Lee Pham partners with business leaders to develop their organizations’ capacity to adapt and compete. Pham is an Innovation & Legal Executive with 15 years of experience across Strategic Investment, Corporate Development, and Governance roles. He offers executive insight developed at an iconic brand as chief of staff, strategic expert, and in-house legal counsel. He is Managing Director and Founder of Teleiosis Consulting (\ ˌtel-ē-ˈō-sis \), which advises a range of clients from early stage to $30B+ public companies in technology-intensive fields.

Distinctive Capabilities for High Performance
Pham bridges strategy and impact by defining, developing, and integrating distinctive capabilities. Building on his foundations in engineering and law, Pham’s expertise includes intellectual property, cyber risk management, data privacy, M&A, and venture investing.

He also offers knowledge of human capital management and transformation. With years of experience in multidisciplinary roles, Pham has delivered succession planning, performance management, career pathing, learning & development, employee sentiment analyses for expert teams, and adaptive organizational models for professional associations.

Pham’s consulting clients have included companies at various stages of growth focused on manufacturing, healthcare, agricultural technology, SaaS software, and financial services. He previously served as In-House Patent Counsel and as Chief of Staff at American Express.

  • Certified Information Privacy Manager (CIPM); International Association of Privacy Professionals

    Certificate in Cybersecurity: Managing Risk in the Information Age; HarvardX

    Investment Foundations Certificate; CFA Institute

  • Chief of Staff Fellow. On Deck CoS, Cohort III (2022). Invited into a trusted global peer network of strategic operators.

    Co-Author, Understanding & Leveraging the Value of Intellectual Property. Wolters Kluwer (2022). Available here.

    Research Paper (Peer Reviewed), Repurposing Code-Switching Habits as Career Assets for Black Professionals. The ELC Research Journal: A Research Journal for Black Professionals, Winter 2021, 3-22. Available here.

    Presentation, Getting the Best From Your IPIT Assets. Innovation & IP Forum and Awards (Paris, 2018).

    Presentation, IP Valuation for Licensing. American Int’l Property Law Association Delegation to South Korea & Indonesia (Jakarta, 2016).

    Panelist, Commercial Innovation & Building Successful Brands. United States Embassy-American Chamber of Commerce in Thailand Joint Forum on Intellectual Property, Creativity, Innovation and Collaboration (Bangkok, 2013).

    US Patents 9,208,528, 9,818,159, 10,157,425, and 10,438,298; claiming FinTech inventions.

  • New York State Courts

    U.S. Patent & Trademark Office (USPTO)

    U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York (SDNY)

    U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC)

  • Early-Stage Startup Scout; Concrete Rose Capital (2021 – 2022). Sourcing venture opportunities with a focus on under-included founders of color, the needs of under-included consumers groups, and founders’ commitment to creating inclusive cultures & diverse teams. Emphasis on sustainability technologies and economic empowerment projects.

    Venture Capital Fellow; Colorwave, Cohort II (2021). Completed an immersive curriculum that primes Black, Latino/a, and Indigenous professionals for materially significant participation in the venture backed ecosystem and related value chain. The fellowship is managed by a non-profit organization and its corporate & VC partners. Voted ‘Most Likely to Found a Unicorn’ by cohort peers.

    Council on Diversity & Inclusion and Alumni Association Executive Committee; Cardozo School of Law (2016 – 2020). Elevated law firm & corporate engagement, institutional awareness, and resources available to practitioners from under-included racial groups. Served on the Alumni Association’s Executive Committee, as Chair of the Black, Asian, and Latino/a Alumni Group, and as an appointee to a special D&I council assembled by the Dean of the law school.

    Delegate to Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand & Vietnam; American IP Law Association (2013 – 2018). Engaged local industry, national IP offices, the courts, bar associations, and advocacy groups on the impacts of contemporary policy & trade developments to empower local communities’ participation in the intellectual property value chain.

Bridging Strategy and Impact
With the right balance of capabilities, organizations can perform and innovate at peak levels. Pham combines his unique experience and suite of capabilities to position organizations in ways that are difficult to achieve and hard to copy.

Having led hundreds of brainstorming sessions as a patent attorney, Pham is skilled at identifying and integrating novel approaches and capabilities that do not yet exist in organizations. And he applies experience from strategy and corporate development roles to achieve unexpected performance through people, assets, and activities.

Subject Matter Expertise & Executive Team Experience
In his prior role as Chief of Staff at American Express, Pham served on the Corporate Development Executive Team delivering overall management, excellence in governance, and greater inclusion of underrepresented talent. He also contributed to the strategic agenda for the teams solely responsible for the company’s acquisitions, venture investments, joint ventures, and divestitures. Pham’s earlier roles at American Express involved formulating intellectual property strategy, managing intangible asset transactions, building strategic centers of excellence, and serving as in-house counsel in the Enterprise Legal Group.

Special Projects and Partnerships
Pham is an active member of the International Association of Privacy Professionals (IAPP) and the American Intellectual Property Law Association (AIPLA). He has represented AIPLA's Far East Practice Committee on international delegations to Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, and Vietnam, and he has presented lectures on IP strategy around the world.

He participates in the venture-backed ecosystem through a strategic partnership with Concrete Rose Capital and is an alumnus of the Colorwave Venture Capital Fellowship (Cohort II). Pham is also a fellow in the On Deck Chief of Staff Fellowship (Cohort III), a trusted peer network of strategic operators who enable executives and their teams.

Education and Research
Pham earned his Juris Doctor from the Cardozo School of Law in New York City and his Bachelor of Science in Chemical Engineering from Drexel University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He also holds certificates in Financial Analysis from the New York University School of Professional Studies and Cyber Risk Management through Harvard University’s Office of the Vice Provost for Advances in Learning (HarvardX).

He has researched matters of equity in global patent policy and executive leadership. And in 2022, Pham contributed to a textbook on intellectual property strategy, arguing that human capital management is key to valuing and leveraging the fruits of the knowledge economy.

Community Presence
Pham’s civic and community engagements include voter protection and fundraising on behalf of causes that he is passionate about. He served as Board Treasurer for the National Society of Black Engineers and is a brother of Kappa Alpha Psi. A patented inventor himself, Pham has guest lectured for the Patent Pro Bono Program offered by the Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts.

Lee’s Posts on LinkedIn