John Aigner

John Aigner

Aigner is a Paris-born, rolling-stone Journalist/entrepreneur, activist who, for over 60 years, has been motivating, teaching and empowering others.

Until retirement in 2016 Aigner worked as Workshop Developer for the New York State Office of Mental Health. His mission, for over 10 years, involved empowering a multicultural outpatient population in recovery from serious and persistent mental health conditions. He assisted out-patients to regain self esteem through self empowerment.

Years as a career counselor

Prior to that he spent 10 years as a Career Counselor/Livelihood Coach in private practice, and was founder/director of the Livelihood Center, in Midtown Manhattan, where empowering individuals also played an important role.

Community Journalism

After graduating from CCNY with a liberal arts degree in 1959, he worked for several years in urban community journalism in Harlem, Brooklyn Heights and Flatbush.

After two years of drafted military service during the Cuban Missile Crisis John began in-home sales work and built a #1 nationally ranked sales organization.  This led to a position with IBM where he received their in depth training and spent two years “in career/cultural limbo.” Next he took to the road, traveling four Mid-south states, marketing a popular line of fashion products to leading retailers.

Community newspaper publisher

After doubling sales in two years he moved to Westchester County, and founded a community newspaper which evolved into “Typegraphic,” a leading edge computerized page layout and composition service bureau.

After selling his interest, he entered the resume and career advisory field as a writer/editor. This quickly evolved into the Livelihood Center which focused on retail career advice, informed by the Buddhist notion of “right livelihood.”

Radio & TV and authorship

He has frequently appeared on radio and TV and has lectured and presented workshops to career counseling professionals at the New York Public Library and developed a groundbreaking graduate course for College of New Rochelle entitled "On Becoming the Electronic Career Counselor".

Since retirement in 2016, after 12 years in mental health, his focus has turned to community involvement as a member of the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Croton Hudson Valley, and as facilitator of a Wise Aging group and co-facilitator of a weekly Mindfulness Meditation practice at the Ossining Public Library.

He recently self-published an autobiography titled “The Jobfather Chronicles” and a second volume of “Family” including photographs and commentary from his father Lucien Aigner. In addition his web page safesenior.net and book can be found online.

His next book, “Safesenior.net, THE user’s manual” will be published early this fall.