Rob Touchstone III
Center for Vocational Discovery
Executive Director of the Center for Vocational Discovery
Biography
Rob Touchstone is a leadership educator, social entrepreneur, Gallup-Certified CliftonStrengths coach, and co-founder of The Well Coffeehouse and Waypoint Strengths Coaching. As Executive Director of the Center for Vocational Discovery at Lipscomb University and an instructor in the College of Business and the College of Bible & Ministry, he helps students, business leaders, organizations, and churches engage at the intersection of faith, purpose, sustainability, and mission. Through teaching, coaching, and consulting, Rob equips others to discover their identity, clarify purpose, and put their unique strengths to work in ways that create lasting impact.
He spent nearly two decades serving full-time in churches as a youth minister and missional discipleship minister across three congregations, later continuing part-time as a preaching minister. He continues to serve as an executive board member of The Well, the missional coffee enterprise he launched that uses the power of commerce to address a critical social problem—lack of clean water—while building community through its retail locations. Rob remains deeply passionate about Business as Mission as a sustainable way to create real, lasting solutions to social challenges. He also serves on the boards of Seed International and the 509 Foundation, both focused on global impact through sustainable missional strategies.
In 2015 Rob created Lipscomb’s Center for Business as Mission to equip the next generation with this same vision. In 2022 that work expanded when he co-created and began directing the Center for Vocational Discovery, a campus-wide initiative helping students explore identity, meaning, and purpose in the midst of vocational calling. As a professor he teaches courses in entrepreneurship, theology, Bible, business as mission, creativity, and business values. He also provides CliftonStrengths coaching for students and Strengths training and consultation for individuals and organizations through Waypoint Strengths Coaching. Rob can be heard on his Living the Story of Jesus podcast.
Rob’s work has been recognized with the NASBA Center for the Public Trust “Making a Difference” Award (2017), Nashville’s Business Innovator of the Year (2016), and the Mary Morris Award for Exemplary Service at Lipscomb (2015). He is married to Aimee and they have four children—Anna, John Mark, Mary Ann, and Andrew. He loves spending time with his family, his church, and his students, along with baseball, hiking, a good cup of coffee, and driving with the top down in his Jeep Wrangler.
Academic Degrees
B.A. in Bible, Lipscomb University
Master of Divinity, Lipscomb University