Living Your Path: Transformative Leadership as Spiritual Practice

If you’re someone who escapes into your spiritual practice as a means of solace amidst a world of chaos, you’re not alone. The pandemic, global warming, job insecurity, gun violence, racism, homophobia, and misogyny, war, inflation, reduced access to healthcare, and inequity across nearly every sector of society can leave all of us feeling untethered if not downright lost.

But when does escape become escapism? When our spiritual practices call us to cultivate and connect with our common divinity, why do we choose to distance ourselves from our humanity? Instead of contextualizing spirituality as only one part of our lives, how do live into our paths in an expansive, embodied way that awakens vibrancy, self-awareness, and liberation in others?

Through storytelling, community dialogue, reflective inquiry, and practical practice, Zoraiz invites you to embrace transformative leadership as an alchemical spiritual practice. Join them in an exploration of how leadership can serve as a means by which we can usher the base, heavy aspects of our humanity—power, fear, greed, indifference—into the light for transmutation and drive the evolution of our collective consciousness forward.

Host Bio

Zoraiz Ahmed, MS, MA, PMP, SCPM, CA-AM, is a biotech executive, consulting firm founder, and an ordained Buddhist monk. Known for their commitment to building teams with heart, Zoraiz has been fortunate to integrate their spiritual and leadership practices in service to the development of several marketed infectious disease medicines over the past decade, including treatments for COVID-19 and HIV, as well as multiple curative therapies for Hepatitis C. They received their B.S. in Biochemistry and M.S. in Integrated Biomedical Science with an emphasis in Molecular and Cellular Biochemistry, have advanced certifications in project and alliance management, and earned their M.A. in Transformative Leadership at CIIS. While their search for purpose led them to leadership, their search for meaning yielded exploration of myriad expressions of spirituality ultimately guiding them to a meditation teacher who taught them that we are humans being, not humans doing. Zoraiz is based in the Bay Area.

Related Academic Program
Department of Transformative Inquiry