
Who Is Julian Lighton?
I can help you navigate your next – your next career, your next team, your next organization










Much like elite athletes and performers, high performance in business requires disciplined focus and mastery. The most effective leaders and teams get coached by elite coaches who have been in their situations and can provide a blend of coaching, mentoring and advice.
With decades of experience guiding some of the world's most successful executives, I customize my coaching to meet each leader's distinct needs. This means going beyond personal growth to incorporate the unique context of your business ecosystem — including team dynamics, organizational culture, and industry-specific obstacles.
I am one of only 400 coaches worldwide individual and team-certified as an expert practitioner by the ICF and EMCC
I've had the pleasure of working with Julian. He's a detailed oriented coach who's focused and grounded around the specific customer needs. Julian has an ideal skill set to balance between strategy and execution.

Manny Rivelo
Former CEO at F5 (NASDAQ)
Of all my professional experiences, working with Julian was easily one of the most enjoyable and invigorating. Julian is blessed with a massive intellect, which is balanced with a focus on results, a spirit of camaraderie, and a great sense of humor.

Malcolm Frank
Former Chief Strategy Officer and Chief Marketing Officer at Cognizant (NASDAQ)
Julian is one of the brightest professionals I have the chance to work with in my entire career - super smart, strategic, quick, sophisticated, and with an unsurpassed capability for developing relationships. I learned a lot during the time we worked together and have him in my list of "go-to" persons for advice on complex issues and guidance on executive/strategic thinking.

Rodrigo Abreu
CEO and Member of the Board at Oi Telecom, Brazil
Julian has served as a thought partner to me several times over the last 15 years. Julian is that rare combination of brilliant strategist, great communicator and genuinely good man. I can recommend Julian without reservation and know who I will go to the next time I need help being coached about a difficult business problem.

David Kuizenga
Chief Financial Officer, Common Sense Media
Julian is an extremely creative business coach who pushes the envelope in understanding the role of business coaching in driving new business performance opportunities and re-shaping organizational options and management practices. He maintains a great balance between big picture thinking and bottom-line focus.

John Hagel
NYT Best Selling Author, Chairman at Deloitte Center for the Edge
Julian is a brilliant thinker and has a prodigious memory. The combined effects of these (and other) qualities are that he can strategically "connect dots" and generate very innovative insights--both to handle constraints and to address potential opportunities as a business coach.

Enrique Rueda-Sabater
Former Head of Strategy at The World Bank and current Senior Advisor at BCG
Julian is a creative innovator in many ways.. his expansive capacity for strategic leadership is paired with an ability to manage, comprehend and communicate complexity on many levels. His ability to bring market or technology perspective to strategic decisions is an ability that distinguishes him as a coach.

Darren Ware
SVP, Public Sector Partnerships at Mastercard
Julian is unquestionably one of the most intelligent men I know. His understanding of what it takes to grow a company, enter new markets and make the best use of company resources is outstanding. Working with Julian always proves to be an education often in subjects spanning the globe. I always enjoy working with him and would recommend him to anyone looking to grow, challenge and inspire their business.

Simon Kelton
Board Chairman at Pepper
Julian is a extremely competent strategist and negotiator. His encyclopedic command of fact brings a high level of confidence to every conversation. Julian's advice has been extraordinarily valuable to the team at Oscar Wilde.

Stuart Hall
CEO at Oscar Wilde Spirits
Julian is an intellectual firecracker that makes every executive and every firm he works with better. His intellectual horsepower and deep experience developing strategy at variety of companies allows him to challenge the status quo for a coachee, introduces out of the box thinking, and constantly is asking "why not do...?".

Marc Caltabiano
Former Chief Product Officer at Renaissance Learning
I have had the pleasure to work with Julian. He is one of the best business partners and strategic advisors I have known. He is smart, insightful, honest, practical, funny and collaborative. I really enjoyed working with him. I hope I can do so again.

Pim Versteeg
Former SVP, Sales and Marketing, EMEA at TiVo
Julian's passion and dedication to strategic problem solving is matched only by his wit and intelligence.

Frank La Placa
Former SVP, Corporate Development at Ampersand
Brilliant strategist, innovative thinker, inspirational coach. Julian is one of the handful of people I've worked with who've inspired me to greater heights.

Roy Schuster
Senior Director of Sales at Infoblox
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