Dr. James Hooks is a leadership philosopher and senior People executive with two decades of practice at the center of technology’s most formative institutions — Meta, Twitter, Airbnb, and Roblox. He operates at the intersection of organizational science, human-centered design, and agentic AI, building the people infrastructure that allows companies to scale without losing their soul.

Most recently as Senior Director of People Experience and Learning at Roblox, James built the company’s first learning and development function from the ground up — expanding its scope from coaching and leadership development to encompass global employee experience, people product management, belonging and inclusion, and an internal content production studio. At Airbnb, he architected Learning Labs and developed R-DASH, a change management framework created during the acute disruption of 2020 that has since become a model for leading organizations through periods of sustained upheaval. Across his career, his signature work has shaped culture and developed thousands of leaders at scale.

James holds a doctorate and master’s degree in Organizational Leadership from the University of Massachusetts and executive education at Stanford Graduate School of Business, with undergraduate work at Chapman University. His doctoral research examined the meaning-making of Black leaders in technology organizations — work that continues to anchor his philosophy of belonging and inclusive leadership.

He has spoken at UC Berkeley Haas, UMass and Babson College, and publishes widely on leadership, organizational culture, and the future of work. His essay Lead Like A Loser remains among his most widely read works. He is currently completing his memoir, The Cost of Breath.

James divides his time between San Francisco, California and Denver, Colorado.