Lead Dad: A Guide for Families to be More Connected and Less Stressed
by Paul Sullivan
For fathers who refuse to choose between career ambition and family engagement, Lead Dad offers a practical blueprint for succeeding at both.
Lead Dad is a timely, conversation-shifting exploration of modern fatherhood, work, marriage, and caregiving in the post-pandemic world. Drawing on his own journey from New York Times columnist to founder of The Company of Dads, Paul Sullivan combines deeply personal storytelling, cultural analysis, research, and practical advice.
Organized around relatable stories and actionable lessons, Lead Dad tackles everything from redefining masculinity and sharing the mental load to navigating hybrid work, supporting a spouse’s career, and communicating more effectively at work and in life. The rise of what Sullivan dubs the “Lead Dad” is a fundamental cultural shift—one that benefits fathers, mothers, children, workplaces, and communities alike.
Blending the accessibility of relationship-driven prescriptive nonfiction with the authority of workplace and cultural reporting, Lead Dad positions itself at the intersection of parenting, business, masculinity, and modern family life—offering readers a hopeful, practical roadmap for healthier relationships in a rapidly changing world.
About the Author
Paul Sullivan is the founder of The Company of Dads, the first platform dedicated to creating a community for Lead Dads – men who are the go-to parents at home, who support their spouse’s careers and who are allies to Working Moms and caregivers in general at work. In other words, super-involved fathers who are proud to be Dads!
A long-time New York Times columnist, Paul became a Lead Dad in 2013 when his wife started her own asset management firm. He spent the next seven years as an Undercover Lead Dad – not feeling he could be open about his role in his community where most of the childcare seemed to be done by moms or paid caregivers or at work where he didn’t want his editors to think he was not 100 percent committed to his career. He became an expert at calendar jenga to make it work.
This all changed in 2020 when without school or camp being a Lead Dad and working full time became untenable. When he realized there was nothing to support fathers like him, he grew frustrated – and then did some research. The sheer number of men in the Lead Dad role – about a third of all fathers today – shocked him.
Encouraged by his wife, Paul ended his New York Times column at the end of 2021 and launched The Company of Dads in early 2022. Today, The Company of Dads is educating Lead Dads through its weekly newsletter, podcast, resource library and various features. It is making Lead Dads feel less isolated through its in-person and online community events. And it is working with companies to change the caregiving conversation in the office and to train managers to message the company’s care policies correctly.
Before starting The Company of Dads, Paul wrote the Wealth Matters column in The New York Times for 13 years. He also created the Money Game column in Golf Magazine. As a journalist, his articles also appeared in Fortune, Money, Conde Nast Portfolio, The International Herald Tribune, Barron’s, The Boston Globe, and Food & Wine. From 2000 to 2006, he was a reporter, editor and columnist at the Financial Times. He got his start as a reporter at Bloomberg and Institutional Investor.
He is a contributing editor at Golf Digest, where he writes the Paying Dues column.
He is the author of the books Clutch: Why Some People Excel Under Pressure and Others Don’t and The Thin Green Line: The Money Secrets of The Super Wealthy.
Paul has been interviewed on podcasts, radio and television programs across America, including NPR, Marketplace, CNN, and Fox News. He has also given key-note talks to corporate and conference audiences from 50 to 500 people in the United States, Mexico and Chile. He has lectured at leading universities, including the Columbia Business School and the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.
Paul lives in Fairfield County, Connecticut, with his wife and their three daughters and three dogs. He received degrees in history from Trinity College and the University of Chicago. When not running The Company of Dads or being a Lead Dad, he is an obsessive golfer – often with one of his daughters playing with him.