ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Richard J. Leider

Internationally bestselling author, coach, and keynote speaker, Richard has pioneered the way we answer the question, Why do you rise in the morning?

Widely viewed as a thought leader of the global purpose movement, his work is featured regularly in many media sources including PBS public television and NPR public radio. His PBS special The Power of Purpose was viewed across the United States. He has taken his purpose message to all fifty states, Canada, and to four continents. Along the way, Richard has written eleven books, including three bestsellers, which have sold more than one million copies and have been translated into twenty languages. Repacking Your Bags and The Power of Purpose are considered classics in the personal growth field. His book Who Do You Want to Be When You Grow Old? defines the power of purposeful aging.

Richard is the founder of Inventure—The Purpose Company, a firm created to guide individuals to live, work, and lead on purpose. He is ranked by Forbes as one of the top-five most respected coaches and is a contributing author to many coaching books. He is one of a select few coaches who have been invited to work with more than one hundred thousand leaders from over one hundred organizations such as AARP, Ameriprise, Blue Zones, Ericsson, Habitat for Humanity, Lifespark, Mayo Clinic, Modern Elder Academy, National Football League, Outward Bound, United Health Group, and the US Department of State.

Richard holds a master’s degree in counseling and is a National Certified Counselor as well as a National Certified Master Career Counselor. His work has been recognized with many awards including a Bush Fellowship, the Outstanding Scholar for Creative Longevity and Wisdom award from the Fielding Institute, and Sage-ing International’s Wisdom Circle. Richard is a senior fellow at the University of Minnesota’s acclaimed Earl E. Bakken Center for Spirituality and Healing, and he serves as the Purpose Ambassador for Blue Zones and Blue Spirit Costa Rica.

For more than thirty years, he has led Inventure Expedition safaris in Tanzania, where he is on the board of the Dorobo Fund for Tanzania. He lives in Scandia, Minnesota, with his wife Sally, life coach and Watershed Wisdom educator.

David A. Shapiro

Dave is a philosopher, educator, and writer whose work consistently explores matters of meaning, purpose, and equity in the lives of young people and adults. He is a philosophy professor at Cascadia College, a community college in the Seattle area, and has a long-standing teaching and leadership role with the Philosophy Learning and Teaching Organization (PLATO), which brings philosophy and philosophers into K–12 classrooms.

Dave has coauthored five previous books with Richard Leider; he has published two books of his own on ethics and philosophy with young people. In 2018–2019 he was a Fulbright Academic and Professional Excellence Scholar—his project, “Cross- Pollinating Philosophy for Children in India and the US,” took him to South India, where he worked with scholars and educators to bring philosophical inquiry into the lives of students at schools in the states of Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, and Kerala.

Dave is a lover of nature and a full-time bicycle commuter; he lives in Seattle with his wife, the artist Jennifer Dixon.