Dov Seidman

Dov Seidman
Seidman at LRN Knowledge Forum 2014
Born	(1964-05-13) May 13, 1964 (age 60) San Francisco, California, US
Alma mater	UCLA, Harvard Law School
Occupation(s)	Author Chairman of the board Former CEO of LRN
Website	www.dovseidman.com

Dov Seidman (born May 13, 1964) is an American author, columnist and businessman. He is the founder, chairman and former CEO of LRN,^[1] an ethics and compliance management firm.^[2][3] He is also the author of How,^[4] and founded The HOW Institute for Society.^[5][6]

Early life

Seidman was born in San Francisco, California. His father, Alex, was a Polish-born physician who died in 1992. At the age of 3, Seidman moved to Israel with his mother and two siblings.^[7] He returned to the United States in 1977, when he was 13. Seidman's first business was as a teenager detailing automobiles, including those of R&B singer Lionel Richie every Saturday.^[8][9] Seidman is dyslexic;^[10] his dyslexia is the subject of a case study in the book The Dyslexic Advantage.^[11]

Education

Seidman attended UCLA for both bachelor's and master's degrees in philosophy, graduating summa cum laude in 1987.^[12] He then received another bachelor's degree from Oxford University in philosophy, politics and economics, where he was a Newton-Tatum scholar and served as captain of the Balliol College crew team.^[12] Following Oxford, he attended Harvard Law School, graduating in 1992.^[13]

Career

After law school, Seidman joined the law firm O'Melveny & Myers and left in December 1992.^[14] Subsequently, borrowing money from friends and using credit cards, he launched the Legal Research Network (LRN) in 1994, to offer outsourced legal research and analysis to corporate law departments and law firms. He raised $2 million from 42 investors.^[15] By the end of 1999, LRN became involved in compliance training by offering a software as a service-based ethics and compliance education platform.^[16] Seidman also had LRN analyze corporate cultures and write codes of conduct.^[17] In 2016, Seidman negotiated a partnership between LRN and professional services firm PwC, which allowed LRN to expand their business with PwC clients; this lasted two years and represented up to 8% of LRN's revenue at the time.^[18] PwC reached a settlement with LRN; using this settlement money, LRN offered to purchase shares as an accommodation to some shareholders who had asked to liquidate their holdings. Ultimately approximately half of shareholders agreed and the company bought out a quarter of its shares, giving Seidman a larger share of ownership in the company.^[18] In 2018, Seidman oversaw an investment of an undisclosed amount from New York-based private equity firm Leeds Equity Partners into LRN.^[19] The following year, in 2019, Seidman, LRN, and two other board members were sued by a former shareholder for breach of their fiduciary duties alleging that shareholders were encouraged to sell their shares at an unfairly low price in 2017 and for not disclosing information regarding a potential transaction to them.^[20][18] Lawyers for Seidman called the lawsuit "seller's remorse," and as of October 2020, there has not been a court ruling regarding the allegations.^[18]

Seidman founded The HOW Institute for Society, a non-profit focused on moral leadership, and was also its chairman.^[5]

He has testified before the U.S. Sentencing Commission about the need for companies to develop ethical cultures instead of 'check-the-box', compliance-only approaches, and his testimony helped shape the amendments to the Federal Sentencing Guidelines.^[2] He was hired by the NFL commissioner in 2014 to advocate to its owners and head coaches the need for the NFL to create a culture where tolerance and respect were normal expectations.^[21] He spoke about issues concerning global leadership at a Fortune Magazine conference for 100 CEOs held in Vatican City.^[22]

In 2022, Seidman became a Hauser Leader at the Harvard Kennedy School's Center for Public Leadership.^[23]

Publications

US book cover

Seidman wrote a book, How: Why How We Do Anything Means Everything... in Business (and in Life) published in September 2007. In 2011, How: Why How We Do Anything Means Everything, an expanded edition, was published.^[24][25][1] and became a New York Times Best Seller in the "Advice, How-to, and Miscellaneous" category.^[26]

Seidman is a columnist for DealBook in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal,^[27] Forbes,^[13] and The Huffington Post.

Legal disputes

Seidman sued yogurt maker Chobani and its advertising agency Droga5 in 2014 claiming that an advertising campaign run that same year around the theme "How Matters" violated trademarks legally held by Seidman.^[28][29][30] In 2017, Seidman settled the lawsuit out of court after Chobani withdrew its application for a trademark for "How Matters."^[31]

In March 2016, Seidman and LRN filed a lawsuit for breach of fiduciary duty against William Morris Endeavor Entertainment, his agent for the book, How.^[32] In 2017, Seidman and LRN settled all three lawsuits.^[31][33]

Awards and honors

Seidman gave the commencement address at UCLA College of Letters and Science in 2002.^[34][35] He was given the Jurisprudence Award by the Anti-Defamation League in 2003.^[36] Since 2008, Seidman and LRN have been the corporate partner of The Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity's Prize in Ethics Essay Contest.^[2] In 2009, Seidman was awarded an honorary degree of Doctor of Human Letters by the Hebrew Union College Jewish Institute of Religion.^[37] Seidman was a keynote address speaker at the United Nations Global Compact in 2015.^[38]

References

1. Seidman, Dov (September 21, 2011). How: Why HOW We Do Anything Means Everything. Wiley. ISBN 978-1118106372.
2. Clancy, Heather (October 26, 2013). "Disruptor - Dov Seidman, founder and CEO, LRN". ZDNet. Archived from the original on September 17, 2015. Retrieved September 17, 2015.
3. Friedman, Thomas (June 24, 2012). "The Rise of Popularism". The New York Times. No. Sunday Review. New York, N.Y. The New York Times. p. SR13. Archived from the original on March 31, 2015. Retrieved September 17, 2015.
4. Seidman, Dov (2011). How: why how we do anything means everything. Wiley. OCLC 786178934.
5. Ward, Marguerite (June 30, 2020). "The Great A-Wokening". Business Insider. Retrieved March 9, 2021.
6. Friedman, Thomas (April 20, 2020). "We Need Great Leadership Now". New York Times. Retrieved March 9, 2021.
7. Haaretz.com Dov Seidman's secret: You don't have to be a sucker to succeed Archived September 24, 2015, at the Wayback Machine, July 1, 2012
8. Clancy, Heather (October 26, 2013). "Disruptor". ZDNet. Retrieved March 9, 2021.
9. Rolnick, Guy (July 1, 2012). "Dov Seidman's Secret". Haaretz. Retrieved March 9, 2021.
10. Heisel, William (July 5, 2009). "His keen sense of ethics has paid off handsomely". Los Angeles Times. Archived from the original on May 18, 2015. Retrieved September 17, 2015.
11. Eide, Brock L.; Eide, Fernette F. (July 31, 2012). The Dyslexic Advantage: Unlocking the Hidden Potential of the Dyslexic Brain (Reprint ed.). Plume. ISBN 978-0452297920. Retrieved August 2, 2015.
12. "Bloomberg Business - Executive Profile: Dov L. Seidman". Bloomberg News. Bloomberg L.P. Archived from the original on March 7, 2016. Retrieved March 6, 2017.
13. Forbes.com Dov Seidman - Contributor Archived October 9, 2015, at the Wayback Machine
14. "A Principal with Principle". Harvard Law Bulletin. April 1, 2004. Archived from the original on March 4, 2016. Retrieved June 8, 2015.
15. Stevens, Amy (July 8, 1994). "Laywers & clients: Law firm fat threatened by a lean network". Wall Street Journal.
16. Carricaburu, Lisa (December 19, 1999). "Companies Go Online for Legal Advice". The Salt Lake Tribune.
17. Murphy, Richard M. (February 2, 2010). "Why doing good is good for business". Forbes. Retrieved May 27, 2021.
18. Vandevelde, Mark; Indap, Sujeet (October 4, 2020). "Business ethics guru accused of cheating shareholders". Financial Times. Retrieved March 7, 2023.
19. "Exclusive: A big merger in the business of ethics". New York Times. September 9, 2020. Retrieved March 9, 2023.
20. Becker, Annette (March 9, 2020). "Directors Breach Fiduciary Duties In Coercive Self-Tender". National Law Review. Archived from the original on June 17, 2020. Retrieved June 9, 2020.
21. Pompei, Dan (March 24, 2014). "Can This Man Help Save the NFL's Soul?". Sports on Earth. Archived from the original on April 22, 2015. Retrieved July 8, 2016.
22. Murray, Alan; Huddleston, Tom (August 21, 2017). "The Moral Imperative of Leadership". Fortune. Archived from the original on July 9, 2018. Retrieved May 28, 2018.
23. Rolnick, Guy (October 31, 2022). "Robredo starts stint as Harvard Hauser Leader". Manila Bulletin. Retrieved January 18, 2022.
24. Kleiner, Art (May 29, 2012). "The Thought Leader Interview: Dov Seidman". Strategy + Business. Archived from the original on March 13, 2015. Retrieved May 27, 2015.
25. Bollinger, Michael (June 2011). "The Means to Differentiation" (PDF). Strategic Finance. 92 (12): 21. Archived (PDF) from the original on July 31, 2017. Retrieved May 26, 2018.
26. "NYT Best Seller list - How: Why HOW We Do Anything Means Everything". The New York Times. November 6, 2011. Archived from the original on May 18, 2015. Retrieved September 17, 2015.
27. "The Experts". The Wall Street Journal. Archived from the original on September 6, 2015. Retrieved August 3, 2015.
28. Tracy, Abigail (June 5, 2014). "The Tweet That Got Chobani Sued for Millions". Inc. Retrieved August 4, 2015.
29. "Chobani Gets Sued in a Case That Hinges on a Tweet". AdWeek. June 4, 2014. Archived from the original on July 13, 2018. Retrieved May 28, 2018.
30. Mahler, Jonathan (October 5, 2014). "If the Word 'How' Is Trademarked, Does This Headline Need a ™?". The New York Times. Archived from the original on May 5, 2015. Retrieved July 18, 2015.
31. "Law grad settles claims that Chobani co-opted his 'how' philosophy in a marketing campaign". ABA Journal. Archived from the original on December 22, 2017. Retrieved December 21, 2017.
32. Cullins, Ashley (March 16, 2016). "Author Sues WME Over Chobani Super Bowl Commercial". The Hollywood Reporter. Archived from the original on July 13, 2018. Retrieved May 27, 2018.
33. "LRN and Dov Seidman Settle Lawsuits Brought Against William Morris Endeavor Entertainment, Droga5 and Chobani". PR Newswire (Press release). October 11, 2017. Archived from the original on July 24, 2018. Retrieved July 23, 2018.
34. Jenkins, Christina (June 13, 2006). "Searching for a Speech". DailyBruin.com. Archived from the original on July 30, 2018. Retrieved July 30, 2018.
35. Dov Seidman - UCLA Commencement Speech, March 15, 2012, archived from the original on August 5, 2018, retrieved July 30, 2018
36. Madnick, Wendy (March 6, 2003). "An Ethical Vision". Jewish Journal. Archived from the original on July 30, 2018. Retrieved July 30, 2018.
37. "Dov L. Seidman to receive Doctor of Humane Letters, Honoris Causa, at Hebrew Union College - Jewish Institute of Religion Graduation Ceremonies". Hebrew Union College -- Jewish Institute of Religion. Hebrew Union College. Archived from the original on September 24, 2015. Retrieved August 3, 2015.
38. "'Business can be a global force for good,' Bans says as General Assembly honours UN Global Compact". United Nations News Centre. United Nations. June 25, 2015. Archived from the original on July 31, 2015. Retrieved August 3, 2015.