In his personal capacity, he has informally advised thousands of CEOs as well as multiple U.S. presidents and nominees from both parties, including Joseph Biden, Donald Trump, Bill Clinton, and George H. W. Bush as a conduit between top business and political leaders.

[3] Sonnenfeld is a member of the board of Lennar, the leading American homebuilder, as well as IEX, Atlas Merchant Capital, and the Ellis Island Honor Society.

[5] After a decade at Emory University, Sonnenfeld joined the faculty at Yale, bringing with him the CEO College and launching the Chief Executive Leadership Institute.

His 2007 book, Firing Back (with Andrew Ward, Harvard Business School Press), studies the paths to resilience for felled CEOs, as well as victims from natural disasters, warfare, and other forms of disruption and adversity.

Past attendees have included Joe Biden, Bob Iger, Stephen Schwarzman, Jamie Dimon, Satya Nadella, David Solomon, Janet Yellen, Gina Raimondo, Jake Sullivan, Steven Spielberg, Mike Sievert, Lisa Su, Pat Gelsinger, Ajay Banga, Ken Frazier, Arvind Krishna, Joe Ucuzoglu, Larry Page, Greg Brown, Max Levchin, Michael Dell, Steve Case, Lloyd Blankfein, Ray Dalio, Ashton Carter, Elaine Chao, Maurice Greenberg, Dina Powell, Robert Hormats, Carla Hills, Farooq Kathwari, John Bogle, John Whitehead, Albert Gordon, Jeffrey Bewkes, Randall Stephenson, David Shulkin, Wilbur Ross, Steven Mnuchin, Anthony Scaramucci, Peter Orszag, John Negroponte, Chris Shays, Indra Nooyi, Kevin Rudd, Ken Langone, Peter Navarro, Bob Woodward, Roland Betts, Peter Salovey, Danny Meyer, Brian Duperreault, Joanne Lipman, Jeff Zucker, Stefano Pessina, Dennis Muilenburg, Alex Gorsky, David Abney, Robert Lighthizer, Jared Kushner, Pete Buttigieg, Richard Blumenthal, Isaac Herzog, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, David Rubenstein, Larry Bacow and many other influential leaders from across sectors.

Past recipients have included Colin Powell, Carla Hills, Stephen Schwarzman, Maurice Greenberg, John Whitehead, John Bogle, Albert Gordon, David Stern, Bernard Marcus, Bob Iger, Indra Nooyi, Janet Yellen, Ginni Rometty, Mary Barra, Brian Moynihan, David Rubenstein, Marillyn Hewson, Jamie Dimon, and Ken Frazier.

[12] He was Harvard's first John Whitehead Faculty Fellow and won outstanding educator awards at Yale, Emory and the American Society for Training and Development.