Our Executive Team
John Boring
John is co-founder of Accelerate. A Silicon Valley veteran, he is known for designing extraordinarily effective and useful trainings, tools and learning interactions for high-tech companies around the world. He does this by working with clients to discover "the one question that needs to be answered – the one problem that needs to be solved." He uses his understanding of how people learn best to develop and test multiple concepts and create targeted solutions. John is the "D" in Accelerate's R&D. He recently lead the development of Managing@Zain, a comprehensive custom management training program for an international telecom company, now being deployed across the firm's 24 operation centers in the Middle East and Africa.
John is also a highly experienced organization development executive known for his abilities to source, hire and retain great talent. His expertise lies not only in Team/Organization Development and Change Management, but also in building corporate training functions. John founded Accelerate in 2004 with the aim of providing all the outsourced services of a corporate university to our clients. He was hired by Netscape to establish HR in Engineering and build the initial Product Development team. He has held senior positions at Atari Games, Netscape, Portal Software and Apple/Apple University, and consulted to ChevronTexaco, AT&T, Silicon Graphics, HP and Yahoo!, to name a few.
Phil Dixon
Phil is co-founder of Accelerate and responsible for the delivery of consulting, training and development services. Phil is the "R" in Accelerate’s R&D. He reaches into the future to find what's next - gathering the latest research on how people think, learn, work and change. He brings these new ideas to Accelerate and finds ways to incorporate them into all our products and services, keeping our offerings fresh and cutting-edge.
Phil's expertise is in the areas of Executive Coaching, Executive/Board of Directors' Team Building, Change Management, Culture Alignment, and Strategic Planning. He has done extensive consulting work in Europe for Intel, Apple, British Petroleum, and the American Embassy. He was hired by Apple to direct the efforts of their Information Technology department and then, changing career direction, went on to head up Apple University. He then went on to found CDI, a world-renowned consulting firm whose clients included Kaiser Permanente, Southern California Edison, BAE, BP, National Semiconductor and Old Mutual. He was brought into Colliers International as CEO and led the company through their highest growth years. He founded the Center for Integrity-Based Leadership and has integrated that company with Accelerate to synergistically build the two into a consulting powerhouse.Phil recently earned a Masters in Coaching and Consulting to Change from Oxford/HEC.
Gary Edwards
Gary is Chief Executive Officer of Accelerate and leads our technology and mobile apps business. He leverages our collective experience and talents along with Accelerate's rich storehouse of learning content and best practices to create innovative solutions to business problems.
Gary is an experienced high-tech industry executive with more than 20 years of success in formulating and leading global business development and strategic initiatives for a variety of innovative firms, including Sun Microsystems, Apple, Memorex and General Electric. His professional background spans the fields of manufacturing and procurement operations, business development, sales operations and human resources. Gary has worked extensively in Europe and Asia and, having lived and worked in Japan and North Africa, he has firsthand knowledge of what it takes to prepare leaders for the challenges of managing globally. As an executive coach and management consultant, he has worked successfully with clients across a variety of disciplines and industries, enabling them to communicate and collaborate more effectively with their internal teams and external partners. Among his extensive list of clients are some notable firms such as Google, Facebook and Kaiser Permanente. Gary earned his B.A. degree from Tufts University and his M.A. from Teachers College at Columbia University.