Aaron McDaniel

Aaron McDaniel is an entrepreneur, corporate manager, speaker, and author with a passion for helping organizations innovate and better engage their millennial workforce. He pairs his multi-generational teamwork expertise with strong corporate experience, having been in leadership and management roles for over a decade. At the age of 27, McDaniel became one of the youngest ever to serve as Regional Vice President at AT&T, a Fortune Global 100 company. He was a graduate of AT&T’s flagship MBA-only Leadership Development Program (as an undergraduate), and was part of AT&T’s Diamond Club, being part of the top 1% of sales leaders worldwide. He has built many successful ventures including three that were acquired (Access Invest, the nation’s largest mobile aggregator of alternative investments acquired in 2016; Tycoon, the first real estate crowdfunding platform to be acquired in 2015; and Pong360, an e-commerce portal targeting millennials, acquired in 2012). Currently, McDaniel is a co-founder of 10x Innovation Lab, an organization that educates and connects international entrepreneurs, government organizations, and corporations with the Silicon Valley. He is a member of the faculty at Berkeley Haas and is a founding partner of Velocity Capital Group. McDaniel is the author of The Young Professional’s Guide to the Working World (an international top-10 listed book printed in multiple languages, with a foreword by New York Times Bestseller Marshall Goldsmith) and The Young Professional’s Guide to Managing (foreword by co-author of The Leadership Challenge, Jim Kouzes) and has been written about in Forbes, Inc., Entrepreneur, Bloomberg BusinessWeek and US News & World Report. He has also been heard on CBS Radio & NPR and seen on ABC’s Shark Tank and has spoken to groups of executives and young professionals at top companies and organizations including The Ritz-Carlton Leadership Academy, Deloitte Consulting, Wells Fargo, UnitedHealth Group and many more.

Education

BS, Business Administration, UC Berkeley – Haas School of Business

Positions Held

• 2015-2016, CEO & Co-Founder, Access Investors Network
  
• 2014-2015, CEO & Founder, Tycoon Real Estate
  
• 2008-2012, CEO & Co-Founder, Pong360
  
• 2009-2010, CEO & Co-Founder, Flagdown Taxi
  
• 2011-2014, Director, Business Development, AT&T
  
• 2007-2011, Regional VP & Regional Sales Manager, AT&T
  
• 2005-2007, Leadership Development Program (Operations Manager), AT&T
  

External Service and Assignments

Advisory Board, CoPilot Labs (Acquired by OpenTable) 2013-2014

Current Research and Interests

• Millennial Workplace Trends

Selected Papers and Publications

• The Young Professionals Guide to the Working World (foreword by Marshall Goldsmith), Career Press 2012
• The Young Professionals Guide to Managing (foreword by Jim Kouzes), Career Press 2013

Teaching

• Introduction to Entrepreneurship (UGBA/L&S C5)