Aaron is an innovation expert with seventeen years of experience innovating in complex organisations.

Aaron is the author of the acclaimed book, Today’s Innovator, a coaching guide for anyone who must innovate, and is launching an innovation training business by the same name in early 2020. Aaron views innovation not as an activity, but as a core organizational competency that must be developed, led, and nurtured within both the individual and the organization. Aaron has spoken at many conferences on the topics of innovation leadership, technology trends, culture change, innovation roadblocks, and more.

After getting his Master’s Degree in Applied Mathematics from Georgia Tech, Aaron got his career started as a Data Analyst at Capital One — a role that for sure would be called a Data Scientist today. It is there that he gained his first exposure to innovation as part of a team that developed new products and processes that contributed over $50 million per year. Aaron later worked as a Product Owner in Capital One’s “Invention Factory,” as well as several other roles that would shape his career as an innovator. It is at Capital One where Aaron learned the value a strong corporate culture has in driving innovation. He left Capital One in 2007 to gain experience in the startup environment, working to develop a new way of packaging and selling life insurance.

At Transamerica, a multinational, Fortune 500 insurance company, Aaron built and led the company’s Insights & Innovation department, consisting of six centers of excellence designed to fuel innovation. As Chief Innovation Officer, he led a division- wide effort to transform the culture of 6,000 employees to a culture of innovation, collaboration, and trust. As Chief Customer Advocate, he merged the company’s customer-centric service strategy with its forward-looking innovation strategy. And, as the Head of Marketing Innovation, he built and staffed a cutting-edge Research & Development team tasked with building customer experiences of the future and integrating them back into Transamerica’s core business.

In 2016, at the age of forty, Aaron stepped away from the corporate grind to decompress and reevaluate his career trajectory. He founded Adaptivity Enterprises, LLC, to “help the world thrive amidst accelerating pace of change” by writing, speaking at conferences, coaching innovation leaders, and helping organizations design and build their innovation competency. Aaron has been a regular writing contributor at InnovationLeader.com and Insurance Thought Leadership. He resides outside of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

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