Â鶹Ãâ·Ñ°æÏÂÔØ

Biography

John Ploumitsakos is an assistant teaching professor of marketing and an Allen Family Faculty Scholar at the Leeds School of Business, where he leads the marketing division's professional selling focus area. He teaches upper-division courses in professional selling, advertising and creative strategy, grounded in buyer psychology, and has taught across marketing and the business core. His classes sit at the intersection of professional practice, the classical arts of reasoning, persuasion and storytelling, and the modern sciences of human behavior.Ìý

Ploumitsakos's recent focus is AI in education: course design, custom agents and simulation-based learning. This work has earned the 2026 David B. Balkin and Rosalind and Chester Barnow Endowed Innovative Teaching Award, the 2024 Leeds AI Teaching Excellence Award, appointment as an Allen Family Faculty Scholar and a Â鶹Ãâ·Ñ°æÏÂÔØSystem AI Sprint Grant.Ìý

Ploumitsakos came to teaching after a career of more than 20 years in law, technology, and entrepreneurship. After graduating from law school, he clerked for Chief Judge Michael Boudin of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, tried cases at the D.C. Public Defender Service, and practiced criminal and civil litigation at Williams & Connolly.

He then spent more than a decade in senior sales, marketing, and product leadership roles at technology companies including Google and Twitter. At Google, he spent two years living in Brazil leading Online Sales for Latin America; at Twitter, he led global product strategy for its advertising business. Immediately before joining Leeds as a full-time faculty member, Ploumitsakos founded and led Modern Homestead, a Boulder-based design and construction firm that he later sold.

Research

Research Areas of Interest

• AI in Education: Simulations, Role-Plays, Workflow Design
• Professional Selling and the Psychology of Buyer Decisions
• Professional Selling and the Psychology of Buyer Decisions

Selected Publications

Ploumitsakos, John. "From AI Users to AI Designers: Teaching Sales Prospecting Through Repeatable Workflow Design." Proceedings of the National Conference in Sales Management, 2026 (forthcoming).

Teaching

Ploumitsakos teaches Fundamentals of Professional Selling, the anchor of the marketing division's professional sales focus area, and Advertising and Promotion Management, an upper-division course in advertising strategy, brand positioning and creative strategy. He has also taught the BCOR Applied Semester Experience, Digital Marketing and Marketing Research & Analytics. His courses are built around the work of the profession: students run a full sales cycle with AI avatar role-plays, design custom AI agents that power prospecting workflows, answer client-style RFPs for real brands and defend their decisions in live pitches. Every professional selling student is paired with an experienced sales professional through the Professional Sales Mentor network he leads. A Â鶹Ãâ·Ñ°æÏÂÔØSystem AI Sprint Grant: AI for Teaching & Learning (2026) funds his current project, "AI-Powered Sales Cycle Simulation for Professional Selling," a full-cycle simulation students will complete.

Service

• Lead, Professional Sales Program, Marketing Division, 2024–present, including the Professional Sales Mentor network and the Annual Mentor Summit
• Faculty Liaison, Sales Club, 2025–presentÌý
• Lead, Agentic AI module, AI in Business video series, Leeds AI InitiativeÌý
• Member, Undergraduate Curriculum Planning Committee, 2024–25Ìý
• Co-Lead, Marketing Curriculum Task ForceÌý
• Creator and presenter, Summer Teaching Workshops on AI-enabled teaching, Marketing Division, 2024 and 2025Ìý
• Incoming Trustee, Hillside School for Dyslexia, 2026Ìý
• Presenter and panelist, "The Fragility of Digital Public Spaces," Conference on World Affairs, 2025

Media, Insights & News

• " Novela, May 2026 — profile on integrating AI marketing simulations into Advertising and Promotion Management.Ìý
• "Leeds 2026 Award Winners," Leeds School of Business — announcement of the David B. Balkin and Rosalind and Chester Barnow Innovative Teaching Award.Ìý