Lee T. Bycel is the founder and CEO of CedarStreet Leadership (CSL). CSL seeks to foster creative, strategic and thoughtful leadership prepared to handle the many challenges of the 21st century. He has also served as a senior moderator of Leadership Seminars at the Aspen Institute for over fifteen years. Lee has an extensive background in leadership positions. He has served as Executive Director of the Redford Center whose mission was to collaborate with diverse leaders and artists in cultivating creative, action-based solutions to some of today’s most compelling civic, environmental and social challenges.
Lee is a social justice advocate deeply committed to humanitarian issues. He was Executive Director, Western Region of American Jewish World Service (AJWS). AJWS is an international development organization dedicated to alleviating poverty, hunger and disease among the people of the developing world, regardless of race, religion or nationality.
He previously served as Senior Advisor, Global Strategy of International Medical Corps. He has facilitated many workshops on leadership issues, ethics, and strategy for a variety of corporate and non-profit groups. He has made several trips to East Africa including five humanitarian trips to Darfur and Chad where he visited several refugee camps. In April of 2006 he was in Rwanda for the 12th commemoration of their genocide. His most recent humanitarian trips were to Haiti (October 2011) and South Sudan in May of 2011; two months prior to it becoming the world’s newest country.
For several years he served as President of The Brandeis-Bardin Institute, a national conference and retreat center located in Southern California. For fifteen years he was Dean of the Hebrew Union College – Jewish Institute of Religion in Los Angeles, where he was the Senior Academic and Administrative Officer of the campus. He was Assistant Professor of Leadership and Applied Theology. He has also served as the Smither Visiting Professor of World Religions at the Claremont School of Theology.
Born in Los Angeles, Lee graduated from the University of California at Berkeley with a B.A. in Philosophy. He earned his doctorate from the Claremont School of Theology.
Bycel has extensive leadership experience. For several years he has addressed the U.S. Presidential Scholars in Washington, D.C. on the subject of Leadership and Ethics. In the fall of 2005, he participated in the inaugural meeting of the Clinton Global Initiative. Lee is involved in a variety of humanitarian, social justice, and educational organizations and activities. He served as President of the County of Los Angeles Commission on Human Relations. He has a number of publications to his credit as well as being the recipient of many awards including the National Conference of Community and Justice (NCCJ) Humanitarian Award. He is a frequent contributor to the Huffington Post and other publications.
