Questions Welcome: Kinsey Institute Exec Director Earns Leading Man Award For Excellent Leadership
Justin Garcia, executive director of The Kinsey Institute, speaking at the recent TEDx KC in Kansas City with the theme, “Human After All.”
In his line of work as Executive Director of The Kinsey Institute, and author of the new book, The Intimate Animal: The Science of Sex, Fidelity and Why We Love and Die For Love, Justin Garcia PhD, fields a lot of inappropriate, embarrassing questions at cocktail parties and events. He politely declines, saying he is a private person.
But what the award-winning researcher in evolutionary biology, psychology, neuroscience, anthropology, social science and human behavior at the world’s leading sexuality and relationship research center, does appreciate are other kinds of inquiries.
“ Exec Director @KinseyInstitute Justin Garcia, author of The Intimate Animal, is this year’s Leading Man award winner @takeleadwomen #leadership #PowerUp2026.”
“The part I do think is an honor is when people come up to me with questions, wanting to know if they are normal. I realize they don’t know who else to ask,” says Garcia, 41, a married father of 11-month-old son, Nicholas, and Founding Co-Director of Human Sexuality and Health at the Indiana University School of Medicine who is speaking at this year’s Power Up Conference.
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For his thorough and award-winning leadership and research over decades, Garcia is receiving the 2026 Leading Man Award at the August 26 Power Up Conference, and particpating on the panel, Women's Health Unfiltered: Sex & Leadership.
Read more in Take The Lead on the Leading Man Award
This award was created in 2022 and is named after Alex Barbanell, the late husband of Gloria Feldt, co-founder and president of Take The Lead.
“We considered how to expand on Take The Lead’s legacy by expanding our programs for men, whose engagement we agreed is essential to the achievement of intersectional gender parity in leadership,” Feldt writes.
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Garcia is this year’s Leading Man winner and he is also speaking on a panel featuring Heather Florio, CEO of Desert Harvest and Take The Lead board member; Sophia Yen, MD, MPH, CEO & Co-founder, Pandia Health; Cheyenne Hunt, JD, Attorney, Advocate and Executive Director of Reckoning Action; Eva Goicochea, Founder & CEO of maude.
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The purpose of the panel is to address critical issues. “Women have long been judged, underestimated, objectified, or penalized because of perceptions tied to appearance, confidence, sexuality, and femininity, often forcing them to navigate impossible double standards. This conversation tackles those dynamics head-on with honesty, expertise, and actionable insight,” according to Take The Lead.
As chief scientific advisor and author of the annual Singles in America survey of 5,000 singles for Match.com for the past 15 years, Garcia has decades of thorough, reliable research to offer factual answers to both men and women.
“The power of agency is when we put ourselves in the drivers seat of our intimate lives, and we feel in control,” says Garcia, the founder of The Kinsey-Kelley Center for Gender Equity in Business at IU in 2022. “I was interested in pursuing questions in biomedical anthropology and behavior genetics.”
“The power of agency is when we put ourselves in the drivers seat of our intimate lives, and we feel in control,” says Justin Garcia, founder of The Kinsey-Kelley Center for #Gender #Equity in Business @IndianaU ”
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His background is deeply rooted in curiosity, research, intellectual drive and an understanding of human connection. Born and raised in Queens, New York, the only child, Garcia says he is the first generation of his family not only to graduate college, but also earn multiple graduate degrees, including a doctorate in evolutionary biology in 2011 from Binghamton University.
Growing up, Garcia says he wanted to be a zookeeper, veterinarian or naturalist and “watched a lot of nature shows.” His mother laughs that he never needed to have that awkward talk about sex with him as a child, because he didn’t need it. He gathered the info from the animals and assumed mammals were similar.
His close friendship with a much older cousin, Jen, who suffered and died from brain cancer in her 30s, when he was in high school, prompted him to think about scientific research and medical school perhaps as a career.
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“The idea of neuroscience and research was formative,” says Garcia, who recently was honored as a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the publisher of the Science journals.
He received this recognition from AAAS for “his distinguished contributions to understanding evolutionary and biocultural foundations of romantic and sexual relationships across the lifespan,” as well as his “unwavering defense of academic freedom to promote scientific and scholarly inquiry.”
“@KinseyInstitute exec director Justin Garcia, speaker @takeleadwomen #PowerUp honored as Fellow of @AAAS for “distinguished contributions to understanding evolutionary and biocultural foundations of romantic and sexual relationships across the lifespan.” ”
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Earning a bachelors degree in 2007 in behavioral development and neuroscience from Binghamton, he went on to earn a masters in biomedical anthropology and a graduate certificate in evolutionary studies in 2009. It is this background that prompted a recent research trip to Thailand to study animal behaviors.
Continuing at Binghamton, he was an adjunct lecturer in health and wellness studies, at the Decker School of Nursing. Then in 2011 he was a postdoctoral research fellow at IU, until 2013, when he joined the Kinsey Institute staff as a senior scientist.
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“I wasn’t interested in the cookie cutter way of knowledge production,” Garcia says. “The Institute did what I was interested in; everyone brings their interest. I could use my biology and anthropology in a way” that was not possible at other institutions.
“When we think about women’s health and women’s sexual health, it is not that long since studies have included women,” he says. Until recently, scientific studies only surveyed men. “It’s the same in animal science, too.” He adds, “That is a pervasive problem, not testing for sex and gender.”
“When we think about #womenshealth and women’s #sexualhealth, it is not that long since studies have included women,” says Justin Garcia, exec director @KinseyInstittute @IndianaU @takeleadwomen speaker”
Eager to share the body of work that is his and that of his colleagues at Kinsey, Garcia says he is eager to address the audience at Power Up. “These are changemakers who want to learn how not to accept the status quo.”
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He will share strategies on “how sex and gender impact business and leadership—including pay inequity, sexual harassment and other dynamics” at the conference, says Garcia, who co-authored the 2016 book, Evolution and Human Sexual Behavior.
At 34, in 2019, Garcia was named executive director at Kinsey, the youngest in its history. This summer he was honored as a fellow of the International Association for Relationship Research for his contributions to the field. He is also Founding Co-Director & Adjunct Professor, IU School of Medicine, for the Human Sexuality and Health Scholarly Concentration.
What he will share with Take The Lead’s audience at this year’s conference, “Audacity: Leadership in Action,” are insights into “how sex and gender impact business and leadership. There is pay inequity, but there are a lot of other interesting dynamics, such as rules about dating and sexual harassment.”
Garcia, who in 2025, earned a Harvard Kennedy School Executive Certificate in Public Leadership, says it is a challenge “to make organizations and individuals navigate that space. In higher ed, the military and corporations, you have to see how issues of sexism, harassment and sexual conduct can derail a career. So how do we navigate the workplace?”
“In #highered, #military and #corporations, you have to see how issues of #sexism, #harassment and sexual conduct can derail a career. So how do we navigate the workplace?” asks Justin Garcia @KinseyInstitute, award winner @takeleadwomen #PowerUp2026”
He adds, “Also I’m interested in how this all impacts our ability to show up as colleagues and leaders. If we see a gap, together we can do something about it. All of us can’t just show up to a conference once a year.”
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There must be action to create change.
Change is urgent particularly in these harrowing cultural times of stigma and disinformation as “people’s orientations, sexualities, and relationships” become weapons. “Sometimes misinformation turns into attacks,” says Garcia, who is the Ruth N. Halls Endowed Professor, College of Arts and Sciences at IU.
Even as state funding to IU and Kinsey was blocked and Garcia has been doxxed and threatened for his work and opinions, Garcia says, “At times there is a political safety aspect. But I am unflinching in our right to study the human condition.”
Take The Lead’s Power Up Conference 2026, Audacity: Leadership In Action, features a diverse group of speakers and experts speaking on the importance of inclusive leadership and strategies to solve systemic and historical barriers across all sectors. Panel topics include Women Claiming Midlife Health & Power, along with Jennifer Weiss-Wolf, Executive Director, NYU Law; Emily Serebryanny, co-founder of Institute FLE; Dr. Rachel Rubin, Urologist & Sexual Medicine Specialist; and Davina Lyons, Resilience Strategist, Creator of the RISE Framework. Additionally, following keynote speaker Margaret Atwood, there are panels on the power of storytelling, AI, wealth, entrepreneurship, investing and more. Learn more about other speakers and panels and register here.
