Besner, Gregory
Biography
Greg Besner is the Founder and Vice Chairman of CultureIQ, a global company that helps organizations create high-performance cultures. Besner founded CultureIQ in 2013, and since then he and his firm have assisted more than one thousand organizations and millions of employees strengthen their company culture. Of note, he was an early investor in Zappos.com, which inspired his commitment to organizational culture.
In 2018, Besner was ranked in USA Today the 8th best CEO in the United States among a pool of 50,000 companies. He was also named the EY Entrepreneur Of The Year® in New Jersey in 2003.
In addition to his leadership role with CultureIQ, Besner has been on the faculty of New York University Stern School of Business since 2013. He is a highly rated adjunct professor teaching hundreds of students topics including organizational culture, leadership and entrepreneurship.
Prior to launching CultureIQ, Besner was the Founder and CEO of Computershare Executive Services, an equity compensation management company formally known as Restricted Stock Systems, Inc. (“RSS”). Besner founded RSS in 2000, and sold it to Computershare Limited in 2007. He remained as President of Computershare Executive Services until 2009.
In 2000, Besner co-founded Leslie Hsu LLC, a consumer products company that has launched brands such as UGG® Handbags and True Religion Handbags. Besner and his team are currently launching SUNFLOW, a premium beach brand introduced in the summer of 2020.
Besner’s business articles are frequently published in magazines, and his interviews and presentations have been featured in numerous media publications and podcasts. He is a sought after speaker for leadership conferences around the world on the topic of business, culture, and the future of work.
In 2020, Besner completed his sixth year of the Harvard Business School Presidents’ Program in Leadership. He has also earned his MBA from The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania in Management and Finance, and his BA from Rutgers College in English Literature and Economics.
The visionary CEO of Zappos explains how an emphasis on corporate culture can lead to unprecedented success. Pay new employees $2000 to quit. Make customer service the entire company, not just a department. Focus on company culture as the #1 priority. Apply research from the science of happiness to running a business. Help employees grow both personally and professionally. Seek to change the world. Oh, and make money too. Sound crazy? It’s all standard operating procedure at Zappos.com, the online retailer that’s doing over $1 billion in gross merchandise sales every year. In 1999, Tony Hsieh (pronounced Shay) sold LinkExchange, the company he co-founded, to Microsoft for $265 million. He then joined Zappos as an adviser and investor, and eventually became CEO. In 2009, Zappos was listed as one of Fortune magazine’s top 25 companies to work for, and was acquired by Amazon later that year in a deal valued at over $1.2 billion on the day of closing. In his first book, Tony shares the different business lessons he learned in life, from a lemonade stand and pizza business through LinkExchange, Zappos, and more. Ultimately, he shows how using happiness as a framework can produce profits, passion, and purpose both in business and in life.
