It seems that, for as long as I can remember, I have been searching for the best way to help myself and others lead successful, meaning-driven lives.
Before graduating high school, my dad gave me the books,Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill, The Power of Positive Thinking by Norman Vincent Peal, and How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie. I was lucky to find such motivation and inspiration at a young age, yet I still wondered what more was possible. So I continued my personal studies, exploring significant figures such as Emerson, Abraham Joshua Herschel, J. Krishnamurti, and others. Then, in my freshman year of college, I had the good fortune to learn meditation. I became a student of Chögyam Trungpa, a Tibetan Buddhist meditation master. I also became a student of Jewish spirituality and Kabbalah.
This world of insight developed alongside my material life at Rutgers, where I majored in Economics. After graduating, I attended business school at the University of Chicago. In 1984, I graduated with an MBA in Finance, and was fortunate to be hired by Morgan Stanley to became one of the first five “home-grown” investment advisors. I ended up becoming a director, led a large successful team and, for a four- year stint, became the leading advisor at the merchant bank, Donaldson Lufkin and Jenrette.
Given the diverse interests in my life, I always wondered: How could all of this be aligned? How could my interests in finance, spirituality, psychology and personal development all come together? I also thought that others must surely wonder the same thing about their own lives. Part of the answer to this question came at age forty when I learned about Integral Theory. Summarizing hundreds of studies from Maslow to Jung to Gebser, Integral Theory provided me a map; a very powerful, transformative, and tangible tool for development. Growth, I realized, seems so much easier when one has a researched map of what may lie ahead. Compelled by a larger holistic vision of what growth and wealth truly meant, in 2013, I created Aligned Wealth and in 2016, the Aligned Center.