About Max

My calling is to work at the intersection of service and leadership development.

I’m an alum of four long-term service programs, and have led service trips to Israel, Honduras, Ghana, and Ukraine. Service to others is my spiritual home; I feel at peace when I am focused on helping others achieve growth, insight, freedom and empowerment.

I received my Doctorate of Education from the Harvard Graduate School of Education in 2005. My studies integrated a dual focus on developmental psychology and the adaptive leadership model developed by Ron Heifetz.

My career has been in the non-profit sector. I spent ten years at City Year, the education-focused AmeriCorps program. While there, I developed an approach to scalable, transformational reflection that ensured that AmeriCorps members had a chance to turn inwards and focus on their own transformation while engaged in an intense year of service. I went on the become the Chief Program Officer at the New Politics Leadership Academy, where I developed a pipeline of leadership programs designed to bring more servant leaders—military vets and alumni of national service programs—into elected office.

In 2025, I published a book focused on the approach scalable inner development that I had refined over the course of two decades. It’s called Developing Servant Leaders at Scale: How to Do It and Why It Matters, and it features a foreword by renowned Harvard Business School Professor Rosabeth Moss Kanter.

I launched the Center for Courageous Wholeness to bring this work out into the world. The Center is an an educational institution dedicated to guiding purpose-driven people and organizations to achieve greater wholeness by courageously integrating shadow, serving others, and scaling up their impact.

Along the way, I published a book about race and social change, got certified as an Integral Master Coach, and became a certified Inner Development Goals Ambassador. My writing about leadership has appeared in Harvard Business Review, Fast Company, and elsewhere. I’ve produced and hosted several podcasts, and I speak frequently here in the U.S. and abroad about leadership, large-scale leadership development, inner development, holding light and shadow, and how we can and must integrate a dual focus on outer and inner change.

I’m also a husband, father, musician, and lifelong spiritual seeker on a quest to stay curious, balance my head, heart, and gut, and always stay present to the mystery.

To learn more about my work history, check out my LinkedIn.