David Kolb is the Chair­man of Expe­ri­ence Based Learn­ing Sys­tems (EBLS), an orga­ni­za­tion that he found­ed in 1980 to advance research and prac­tice on expe­ri­en­tial learning.

He received his Bach­e­lor of Arts degree in psy­chol­o­gy, phi­los­o­phy and reli­gion at Knox Col­lege and his Ph.D. in Social Psy­chol­o­gy from Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty. He was a pro­fes­sor of orga­ni­za­tion­al behav­ior and man­age­ment at the MIT Sloan School of Man­age­ment and at the Weath­er­head School of Man­age­ment, Case West­ern Reserve Uni­ver­si­ty, where he is cur­rent­ly Emer­i­tus Pro­fes­sor of Orga­ni­za­tion­al Behavior.

He is best known for his research on expe­ri­en­tial learn­ing and learn­ing styles described in the new Sec­ond Edi­tion of Expe­ri­en­tial Learn­ing: Expe­ri­ence as the Source of Learn­ing and Devel­op­ment. Oth­er books include How You Learn Is How You Live: Nine Ways of Learn­ing That Can Trans­form Your Life, Con­ver­sa­tion­al Learn­ing: An Expe­ri­en­tial Approach to Knowl­edge Cre­ation, Inno­va­tion in Pro­fes­sion­al Edu­ca­tion: Steps on a Jour­ney from Teach­ing to Learn­ing, and Orga­ni­za­tion­al Behav­ior: An Expe­ri­en­tial Approach. In addi­tion, he has authored many jour­nal arti­cles and book chap­ters on expe­ri­en­tial learning.

David has received sev­er­al research awards and four hon­orary degrees rec­og­niz­ing his con­tri­bu­tions to expe­ri­en­tial learn­ing in high­er education.