Marc Lesser is cofounder and CEO of SIYLI: Search Inside Yourself Leadership Institute, a nonprofit company whose vision is creating enlightened leaders worldwide. Based on programs that Marc helped develop within Google, SIYLI accomplishes its mission by employing the tools of mindfulness and emotional intelligence to help leaders and organizations achieve more productivity, leadership, effectiveness, and happiness.
For more than twenty years Marc has been integrating mindfulness and awareness practices with business, strategy, and leadership practices. He has been practicing and studying Zen for more than thirty years and is a Zen teacher in the lineage of Suzuki Roshi, author of Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind. Marc was a resident of the San Francisco Zen Center for ten years and in 1983 served as director of Tassajara Zen Mountain Center, the first Zen monastery in the West.
Prior to his position with SIYLI, Marc was founder and CEO of ZBA Associates, a management consulting, coaching, and training company. Clients included Google, Genentech, Twitter, and Facebook, as well as leading nonprofit organizations. Before founding ZBA, he was the founder and CEO of Brush Dance, an innovative publisher of greeting cards, calendars, and journals with distribution throughout the world.
Marc is the author of Less: Accomplishing More by Doing Less and Z.B.A.: Zen of Business Administration — How Zen Practice Can Transform Your Work and Your Life. He has an MBA from New York University and an undergraduate degree in psychology from Rutgers University. He lives with his family in Mill Valley, California.