Highlights of More Recently
Recognized Noble Leaders.

Daniel Goldstein

Daniel Goldstein’s emphasis on collaborative participation in generative communities is deep rooted in his earliest foundational influences.  Daniel’s journey of leadership began at an early age and is evident throughout his career, nonprofit, and educational achievements.  His life journey has taken him across countries, continents, and cultures as he works with others to build companies, social causes, teams, and networks.  He has been a prolific public speaker, writer, student, and mentor.

Daniel grew up as first generation American.  His parents emigrated from Europe.  His father arrived on a Fulbright Scholarship from England after earning his undergraduate degree.  His mother arrived in the late 1930s as a refugee of war without citizenship, having escaped Nazi Germany with her family.  Daniel was raised believing that societies need to be inclusive to fight against the divisiveness which caused generations of his ancestors to flee from persecution.  Rather than playing competitive sports, he spent his childhood years deeply immersed in outdoor activities, learning self-reliance, community, and respect for the natural world.

At 18 years old, Daniel founded his first business, a franchise house painting business with 23 employees.  He credits his success as the highest grossing franchise across North America that year as being driven by his philosophy to lead by example.

Folience Service Recognition Luncheon

His most formative education was simultaneously completing two master’s programs at Rensselaer, an MBA in finance and a master’s in science and technology studies.  These programs balanced sound economic sustainability with social responsibility and ethics.  He went on from there to work at the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation in Kansas City.  There, Daniel was moved by Mr. Kauffman’s lifelong focus to create a company and a foundation supporting people to reach greater economic self-determination.

Daniel then lived in Europe for 15 years and, based there, managed investments, businesses, and philanthropic programs around the world.  He created an international program for children with serious illnesses.  The program has influenced the development and creation of spin off programs touching the lives of thousands of children and families across Europe. 

In 2016, having returned to live in the US, Daniel entered the world of employee ownership.  Here he says he at long last found the purpose that tied together his previous half century of education, work, and life.  He took over as President and CEO of a 132-year-old company which had been primarily a family-owned and controlled media conglomerate.  The disintermediation of media by the internet, along with prior business decisions, had created deep financial instability and toxicity in the company culture.  Daniel developed and led a team to set up a holding company structure, diversified the business by acquiring manufacturing businesses, and developed a strong employee ownership culture.  In 2020, the company achieved its highest valuation since starting its ESOP in 1986, and has gone on to achieve year-on-year share value increases.  In 2022, the company was awarded the national Employee Owned Company of the Year by The ESOP Association.

Daniel has testified before Congress about the benefits of employee ownership and has actively advocated for greater awareness of, and access to, employee ownership across America and internationally.  He knows that when employees can invest their labor to earn equity in their company, they can accrue the resources to create a secure financial future for themselves and their families, which in turn creates more vibrant communities.

Today Daniel serves on several Boards of employee-owned companies and continues to promote employee ownership through research, writing, teaching, speaking, advocacy, and meeting with business owners curious to learn how they transition their business to employee ownership.

RESOURCES

Articles and Written Interviews:

 

Podcast Interviews:

Contributions to and Quotes in Articles:

GARY GREENBERG

Formerly Head of Global Emerging Markets, Federated Hermes International

Gary grew up in Chicago, received his undergraduate degree at Carleton College in Comparative Religion and graduated at the top of his MBA class at Thunderbird (now part of the University of Arizona).  He started a career in Finance in 1985 at Continental Bank, covering Chicago-based multinational organizations. He then spent one year in institutional equity sales in New York before starting a 33-year investing career in Chicago, New York, Hong Kong. and London.  He was amongst the first international portfolio managers to invest in China, India, Peru, and Indonesia.  During his career, he received over 30 industry awards for investment performance and social responsibility. Over the last decade of his career he ranked in the top 1% of emerging market fund managers, and in his final year, managing over $17 billion, he received the coveted Fund Manager of the Year award from Investment Week, the premier investment publication in the United Kingdom.

gary

Gary used the authority gained through successful investment performance to advocate for responsibility in investing, a vocal and respected proponent of applying ethics to the process of investing for the long term. He maintains an interest in the investment world through his membership in the investment sub-committee of King’s College in London and consults with various organizations on investment-related matters.    Married in 1988, he and his wife have two adult children and now live in the Hudson Valley in Upstate New York, having recently relocated from London.

Gary has spent nearly half a century studying and practicing both Western and Eastern spirituality.  Over the past 25 years, he has concentrated on Buddhist study and practice, first under Thich Nhat Hanh, in the Plum Village Tradition, where in 2010 he became an ordained member of the Order of Interbeing, and more recently under Khenpo Tsewang Dongyal Rinpoche, a Tibetan Dzogchen Master.  Most of his working life was an exercise in trying to balance the spiritual and the material, and he was able to introduce regular meditation practice to his and other companies in the City of London.  Now that he is retired he spends several hours a day in meditation along with spiritual study.  In addition, Gary serves as a spiritual mentor to many practitioners in the US and the UK. 

In this article he wrote in March 2021, “Zen and the Art of Investment Management: Exploring Mindfulness as a Vehicle for Truly Responsible Investing,” Gary explains how investors and intermediaries can help ensure that their actions serve both themselves and their clients and people, planet, and prosperity.   In this way, Gary demonstrates NOBLE LEADERSHIP IN THE EMERGENT REALITY.

Zen and the Art of Investment Management
Climate Change
Income Inequality in Emerging Markets
Transcendent Leadership
Birds of Fire

Dagny St. John

Dagny St. John was born December 5, 1942, into an artistic family.  Growing up on Mason’s Island in Connecticut, her early life was informed by tides, weather, nature and adventure.  She believes her education was enhanced by attending girl’s and women’s high school and college where she focused on becoming and teaching women to be fully empowered.

Dagny St. John went on to teach high school creating and expanding programs such as the Loon project.  The mission of the Loon project was to introduce an alternative way for school students to engage in outdoor activities such as rock climbing or hiking for the first time.  The alternative approach emphasized collaboration and team building.  St. John taught at various Outward Bound schools including teaching the first girl’s sailing course at the Hurricane Island Outward Bound School in 1972.  She helped start coeducation as the first woman dean at the Hotchkiss School by selecting the first set of young women for admission and creating an orientation program that is still in practice today.

Dagny St. John is a living legacy of Noble Leadership as she weaves throughout her career “Uplifting People, Planet and Prosperity.”  A major accomplishment has been fully self-empowering women and in particular in their connection to nature.  In her many roles and responsibilities, Dagny continuously fosters self-discovery, experiential learning, teamwork, and mastery by doing.  Dagny still participates in a Hurricane Island adventure course which has been designed specifically for women in the 60 to 83 age range.  The program teaches them to become aware of their feelings and to be empowered.  A documentary about this course “Beyond the Compass” presently is being produced.

Dagny’s triumphs are a tribute to her human spirit which she carries forth in her living values and noble works.  Dagny walked 500 miles on the El Camino and more recently hiked 48 of the 4,000 footers in New Hampshire becoming the first woman over 75 and over 80 to have achieved that.  She is 82.  She was featured on the Wisdom issue, September 2024, of the Boston Sunday Globe honoring those phenomenal accomplishments.  Dagny literally “Walks her Talk” in being empowered and being a Noble Leader.  Her authenticity, integrity, discipline and heartfelt leadership in her personal and professional lives is remarkable and inspirational. 

Instead of letting fear control her on the steep, and sometimes perilous climbs, Dagny explains “she surrounds herself with a bubble of positive energy and becomes tuned into each mountain as she climbs.”  The higher consciousness of her inner reality and the awareness of her sacred connection to nature define her outer reality, which is reflected in both her personal and professional success.

Dagny St. John believes the seven sacred values to live by are joy, peace, strength, courage, gratitude, humility, and love.  She affirms that being connected to nature throughout her life has informed her about these values.  As a Noble Leader, she teaches others about these sacred connections.  She epitomizes in her life’s work living these values with authenticity.  This is Noble Leadership in the Emergent Reality.

Dagny continually redefines herself and her higher purpose.  After countless years of teaching and as a counselor and administrator in education, she opened her own practice as a soul intuitive.  She gives transformative healing energy care as an ever-evolving expression of her countless talents, skills and higher purpose.  She wisely surmises, “Sometimes we just need a shift in consciousness or an expanded awareness to help get clarity about one’s higher purpose.”   Dagny shares more of her deeply intuitive wisdom and transformative work with soul consciousness in her book Soul Fragments and Healing through Soul Journeys.

Dagny’s higher purpose and gifts expand beyond human souls with her ability to communicate and receive messages from plants, animals, dolphins and shales.  Dagny feels a sense of oneness through her close and sacred connections with nature, and these are among her most joyful times.

Our world will immeasurably benefit from more Noble Leaders like Dagny with their ability to unite nature reverently with heartfelt humanity, elevating consciousness by exemplifying human spirit and living values to uplift humanity and our earth.

Brian Tausig-Lux

Retired President of UnTours, Founder of Taussig Travel.

First B-Corp in the world.

Brian Taussig-Lux worked for UnTours for 36 years. He led the company for that last 27 years of his career. How did his leadership line up with the precepts of Noble leadership? Here are some examples.

1. Higher Purpose.

Brian was drawn to UnTours at the age of 19 for two reasons: 1) He wanted to travel and learn how people in other cultures lived and 2) he saw an opportunity to work for a company that prioritized values other than maximizing profit. Brian’s strict Christian upbringing had emphasized living a life of purpose, not of self-enrichment. It was the 1980s. The tensions between the US and its allies and the Soviet Union were top of mind. Brian saw travel as a way to expose Americans to different ways of living and different views of the world. Travel could contribute to world peace. Years later, when Brian took over leadership, the company focused on environmental, social, and governance issues (ESG), culminating in the company becoming the first B Corporation in the world. The certification (and continual recertification) as a B Corporation accomplished two key goals: 1) UnTours signaled to clients and other stakeholders that it was driven by its values and 2) the company joined a supportive community of like-minded business leaders. In addition to its B Corporation commitment, the owner of UnTours created a foundation that offered low interest “micro-loans” to entrepreneurs from struggling communities. All of the profits from Untours flowed to the UnTours Foundation. This focus on a higher purpose created a virtuous cycle. Like Brian, other purpose-driven people became interested in working for UnTours. Brian prioritized hiring these values-aligned employees. These associates helped the company both in terms of profitability and in terms of accomplishing a social purpose.

2. Living Values.

Profitability is never a given in the turbulent travel industry. The 9/11 attack in 2001 came the same day that UnTours would have had its largest ever departure for Europe. Not only did no one depart the US on that day. The clients in Europe who were scheduled to return on September 12 could not fly. It was unclear when anyone would be able to return to the US. At the same time, no one knew what this attack would do to the travel industry writ large. Previous terrorist attacks in Europe had greatly diminished demand for international travel. In spite of the uncertainty, after conferring with his staff, Brian decided to pay the accommodation costs of the many hundreds of travelers stranded in Europe. As far as they knew, no other travel company took such an extraordinary step. The company also offered full credit to those who were unable to leave the US on their scheduled departure dates. Travel insurance companies found contractual reasons not to help either group of clients. Between the customer gratitude and the employee pride in “doing the right thing,” the decision turned out well for the company.

Brian is an advocate of “Servant Leadership,” a concept developed by Robert Greenleaf. Greenleaf proposed that a leader aspiring to meet employees’ needs ask this question: “Do those served grow as persons? Do they, while being served, become healthier, wiser, freer, more autonomous, more likely themselves to become servants? And, what is the effect on the least privileged in society, will they benefit, or, at least, not be further deprived?” Brian did his best to lead with these principles in mind while helping employees create positive impacts with their work.

3. Human Spirit

With the many external shocks to the travel industry throughout the years, maintaining equanimity and a spirit of resilience was vital to Brian’s success as a leader. The most recent disruption was the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic that essentially halted travel to Europe for two years. Some companies went out of business, but Brian kept the core UnTours team intact and ready to take the company back to profitability once the crisis was over.

4. Oneness Consciousness

Brian drew from several traditions to create a spiritual foundation for his leadership. While rooted in Christianity, he found great wisdom in the Tao Te Ching and its insight that surface appearances can obscure deeper realities. This enabled better understanding of complex employee interactions and yielded occasional strategic insights. Brian’s tai chi practice helped keep him centered physically and mentally during difficult periods. It was also a constant reminder of the principle of the soft power of water. Water is soft and flexible. It can adapt itself quickly to new environments and circumstances. It finds low, empty spaces and flows into them. This insight enabled Brian to minimize “hard” directive leadership and collaborate with his team to find opportunities for success.

Brian’s BA in European Studies is from Empire State College. His MBA is from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. During his tenure, UnTours generated millions in excess profits to fund the UnTours Foundation. He has since founded Taussig Travel, a travel consulting service focused on sustainable travel to Europe.

References:

UnTours (www.untours.com)

UnTours Foundation (www.untoursfoundation.com)

The First B Corporation (www.taussigtravel.com/becoming-the-first-b-corp/)

Departure from UnTours (www.untours.com/blog/reflecting-27-years-guiding-all-things-untours)

Taussig Travel (www.taussigtravel.com)

Talitha Vaz Silva

Talitha Vaz Silva’s trajectory is defined by a single word: intersectionality. Born in Rio de Janeiro, her journey was fueled by an early, insatiable drive for social equity, beginning as a volunteer educator at 18 after recognizing the stark educational disparities among her peers.

While navigating law school, Talitha was elected President of the Academic Board, where she prioritized blood donation drives and social initiatives for children in Rio’s favelas. She was also awarded Honorary Recognition by the Rio de Janeiro City Council.

Despite the challenges of becoming a solo mom at 19, Talitha persevered and completed her degree on schedule, becoming the first woman in her family to earn a university degree, with a remarkable GPA of 8.6/10. In 2009, when the topic of carbon credits was still nascent, with little academic production on the subject, she presented a distinctive thesis—the first to be delivered using 100% recycled materials, hand-stitched instead of spiral-bound.

As a lawyer, Talitha found her purpose in bridging Brazil and Portugal, specializing in human rights and nationality processes. Her impact soon expanded into education and communication:

In Brazil, she professionally immersed herself in the diverse contexts of 17 favelas, working both with NGOs and in public sector initiatives. Separately, she served as a social mediator on socio-environmental projects at the award-winning Agência Redes para a Juventude, mentoring initiatives like the Fala Roça newspaper. At the Rio de Janeiro State Secretariat for Human Rights, she served as a methodological area coordinator for a program in partnership with the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), emphasizing active listening guided by professionals and transforming life planning into an innovative board game that earned her an invitation to lecture at the University of Lille, France.

In Portugal, she launched the 4G project for vulnerable women, trained as a domestic violence support technician, and coordinated REVIBRA during the pandemic. Her work with immigrant mothers in Porto and her contributions to the University of Porto’s REGAP program highlight her commitment to reducing educational gaps for migrants and refugees.

Talitha places creativity at the heart of learning. She served as a pedagogical mentor in the GAP Project for learning recovery, promoted by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation in response to the pandemic’s impacts. She was selected for the Teach For Portugal Leadership Development Program—an organization affiliated with Teach For All, focused on reducing educational inequality—and carried out projects in Porto and Lisbon aligned with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Through active methodologies such as gamification and storytelling, she developed female empowerment initiatives such as Uterus19, led virtual activities with Portuguese and Nigerian students, created school radio and TV programs, facilitated creative writing workshops, and participated in lectures on the importance of therapeutic and creative writing as forms of emotional self-regulation, exemplified by her book Outubre-se: Transforming Pain into Verb. In partnership with Roma youth, she designed the art-education game originally titled “Dedicação Única Nos Afetos” (Unique Dedication in Affections), later changed to “Dedicação Única Nas Aprendizagens” (Unique Dedication in Learnings), since learning is born in affection, yet manifests itself in plurality. This work resulted in a 94% increase in student learning through targeted interventions and mentoring, impacting more than 200 students.

 She believes that care and diligence are pillars of human development, nurturing each individual’s

subjectivity—along with their level of consciousness—and personalizing learning to respect everyone’s unique pace and process. She emphasizes expression through writing, reading, art, and culture as the foundation of human repertoire, fostering individual awareness and cognitive sovereignty as citizens. In the current technological landscape, she advocates for enhancing communication skills. To this end, she is part of Women in Tech, participated in a training course in Romania, and, with her interest in communication—both through the power of language, especially in the AI era, and through mass media like TV—was mentored by renowned journalist Conceição Queiroz.

After her international experience, she felt a calling to return to her roots and immerse herself in the culture of the Amazon’s Indigenous peoples to understand the phrase, “before the Brazil of the crown exists the Brazil of the headdress,” during which she visited schools and experienced daily life in various villages.

From the heart of the Amazon Rainforest to the halls of academia, her experience is vast and diverse.

Holding a Master’s degree in Social Psychology (UERJ), with a thesis on the social representation of women; a postgraduate degree in Cultural Production with the interview project Alexandrina: Dissonant Voices; completed a complementary Neuroscience course from Neurovox by Prof. Pedro Calabrez, due to an interest in the intersection and interaction between technology and human subjectivity and a certification in AI in the Responsible Management of Socio-Environmental Projects (PUC-Rio), she currently serves as a Visiting Professor and Researcher at Fundação Dom Cabral’s Center of Reference for Leadership.

Talitha believes that, in the current landscape, leadership must connect and communicate through the intersection of the IAs—that is, Ancestral Intelligence and Artificial Intelligence—in a human, ethical, technical, and strategic manner for the collective good, remembering that humanity comes before society.

Frank Zuback

Frank Zuback grew up in Pennsylvania, the son of Croatian immigrants who came to America with determination and hope. His father, a Marine veteran and union leader in the steel mills, taught him that character is measured by effort, not status. His mother, who raised three sons after her husband’s early death, modeled strength, perseverance, and compassion. Together, they shaped Frank’s belief that every kind of work deserves dignity and that integrity is life’s true currency.

Music became Frank’s first language. By the age of twelve, he was conducting his school band and performing on tuba and double bass. In high school, he formed his own group, began booking performances in community halls and clubs. He arranged the music, led rehearsals, and managed the business side of the band. These early experiences taught him that leadership requires both vision and responsibility.

At Rutgers University, Frank studied philosophy, where his interest in ethics, logic, and human behavior deepened. He carried that intellectual foundation into a professional life defined by both artistic achievement and moral consistency. Over the years, Frank performed with—and learned from—many of the most accomplished musicians of his generation, including members of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, the Philadelphia Orchestra and jazz masters who shaped the jazz world.

The music industry can test one’s values. Fame, competition, and financial pressure often blur ethical boundaries, but Frank never compromised his standards. He treated everyone, from stagehands to headliners, with equal respect, believing that integrity matters more than applause. His reputation for reliability and humility earned him trust across rehearsal rooms, studios, and orchestras. Colleagues frequently sought his counsel because he combined technical mastery with fairness and empathy.

Frank’s leadership was never about control but about elevating others. He believed that excellence flourishes only in an environment of trust and respect. Musicians who worked with him remember not only his skill, but also his ability to create calm and cohesion under pressure. He led by listening, by setting an example of professionalism, and by maintaining curiosity even after decades in the business.

Today, Frank continues to mentor emerging artists and creative professionals, embodying the values of the Noble Leaders community. His life’s work reflects a rare synthesis of artistry, intellect, and ethics—a belief that success without integrity is failure in disguise.