A. Lad Burgin

Lad grew up in Cleveland, played football at Ohio State for the legendary Woody Hayes, and earned his BS, MBA, and PhD there, initially subsidizing his graduate education working as a laborer at the Buckeye Steel Castings Company. After serving as an executive at SCM and Transamerica, Lad headed four companies as CEO, including a publicly traded medical devices enterprise acquired by Johnson & Johnson. He went on to serve as director on the boards of 5 companies, and to lead HRMG, LLC, a management consulting firm providing business, organizational, and leadership effectiveness services. Lad has consulted with executives from more than 300 companies across 25 different industries around the world, ranging in size from Silicon Valley start-ups to the top Fortune 100. Recognized internationally for his work with corporate boards, CEOs and their teams, Lad continues to serve as a confidential advisor and coach, helping organizations build and sustain high performance. Lad has authored numerous articles on leadership, performance, and organizational effectiveness, as well as two books in the business genre: Leading Your Organization to High Performance: A Guide for Executives, and Leading Units & Teams to High Performance.

For ten years, Lad co-facilitated a series of “Good Life” seminars (originally conceived by Mortimer Adler of the University of Chicago) alongside Aspen Institute veterans John O’Neal (best-selling author of The Paradox of Success) and UC Berkeley Haas School of Business and Stanford University professor Pete Thigpen.

Lad’s latest book crosses over into more personal territory: The Good Life Guide: Every Voyage Needs a Plan is a practical playbook for living with intention — for adults at any life stage who are ready to stop drifting and start sailing with purpose. Combining the authenticity of a memoir with the generosity of mentorship, it offers a rigorous, structured, personal growth experience including readings and exercises, which can be approached in a variety of ways: as a solo voyage, or because the process stimulates and is enriched by deep conversations, with a partner or friend, or in a larger group setting.

Lad has been an avid sailor since he launched his passion in a small boat on Lake Erie when he was 11 years old. He’s been at it ever since — racing on the Great Lakes and San Francisco Bay, crossing the Pacific from Northern California to Hawaii, and eventually making his home in Port Townsend, Washington, where he sails on the Bay when the weather allows, which Lad claims is most always. During his life, Lad has encountered catastrophic loss including the death of his adult son, Christian. He has grieved friends whom he did not expect to outlive. A dire cancer diagnosis forced him to reckon with how he had been living and how he intended to spend the time remaining to him. Several years of challenging medical intervention carried him through to remission, granting him “the long voyage.” A daily meditator, Lad has been studying Buddhism and Jungian psychology for most of his adult life, not as an academic but as a practitioner — someone trying to understand, in the most practical sense, how to be present and how to act wisely. That practice is woven throughout The Good Life Guide.

Lad and Burke, his wife of 50 years, have two surviving sons. “Every day that I wake up, sail on Port Townsend Bay, sit with Burke, and write a sentence that is true, is a day on the long voyage. I am grateful for each and every one of them,” says Lad.