Global Consulting Practicum (GCP) that has subsidiary partnerships with leading business schools in Israel, Chile, Peru, China, Taiwan, India, UAE, and Spain. Through the GCP program, groups of Wharton MBA's work with MBA students at the partner institution on real projects to help a foreign client company leverage a relationship with North America or a North American firm leverage a relationship with the partner country. Len was the initial Vice Dean for Wharton’s San Francisco campus from 2001-2009 and is currently Senior Advisor in San Francisco. He was also the first Wharton Vice Dean for Social Impact from 2009-2012.

In 1995, he initiated, developed, and currently teaches Wharton’s Entrepreneurial Marketing MBA Course and wrote Entrepreneurial Marketing: Lessons from Wharton’s Pioneering MBA Course, with Howard L. Morgan, and Amy Kallianpur, published in 2001 by John Wiley. In 2007 Wharton Publishing published Marketing that Works: How Entrepreneurial Marketing can Add Sustainable Value to Any Sized Company, written by Len, Howard Morgan, and Shellye Archambeau. He has published over 60 articles, is active as an editor in leading Marketing and Management Science Journals, and is the author of The Advertising and Promotion Challenge: Vaguely Right or Precisely Wrong, published by Oxford University Press. Len is also the co-founder and co-director of the Wharton-INSEAD “Leading the Effective Sales Force” executive program which is delivered each year in Singapore, Fontainebleau, and Philadelphia.

Professor Lodish's primary research and consulting areas are in entrepreneurial marketing, strategic and tactical marketing resource planning, marketing decision support systems, and applications in firm/marketing strategy, sales force, advertising, and promotion planning. In 1987 he led a team that won the Franz Edelman Award for Management Science Practical Achievement from the Institute of Management Sciences for a sales force sizing and deployment model responsible for a sales increase of $25 million annually at Syntex Laboratories.

Professor Lodish has developed models and decision support systems that have been syndicated to worldwide use. They include MEDIAC® for media planning, CALLPLAN® for sales force deployment, and PROMOTER® and PROMOTIONSCAN® for promotion planning and evaluation. He led a consortium of most major consumer packaged goods manufacturers, leading advertising agencies, and the major U.S. T.V. networks in a comprehensive analysis of 381 real world split cable TV experiments entitled "How T.V. Advertising Works" which appeared as the lead article in Journal of Marketing Research in August 1995 and in 1996 won the American Marketing Association’s new Paul E. Green award for the article in the journal which is most likely to have an impact on marketing practice. In 2000 this article was also awarded the Odell award for the article in the journal that had the most impact after five years and was also judged the best article after five years by the American Marketing Association’s Advertising Special Interest Group. An update to the study published in 2007 won the best article award from the editors of Journal of Advertising Research.

As a part time entrepreneur, Professor Lodish co-founded Management Decision Systems, Inc. (MDS) in 1967 with $4000 of initial equity capital. In 1985 MDS's, 300 employees, merged with Information Resources, Inc. to become a premier international decision support and marketing data supplier. He was a corporate director of public companies Information Resources from 1986-2003 and Franklin Electronic Publishers from 1992-2009. He also was co-owner and co-founder of Shadow Broadcast Services in 1991 that was sold to Westwood One, Inc. in 1998.

He has been a Corporate Director of public company: J&J Snack Foods, Inc since 1992. He also is or was a director or advisory board member of private companies – Compete.com, DVtel, Diapers.com (now Quidsi and part of Amazon), Milo.com (now part of Ebay), Notehall Inc (now a subsidiary of Chegg, Inc.)., Oxicool, Inc., Sight Machine, InfoScout, Realfood Works, and Powergetics,Inc, (now STEM)., as well as an advisor to First Round Capital, Vintage Venture Funds, Mentor Tech Funds, Lumia Capital, and the Jerusalem Global Venture Funds. Len was the first outside director of Diapers.com which was the fastest growing Internet retailer for 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, and 2009 and was sold to Amazon.com for over $500 million in 2011. Len was also the first outside director of Milo.com that was sold in 2010 to eBay for over $70 million after only 2 years in business. Professor Lodish has consulted with many major firms world wide, including Procter and Gamble, Anheuser Busch, Syntex Laboratories, Merck and Company, McNeil Consumer Products Company, the Campbells Soup Company, Bentley Systems, Inc., Merrill Lynch, the Coca-Cola Company, and Walsh/PMSI.

Len received a Ph.D. (Marketing and Operations Research) from Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Sloan School of Management in 1968 and an A.B. (Mathematics) from Kenyon College in 1965.

In 1996 Len and his wife Susan pedaled their tandem bicycle across the U.S., and since then have done long distance bicycle rides each year which have raised over $1,300,000 for the A.L.S. (Lou Gehrig’s Disease) Association . Len is a licensed sailplane pilot and ardent bicycle commuter.

As a renowned expert and highly sought-after speaker, Leonard Lodish's expertise is in high demand. To book Leonard Lodish for your next event, conference, or workshop, please contact our speaker booking agency. Our experienced team will work closely with you to understand your specific needs and help secure Leonard Lodish's participation. With our professional guidance and seamless booking process, you can ensure a memorable and impactful experience for your audience. Don't miss the opportunity to engage your audience with Leonard Lodish's compelling insights and inspire positive change within your organization. Fill out the booking request form to take the first step in securing Leonard Lodish for your next speaking engagement.