The Project Leaders

Jim Woodward

Jim Woodward spent 30 years building and running businesses as large as $100M, primarily in management and technology consulting to Fortune 500 companies, with full responsibility for marketing, sales, operations, service, and profitability. He also helped to found a highly successful full-service ice machine leasing business that has become the nation’s largest. Today, Jim is a peer advisor board chair and a business growth coach for Convene. In this work, he helps people get unstuck, achieve their potential, and grow closer to Jesus. This is accomplished through: peer-to-peer counsel, great learning content, life-on-life community, and One2One coaching. In addition to The Work Exchange, Jim has designed a variety of other adult learning experiences including Answering the Big Questions of Faith, Bible Reading and Reflection, Restoring Freedom to Overloaded Lives, Spiritual Conversations: Tilling Soil for the Gospel, Teaching to Transform Lives and Transformational Bible Study. Jim and his wife Julie have 3 children and live just outside of Dallas, TX.

Helen Mitchell

Helen M. Mitchell is passionate to see people fully activated and engaged in their callings, to accelerate and facilitate transformation of leaders and organizations, and for the local church to be equipped to lead people into a biblical understanding of work and vocation. She lives at the intersection of faith and reality by integrating her pastoral, business, and academia experience. She is an ethics and leadership professor in the Crowell School of Business at Biola University. As the Director of the Talbot Center for Faith, Work & Economics at the Talbot School of Theology at Biola University, she works with churches and pastors on faith and work integration.  Helen is also a certified leadership and strategy coach, speaker, author, and as a faculty member for Professional Christian Coaching Institute, Helen is combining her teaching skills with coaching. She oversees the leader learning initiative for Convene Corp. She started her business career with AT&T becoming an Area Vice President at the age of 30 with Lucent Technologies. As a licensed pastor, she was the architect and visionary of the Saddleback@Work ministry at Saddleback Church. Helen holds a Master’s in Organizational Leadership from Biola University and a Master’s in Biblical and Theological Studies from the Talbot School of Theology, at Biola University.  She also attended the Senior Executive Program at Columbia University.

Greg Leith

Greg Leith is a CEO to CEOs as he stewards the role of CEO at Convene corporation, which has served thousands of Christian CEOs over 25+ years. He was born in Canada and lived in all four corners of North America. His career spans over 45 years of senior leadership roles in corporate, nonprofit, church and academic sectors. Greg has served the persecuted church with food, brought relief and long-term jobs to Orissa, India, assisted mission agencies in China with strategy, and helped envision a School of Journalism in Haiti. He and Shelley, his wife of more than 40 years, crisscrossed Canada for over a decade speaking on marriage and parenting for FamilyLife. Greg was a senior executive for 20 years with the $9 billion ServiceMaster company, serving in various leadership capacities. He served as the Director of Strategic Alliances at Biola University, Vice President of Arrow Leadership and Director of Leadership Development for Christian Leadership Alliance, creating learning experiences for Christian leaders and organizations. Greg and Shelley have raised five thriving young adults and live in Southern California.

Shelley Leith

Shelley Leith contributed her rich background in curriculum development to this project. She was responsible for developing the 40 Days of Purpose Campaign that was used by 40,000 churches as they led their congregations through The Purpose Driven Life by Rick Warren. She went on to develop several other 40-day campaigns for Saddleback Church, and then moved to HarperCollins Christian Publishing where she developed The Story, a 31-week churchwide experience that she subsequently trained thousands of churches to implement. She is currently the director of Study Gateway, the streaming subscription service that carries all of the video Bible studies published by Zondervan and Thomas Nelson, such luminaries as Max Lucado, Ann Graham Lotz, Andy Stanley, Lysa TerKeurst and Louie Giglio.

Convene was founded in 1996 by Brian Thatcher, Ric Green, and a group of five CEOs and business owners. We were created to meet a vital need to help successful business leaders that were isolated and lacked the tools, support, and relationships they needed to build profitable, kingdom-focused, faith integrated businesses. Through a community of peer-to-peer advisory teams, executive coaching, and world-class consulting, we work with Christian CEOs and business owners to impact the Life of a Leader, leading to an ultimate Kingdom legacy. Together, we are transforming lives and businesses globally for God’s glory.

The Talbot School of Theology’s Center for Faith, Work and Economics at Biola University exists to equip churches to help their congregations live an integrated life – at home, in their communities and in the workplace. Building upon biblical truth and strategic thinking, The Talbot Center for Faith, Work and Economics is resourcing local churches with work and vocation theology, strategies, tools, curriculum, and plans to transform the local church, its people, and the communities in which they live and serve. With a focus on research and development and sound biblical truth, churches are empowered, and individuals equipped to live out their call at work.