Tjai Nielsen is a Principal at ghSMART, where he advises private equity and venture capital investors, portfolio company CEOs, hedge fund and alternative asset managers, and Fortune 500 senior executives on their most pressing leadership challenges. These include talent assessment and development, top team effectiveness, and initiatives to optimize organizational performance. He has worked with investors pre- and post-transaction across multiple industries.

Prior to joining ghSMART, Tjai founded and served as managing director for C-Suite Future, a leadership consultancy. Earlier in his consulting career, Tjai worked for RHR International concentrating on executive assessment and leader development. He has partnered with many organizations ranging from Fortune 100 corporations to the United States Congress in more than 20 countries across North America, Europe, the Caribbean, and the Middle East.

Concurrent with his consulting career, Tjai was an academic, spending much of that time at the school of business at George Washington University as a dean’s research scholar, professor of management, and director of executive education. Tjai earned multiple awards for leading MBA and doctoral classes and for his research, including an invitation to join a United Nations Expert Group. His academic work has produced over 55 refereed research articles, book chapters, and technical reports and more than 85 invited talks and refereed conference presentations.

Tjai holds a Ph.D. in industrial and organizational psychology, an M.A. in health & human performance, and a B.S. in psychology. He lives in North Carolina with his wife and their three children.