John Bales served as President of the International Council for Coaching Excellence from 2005 to 2025 and was one of the founding members of ICCE in 1997.  He has led the ICCE Global Coaches House program at recent Olympic, Paralympic and Commonwealth Games, played a key role in designing the Global Coach Conferences, and contributed to the ICCE Coach Developer program.

John serves as a Vice-Director of the Nippon Sport Science University Coach Developer Academy (NCDA) in Tokyo, originally developed as a Tokyo Olympic legacy project from 2014 to 2021 and now with its rebirth with IOC Olympic Solidarity support since 2025.

John was President and Chief Executive Officer of the Coaching Association of Canada (CAC) from 1996 to 2013, overseeing Canada’s National Coaching Certification Program (NCCP) and contributing to the establishment of a network of National Coaching Institutes across Canada for the preparation of the next generation of high performance coaches. He served as director of the National Coaching Institute –Calgary for two years.  He has an MBA from the Institut Européen d’Administration des Affaires (INSEAD) in Fontainebleau, France, and was a national and Olympic sprint canoe coach for Canada.