Howard Zeiderman – Director of Leadership Programs

Howard Zeiderman attended Dartmouth College and St. John’s College in Annapolis, Maryland, and completed graduate and post-graduate studies in philosophy at Princeton University. Since 1973, Zeiderman has been on the faculty of St. John’s College in Annapolis. As a senior member of the faculty, he has nearly fifty years of experience with the college’s cross-disciplinary program in which all students read primary source materials explored entirely through seminar classes.

On the basis of this experience, Zeiderman co-founded the Touchstones Discussion Project in 1984. Since the late 1990s, Zeiderman has served as Touchstones’ President, in addition to his other professional work within seminar environments. Zeiderman’s work in custom seminar design, program implementation, and seminar moderating include:

  • Federal Executive Institute in Charlottesville, Virginia
  • National Security Agency
  • Central Intelligence Agency
  • Leadership Metro Richmond
  • Enhancing Public Service Leadership Programme (Office of the President of Tanzania)
  • Hampden-Sydney College
  • Baltimore City Police Department
  • Democratic Leadership Council
  • Aspen Italia (Young Fellows  and Senior Fellows Programs)
  • St. Mary’s College in Moraga Hills, CA
  • Bureau of French Education for the Province of Manitoba, Canada
  • African Leadership Academy (South Africa)
  • CAFE
  • UNLV
  • Coastal Alabama Community Colleges

From 2004–2008, Zeiderman served as Director of the Aspen Institute’s Executive Seminar Program, where he developed and implemented seminar curricula and moderator corps training. His Aspen programs include seminars on creativity, women’s leadership, society and wilderness, China, and customized leadership seminars for several multinational corporations.

Zeiderman has authored and co-authored more than 26 original Touchstones program titles. Under Zeiderman’s leadership, more than five million people around the world have participated in Touchstones programs and the Touchstones method has spread to more than 42 countries.

Zeiderman has lectured and presented to numerous educational conferences, civic groups, and institutions, including the International Freshman Year Experience Conference; National Students in Transition Conference; Maryland Association of Independent Middle Schools; International Baccalaureate Mid-Atlantic Conferences; Maryland Educators for Gifted Students Conference; Annapolis League of Women Voters; Annapolis Rotary; 21st Century Club of Annapolis; Correctional Educators Conference (Ottawa); Rowan University (NJ); St. Mary’s College in Moraga Hills, CA; AVID Summer Institutes; St. John’s College in Annapolis, MD and in Santa Fe, NM; Maple Center Senior Peer Counselors (Los Angeles); Maryland Association of Adult Community and Continuing Education; and the Open Society and Creative Alliance Panel on Views of Justice film series.

Over the course of his tenure with Touchstones, Zeiderman has run leadership programs with thousands of adults and trained more than ten thousand teachers in the Touchstones method. He currently serves as Touchstones Director of Leadership Programs.