Isak Adizes

Isak Adizes was born in 1937 in Skopje

Adizes was born on October 22, 1937, in Skopje, then in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. During World War II, members of his family were deported and murdered at Treblinka. He and his close family escaped after his father bribed an official, posed as Muslims and hid in a mountain village in Albania until the war ended.

In 1948 the family moved to Israel, where he served in the IDF. He earned his first degree at the Hebrew University. In 1963 he moved to the United States and completed a doctorate in business at Columbia University, writing on Yugoslavia's system of industrial democracy.

From 1967 to 1982 he was a tenured professor at UCLA, and he also taught at Stanford, Tel Aviv University, the Hebrew University and Columbia. In the early 1970s he developed the PAEI model, which sorts managers into four roles. In 1982 he founded the Adizes Institute, and he has advised companies and governments around the world.

He is married to Nurit Manne Adizes, and they have 6 children. They live in California, and he plays the accordion.