Joel Hoomans, Dr.
Professor of Management and Leadership Studies
Dr. Joel Hoomans is Professor of Management & Leadership Studies. Prior to working in academia, Joel spent 10 years working in the field of Human Resources for Wegmans Food Markets, eventually becoming the company’s very first Manager of Leadership Development. Throughout various roles at Wegmans he was struck by the impact that a best-in-class organization can have on the growth and development of people when they are invested in and treated as renewable assets, rather than expendable resources. In 2006 Roberts Wesleyan College afforded him the opportunity to return to his one-time alma mater and facilitate the advancement of service leadership, strategic agility and people development on a broader scale. He helped Roberts Wesleyan College build the ‘next generation graduate’ degree – a Masters in Strategic Leadership. This was a commission that came from discussions that originated out of leadership development discussions with members of Fortune’s Best Companies To Work For in 2005. In addition to his teaching duties for the college, Joel also enjoys consulting across business, church, government, non-profit and military sectors. He presently also works as a HR & Strategic Leadership Consultant for Livingston Associates. He devotes a great deal of time practicing a lifestyle of faith, fun, family, friendship, servitude, learning, and human development and has a wide range of hobbies that range from facilitating and playing board games to kayaking.
Research Interests
Leadership Development & Effectiveness
Courage Development & Values Formation
Strategic Utilization of Human Assets
The Use of Games in Learning
Driving Service Levels in Higher Education
Quote
“I would prefer to combat the ‘I’m special’ feeling not by the thought, ‘I’m no more special than anyone else,’ but by the feeling ‘Everyone is as special as me.’…No one is like anyone else. All are ‘members’ (organs) in the Body of Christ. All different and all necessary to the whole and to one another; each loved by God individually, as if it were the only creature in existence. Otherwise you might get the idea that God is like the government which can only deal with people in mass…[People] are not interchangeable. Each person is almost a species in himself [herself].” - C. S. Lewis
Acts 17:26-27 “From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. 27 God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us.”