Joseph Sweeney

Joseph Sweeney creates and delivers new leadership thinking and programs for various clients in the education vertical, helping to transform their practices with inspiration and research from the fields of cognitive science, software systems, and gaming. He is the President of Sweeney Consulting, LLC, and the Director of Innovation & Learning at How I Decide, a non-profit that equips youth with fundamental thinking skills and strategies to manage everyday habits, in-the-moment choices, and significant decisions throughout their lives. He lectures at Columbia University in the Masters in Applied Analytics program and teaches Research Methods at Philadelphia University in the Doctorate in Strategic Leadership program. He is a Fellow of the Systems Wisdom Institute.

Prior to university teaching and consulting, Sweeney taught for twelve years at the secondary and college levels in the fields of mathematics, physics, software programming, and economics and was most recently the Associate Head of School at Springside Chestnut Hill Academy, a college preparatory PK-12 school in Philadelphia with an international reputation for innovation and entrepreneurship. Prior to SCH, he was the Director of Innovation and the Mathematics Department Chair at the Haverford School, and the recipient of the Rafael Laserna Outstanding Teacher Award.

Before entering the teaching profession, Sweeney worked as a software engineer, project manager, and entrepreneur, in multiple fields including the finance, medical, real estate, and legal industries. He was an active participant in several startups, including serving as a Director of Technology for Juniper Financial, an online bank successfully acquired by Barclays, and as founding Business Manager and Acting President of ePharm, a business-to-business information platform sold to C-suite executives in the pharmaceutical industry.

He received his formal education from Villanova University, earning a B.A. in the liberal arts and an M.A. in mathematics, and from Temple University, earning an M.A. in economics. In May of 2016, he received his Ph.D. in Educational Leadership from the University of Pennsylvania.