Consulting
Leadership & People
Trust, accountability, organizational change, and developing the people who do the work.
Backed by the books: Servant Leadership Stories · Jayson and the Corporate Argonauts
Leadership consulting
Work with Tom
Experience you can
bring into your organization.
Consulting
Purchasing & Supply Chain
Purchasing costs, supplier relationships, negotiation, and process improvement with Lean Six Sigma.
Backed by the books: Common Sense Purchasing — New Edition · Avoiding a Supply Chain Apocalypse
Purchasing & supply-chain consultingSpeaking
Keynotes & Workshops
Real Navy and corporate stories that leave audiences with habits they can use on Monday.
Backed by the books: Leadership by Storytelling · Servant Leadership Stories
Invite Tom to speakTrack record
- 50+organizations advised through Apollo Solutions since 1995
- CaptainU.S. Navy (O-6), retired — logistics officer
- 200+university and professional courses taught
- 15books on leadership, purchasing, and supply chain
Credentials
- PhD
- MBA, Notre Dame
- Certified Purchasing Manager (C.P.M.)
- Lean Six Sigma Black Belt
- SPHR
Industries served
- Chemical
- Paper
- Pharmaceutical
- IT
- Automotive
- Government
- Military
- Consumer
Find your way in
What brings
you here?
- Solve a Business ChallengePurchasing, supply chain, process, and leadership problems.
- Hire Tom as a SpeakerKeynotes, conferences, workshops, and corporate events.
- Improve My Purchasing SkillsSupplier relationships, negotiation, and purchasing judgment.
- Learn Practical Leadership LessonsTrue stories about trust and taking care of your people.
- Explore Books & StoriesFourteen titles on leadership, business, and life.
- Learn About TomNavy logistics, corporate leadership, and the classroom.
Featured book — New Edition
Common Sense
Purchasing.
Practical, experience-tested lessons for the people making the next purchasing decision.
- Better purchasing decisions. Look beyond the price on the quote to total cost and the real need.
- Stronger supplier relationships. Build the trust that brings you ideas, service, and reliability.
- More effective negotiations. Negotiate from knowledge of the supplier’s market, not pressure.
Read
Books, stories, and articles.
Learn
Speaking, mentoring, and practical insights.
Work with Tom
Consulting, workshops, and speaking engagements.
01 / Experience
Where the
stories began.
Before the books came the work: military logistics, business, and teaching. The lessons came from people.
A life, told through its stories
Leadership Stories from the Corporate Jungle and Navy Deck Plates
Dr. Tom retired from the Navy as a Captain in logistics. His civilian career took him through supply chain, consulting, software, and human resources.
This book brings the experiences together—the difficult decisions, the mistakes, and the lessons that stayed.
U.S. Navy
Captain, retiredBusiness & education
Leader, teacher, author
More about Tom Captain, retiredBusiness & education
Leader, teacher, author
A closer look
The experience
behind the pages.
Explore the Navy and workplace experiences behind Tom’s leadership memoir. This presentation introduces the decisions, mistakes, and people that shaped the stories. Watch with a challenge from your own team in mind, then open the book to spend more time with the lessons that stayed.
02 / Speaking
Bring a story
into the room.
Trust, character, and the decisions people remember. Start with the writing behind the conversation.
Leadership by Storytelling
Some lessons are
easier to remember
as a story.
Tom writes about leadership through real experiences. These books offer a starting point for conversations about earning trust and taking care of people.
TrustLeadershipPeople
Invite Tom to speak 03 / Mentoring
Take care
of your people.
Servant Leadership Stories
Trust, empathy, and the everyday work of looking after a team.
Learning alongside
other people.
As an educator, trainer, and coach, Tom has taught in university classrooms and online. His books carry that same interest in helping people learn.
Leadership
Jayson and the Corporate Argonauts
A business fable about the journey of transformation.
Book presentation · 4:32A different way into the subject
A business fable about transformation, teamwork, and trust. Read it alongside the leadership stories.
Ask Tom a question04 / Business
The books
behind the work.
Purchasing decisions. Supplier relationships. Better ways of working. Lessons drawn from the job itself.
Purchasing / New Edition
Common Sense
Purchasing.
For the people making the next purchasing decision.
Relationships, negotiation, and practical lessons for purchasing and supply chain professionals. The new edition builds on Tom’s original collection of hard-knock lessons.
- Supplier relationships and trust
- Negotiating with better information
- Putting experience into practice
Before you open the book
Watch the
purchasing presentation.
Explore the supplier relationships, negotiation, and buying decisions behind Common Sense Purchasing. Watch the new-edition presentation with a question from your own work in mind, then use the reading guide to choose where to begin.
Business
Business Consulting Wows!
A collection of ideas for business and everyday decisions.
Book presentation · 4:05
Management
Broken Windows Management in Business
Small steps toward a workplace built on trust.
Book presentation · 3:47
Process improvement
Kaizen Kreativity (Oops!)
A creative, human approach to process improvement.
Book presentation · 3:26Interested in working through a business question with Tom?
Discuss your business challenge05 / Books
Find your
next book.
Start with a question you’re carrying—or a story you’d like to read.
On leadership & people
The complete collectionLeadership
Servant Leadership Stories
Stories about trust, empathy, and taking care of your people.
Presentation · 2:47Leadership
Leadership Stories from the Corporate Jungle and Navy Deck Plates
Leadership lessons from military service, corporate life, and the people met along the way.
Presentation · 5:21Leadership
Leadership by Storytelling
True-life stories that make the practice of leadership tangible.
Leadership
Boogeyman Leadership
Recognizing harmful leadership and workplace bullying.
For the work in front of you
Business / Purchasing / Supply chain01
Common Sense Purchasing — New Edition
Purchasing02Common Sense Supply Management
Supply chain03Avoiding a Supply Chain Apocalypse
Supply chain04Business Consulting Wows!
BusinessBeyond the workplace
There’s a life
in these pages, too.
Childhood memories, family, and a story to help younger readers talk about bullying.
Your next chapter
Start with the question.
Find your book.
A team to lead. A purchasing decision to make. A story you want to share. Explore fourteen books by Dr. Tom DePaoli, or get in touch about the conversation you have in mind.
Explore Tom’s books on AmazonPurchasing
Ready for your next purchasing decision?
Free excerpt
Get Practical Lessons You Can Use.
Short, practical lessons from Tom’s Navy, corporate, purchasing, and classroom experience: what worked, what didn’t, and what you can try with your own team. Occasional emails, no clutter.
Servant Leadership Stories — free excerpt
The Introduction and the first three stories: doing your best on the tasks you hate, trusting the people closest to the work, and how to get employees to trust you.