Paul DePodesta

Paul DePodesta has made a career of evaluating, measuring, and assigning value to talent, as documented in Michael Lewis’s book, "Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game." The "Moneyball" methodology has become a mainstay strategy for business leaders looking for new approaches for overhauling stagnant systems.

The "Moneyball" methodology has revolutionized every industry—from Wall Street and Fortune 500 companies to government and healthcare. DePodesta's enlightening program draws connections between baseball and basic business operations, presenting the many parallels with lessons from the world of professional sports and talent recruiting. DePodesta explains how your organization can drill down “big data” output to create an applicable analytics strategy and sharpen your company's competitive edge. Audiences come away armed with innovative techniques for optimizing current operations systems, improving company- wide performance, and enhancing customer experience.

After graduating Cum Laude from Harvard College with a degree in economics, DePodesta worked in the Canadian Football League and the American Hockey League. He then joined the Cleveland Indians Baseball Club as an intern in Player Development. Within a year, the Indians made him the advance scout for the Major League team, and two years later he was appointed Special Assistant to the General Manager.

DePodesta served as Assistant General Manager of the Oakland Athletics from 1999 to 2003—a tenure during which the A’s tied for the best winning percentage in baseball (392-255). At the time of his hire, Oakland was one of the worst teams in the league, coming off of six losing seasons while posting one of the lowest payrolls in baseball. In an industry entrenched in ingrained thinking and outdated systems, the stagnant team needed the unique management and creative approach that A’s GM Billy Beane and DePodesta brought to the table.

The conventional wisdom in Major League Baseball is that wealthy teams— who spend three times as much on talent as poor teams—will win out. But in DePodesta’s final four seasons in Oakland, the A’s won more regular season games than the New York Yankees, who during the same period spent $350 million more on player payroll than did the Athletics. In rethinking how the system works by asking what DePodesta calls the naïve question—”If we weren’t already doing it this way, is this the way we would start?”—he and Beane revolutionized the way baseball teams are built.

In DePodesta’s first season as Oakland’s Assistant GM in 1999, the Athletics enjoyed their first winning season in seven years and a year later began a run of four consecutive playoff appearances, including three American League West Division Titles. Amidst the remarkable run, the Toronto Blue Jays offered to make DePodesta the youngest General Manager in the history of Major League Baseball (an offer he declined). His work has been recognized by various publications, including Fortune, who named him one of the Top 10 innovators under 40.

Formerly the Executive Vice President of the San Diego Padres, and General Manager of the Los Angeles Dodgers during the 2004-05 seasons, DePodesta was the third-youngest person ever to assume the role of Major League GM. Assigned the task of turning around a team that had not won a postseason game since 1988, DePodesta guided Los Angeles to a Division title and a playoff victory in his first season at the helm. Beginning in 2010, DePodesta also served as Vice President of Player Development and Amateur Scouting for the New York Mets, helping to lead the team to the 2015 World Series for the first time since 2000. Mets GM Sandy Alderson said DePodesta was a “huge factor” in the Mets’ success.

In December 2012, DePodesta joined Sears Holdings’ board of directors. Sears’ Chairman Edward S. Lampert said of DePodesta that his “ability to scrutinize data and use it to assess talent and drive execution makes him ideally suited to join our board.”

In January 2016, DePodesta joined the NFL’s Cleveland Browns as Chief Strategy Officer. In this new role, he is responsible for assessing and implementing the best practices and strategies that will give the Browns the comprehensive resources needed to make optimal decisions for their players and team.

DePodesta is also an Assistant Professor of Bioinformatics at the Scripps Translational Sciences Institute.

DePodesta is married and lives in southern California.

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