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Something profound is changing in the world of work.
Artificial intelligence is transforming what we produce. Automation is changing how we create value. Information has never been more abundant or more easily replicated.
This means the qualities that increasingly distinguish exceptional leaders, entrepreneurs, coaches, founders, executives, healthcare professionals, educators, and changemakers are no longer simply technical expertise or intellectual ability.
They’re human capacities.
Self-awareness, discernment, emotional intelligence, presence, the ability to remain steady under pressure, the wisdom to know what matters, and the courage to lead from your values rather than your fears.
These are some of the most valuable capabilities any professional can develop.
The Inner MBA was created for this moment.
The Inner MBA is a six-month certificate program that integrates the science of human flourishing, contemplative practice, emotional intelligence, conscious business, and practical leadership into one learning experience.
Created by Sounds True.
Reimagined for 2026. And, now beginning with an immersive opening experience in Berkeley, California.
For professionals ready to lead the future, from the inside out.
The next Inner MBA cohort begins this October. Early applicants can save up to $1,400.
The Inner MBA has far exceeded my expectations. The program is exceptionally well designed. There is so much to learn from the master faculty, and there are multiple opportunities for interaction through the live calls and cohort groups.
– Susan Chritton, Inner MBA Alum
Something Is Changing
For generations we believed success came from accumulating more. More knowledge, credentials, productivity, certainty.
That formula built remarkable careers. It also left many remarkable people quietly exhausted. Today something different is emerging. The professionals creating the greatest impact are no longer simply the smartest people in the room. They’re often the calmest, the clearest, the most emotionally grounded, the people others instinctively trust when uncertainty arrives. They are the leaders who can navigate complexity without becoming consumed by it, the founders who can grow organizations without losing themselves, the executives who know that culture isn’t built through strategy decks but through the quality of human presence, the coaches whose clients don’t simply hear their words but feel their steadiness, the physicians who remember that healing begins long before treatment, and the educators who understand that who they are teaches just as much as what they know.
In every profession, something subtle, but profound, is happening.
Human capability is becoming a competitive advantage. That kind of leadership isn’t taught in traditional MBA programs. It’s rarely taught anywhere. Which is exactly why the Inner MBA exists.
This Is Where The Work Begins
This year marks the beginning of a new chapter.
For the first time, the Inner MBA opens with an immersive gathering in Berkeley, California, with the program developed in consultation with the Greater Good Science Center, one of the world’s leading organizations devoted to the science of human flourishing.
For decades, Sounds True has helped millions of people explore the potential of contemplative practice, psychology, spirituality, and personal growth.
The Greater Good Science Center has spent years asking complementary questions through rigorous scientific research. How do people flourish? How do compassion, resilience, gratitude, purpose, emotional intelligence, and belonging shape our lives, our work, and our leadership?
Science supporting wisdom, research informing lived experience, ancient insight meeting modern evidence… The result is a learning experience unlike any other.
Your journey begins with three immersive days at International House Berkeley, in California, either in person or live online, alongside Tami Simon, Jeremy Hunter, and the other Inner MBA faculty, an extraordinary community of professionals from around the world.
Together you’ll begin cultivating the capacities that everything else depends upon:
Greater awareness, steadiness, emotional agility.
Clarity about what is yours to build.
Trust in yourself.
Those relationships don’t end when the opening event concludes. They become the foundation for everything that follows.
For six months you’ll continue learning together through live teaching, guided practices, one-on-one coaching, meaningful conversations, and a global learning community committed to bringing greater consciousness into every profession.
Earn a Certificate of Completion issued by Sounds True.
A Letter from Tami Simon
A note from Tami Simon, FOUNDER OF SOUNDS TRUE
An invitation to bring your authentic presence, creative mind, and greatest human capacities to work
The way we’ve been taught to build, grow, and succeed was built for a world that has fundamentally changed. AI is reshaping how people think about value, judgment, and contribution. Old markers of success are losing their authority. More people are asking deeper questions about who they want to become and the life they want to build.
Meeting this moment asks something different of us.
The skills that make navigating this possible, self-awareness, nervous system regulation, emotional intelligence, the ability to stay present in hard conversations, are not soft skills. They are some of the hardest skills to develop, and they are almost never taught in traditional business or MBA programs.
And yet, here’s what I see. The ones willing to do this work are showing up, quietly, steadily, from every corner of the world. They’re not waiting for the answers to become clear. They’re becoming the ones who find them.
These are not “soft skills.” They are some of the hardest skills to master and are not taught in college or business school.
– TAMI SIMON
There are big questions before us today. How do we make sense of our work when AI is reshaping what work even is? How do we grow inwardly when the world gets louder every day? How do we bring our dreams, ideas, and visions into the world and do work that matters, while building the life we actually want? And how do we become the people who build all of that, the work that matters, the life worth living, the future we actually want?
Here’s what I’ve learned: that question itself is the starting line. People like you, people who care, are already on the path.
After decades on this path, I’ve found that those asking these questions are often the ones who change things, the ones who want to live on purpose and are willing to do the inner work to reimagine how we live and work.Doing that kind of inner work, however, is not easy. But it is learnable.
With training and commitment, we can learn to become proactively aware of our thoughts and emotions, instead of always being reactively driven by them. We can learn how to regulate our nervous system such that we feel grounded, capable, and solution-oriented, even in the face of very challenging situations.
With the Inner MBA program, you will learn alongside some of the most accomplished, purpose-driven leaders, teachers, and coaches working today, among them Jeremy Hunter, Melissa Bernstein, Nataly Kogan, and Raj Sisodia, people who have built meaningful careers and businesses on their own terms, and who are ready to share what they know. Their accumulated wisdom, talent, and experience are here for you.
And we have gathered them here for those like you who sense there is more available to them. What they have learned, they are ready to share. If something in you is ready, this is your moment.
I believe that success in the future will be defined by the depth of connection we feel to what we do and the community we do it with. Self-awareness, creative vision, and collaboration skills will not be “nice to have”; they will be imperatives.
That kind of connection begins here. People from all walks of professional life, from all over the world, are asking the same questions you are asking and feeling the same pull toward something more meaningful. You will not be doing this alone. The conversations, the accountability, and the relationships that form here are among the most lasting things participants take from this program.
I have been on this path for a long time. Every cohort teaches us something, and this year we have built on everything we have learned: a program developed in consultation with the Greater Good Science Center, a live opening event, individualized coaching, and a Certificate of Completion issued by Sounds True.
I am excited about what we have created for 2026, and I cannot wait to share it with you.
Whether you are building a business, leading a team, guiding others, bringing big ideas to fruition, or reimagining your next chapter, if growing in this way calls to you, we would love to have you join us for our next cohort of the Inner MBA program.
We welcome you, fellow traveler and creative changemaker, with open arms.
With love on the journey,
Tami Simon
FOUNDER OF SOUNDS TRUE
What Is an Inner MBA?
An Inner MBA strengthens the inner capacities that shape every decision you make, every conversation you have, every relationship you build, and every vision you bring into the world.
The Inner MBA integrates emotional intelligence, neuroscience, contemplative practice, organizational psychology, conscious business, and human flourishing into one coherent framework.
This goes way beyond collecting more ideas, it’s about embodying them. Because knowledge changes very little by itself. Embodied wisdom changes everything.
Throughout six months you’ll explore questions that rarely receive sustained attention in professional life:
Who are you becoming while you’re building what you’re building?
What patterns quietly govern your decisions under pressure?
How do you cultivate resilience without hardening?
How do you become more ambitious without becoming less human?
How do you lead people without losing yourself?
How do you make difficult decisions while remaining connected to your values?
How do you build meaningful success that doesn’t require abandoning the rest of your life?
The goal is about achieving success that matters. And it’s about becoming someone capable of holding greater success wisely.
What We Built for 2026
Every cohort has taught us something. Thousands of participants from more than ninety countries have trusted us with their growth. They showed us what changed their lives. They also showed us what could be even stronger. So we listened. The 2026 Inner MBA is the most significant evolution of the program since its creation.
We integrated individualized coaching because transformation accelerates when insight becomes personal. We redesigned the curriculum so each month naturally builds on the last. We expanded the faculty to include internationally respected researchers, business leaders, psychologists, contemplative teachers, and practitioners who have spent decades living the work they teach.
Most importantly, we designed every element around one central question:
Who do you need to become for the future that’s calling you?
Because that’s the question that quietly lives underneath every meaningful professional decision.
The answer isn’t found in another productivity system, credential or strategy. It’s found through the lifelong practice of becoming more aligned with who you already are.
And that’s the work we begin together.
Learn From People Who Have Lived the Integration
The Inner MBA is taught by people who have gone way beyond studying leadership, consciousness, human development, or meaningful work.
They have lived the questions at the heart of this program.
How do you build something successful without losing contact with yourself?
How do you lead people through uncertainty while remaining grounded in your own humanity?
How do you bring contemplative practice into the pressures of organizational life?
How do you create businesses, cultures, and careers that are financially viable, personally meaningful, and useful to the world?
The faculty includes founders, CEOs, researchers, psychologists, coaches, authors, contemplative teachers, and organizational leaders who have approached these questions from different fields and different lives.
Some have built companies from the ground up. Some have led multinational organizations through profound change. Some have spent decades studying the science of compassion, emotional fitness, collaboration, and human flourishing. Some have helped leaders regulate their nervous systems, confront the patterns limiting them, and become more effective without becoming less human.
They do not all teach the same methodology.
That is part of the value.
The Inner MBA brings together perspectives that are too often separated: Business and inner work, science and contemplative practice, performance and well-being, ambition and integrity, and personal transformation and organizational change.
You will not be asked to adopt one teacher’s philosophy as your own. You will encounter a range of tested ideas, practices, and lived examples, then learn to discern what belongs in your own leadership.
The goal is to develop people who can listen closely, think clearly, choose consciously, and lead from a stronger internal foundation.
The Inner MBA Program at a Glance
Inner MBA is a six-month, certificate program and learning community for people who build, lead, and serve, and who sense that the next level of their work requires a different kind of inner foundation.
Each cohort is shaped to meet the questions and demands of this particular moment in time, helping you clarify the impact you want to have, define what success looks like on your own terms, and move forward with intention.
Development of your Personal Inner MBA Compass
Sets you up to make progress during the program and leaves you with the action plan you need after it is over.
The inner foundation that steadies everything else
Especially in moments of pressure, transition, responsibility, and change
A clearer sense of what is yours to do
So your path forward reflects your values, your gifts, and the life you are choosing to build
The ability to build, lead, and serve with more authenticity and integrity
Making better decisions, having harder conversations, and creating real impact without losing yourself in the process
Mentorship from people who have actually lived this integration
Teachers, coaches, and leaders who have built meaningful success on their own terms and are ready to share what they know
A circle of peers committed to meaningful growth
Offering connection, networking, accountability, and the kind of community where your next chapter can take root
I’m so grateful that you’re doing this program. The most essential part of being a great leader, a great manager, and a great person in the world is the inner reflection, inner confidence, and inner strength to do the things that are required in this moment.
– Rose Marcario, former CEO of Patagonia and former Inner MBA faculty member
Who the Inner MBA Is Designed For
The Inner MBA is for people who are building, leading, guiding, or reimagining what they do, people with big ideas they’re bringing into the world, and who want to do it with greater consciousness, clarity, and care.
This program may be for you if:
You are building something, a business, a career, a big idea, a body of work, and want it to reflect what you truly value.
You are carrying more responsibility, and want to feel more steady, clear, and grounded in how you hold it.
You have done a lot already, but know there is more in you.
You are in a season of reinvention and want the support to do it well.
You are between chapters, and want to move through the transition with clarity rather than just survive it.
You want to stop compartmentalizing who you are at work and who you are everywhere else.
You want the way you spend your days to reflect what you actually believe.
You want to reach new heights of fulfillment, at work, and in life.
You want to make a real contribution in the world, without giving up on your own ambition.
You already know that who you are becoming matters as much as what you are achieving.
You feel something new beginning to take shape.
You know it’s time for the next chapter, and you want to write it consciously.
Something in you has already decided. You’re just looking for the right next step.
And suddenly you know: It’s time to start something new and trust the magic of beginnings.
– Meister Eckhart
You may recognize yourself here through a life circumstance, an inner turning point, or simply a sense that something needs to change.
You May be:
- Someone who has built real capability and real credentials, and is ready for them to actually translate.
- An executive who is already performing at a high level and knows their next level is an inside job.
- A founder or coach who has invested in their growth before and is ready for something that actually sticks.
- A changemaker bringing a bigger vision into the world, and ready to build and create with more clarity, care, and courage.
- A professional actively reimagining how they build, lead, and serve in a changing world.
- Or someone with decades of experience who knows their most important contribution is still ahead.
The role may differ, but the deeper experience is often shared: a desire to grow, to live and work in closer alignment with your values, and to bring more presence, purpose, and humanity to the way you build, lead, serve, and contribute.
If that feels true for you, Inner MBA was designed to meet you there.
The Inner MBA program makes clarity possible.
It will enable you to take a purpose-filled approach to business while accelerating results, whether you’re a C-level executive or just starting out. Past graduates have come from all walks of life and business, including:
- Entrepreneurs committed to positive impact
- Meditation teachers, meditation center owners, yoga studio owners
- Leaders running B Corp operations
- Doctors, osteopaths, and naturopaths
- Holistic practitioners and therapists
- Executive and life coaches
The course definitely exceeded my expectations, blew my mind, and took my breath away. Every interaction on this platform has been a lesson for life, and it’s an enriching once-in-a-lifetime adventure, not to be missed!
– Pramodini Gosukonda, Inner MBA graduate
Before We Tell You About the Curriculum…
We’d Like You to Meet Caren Prentice.
When Caren Prentice applied to the Inner MBA, she wasn’t looking for another business strategy. She wasn’t looking for another meditation practice, another leadership book, or another certification. Meditation had already become the foundation of her life.
As the founder of the Hamsa Meditation Center, Caren had dedicated her career to helping people live with greater awareness, compassion, and presence. Every week, children, teenagers, parents, and adults came through her doors to learn from her. She taught meditation classes for young children, teens, mothers, and adults. She led workshops and retreats, and she had already begun training future meditation teachers because she knew the work had become bigger than one person could carry alone.
From the outside, it looked like a beautiful success. Inside, she was wrestling with a question she couldn’t answer.
Could you build a thriving organization without compromising the very principles that made it worth building?
The center was growing. She could feel it. Every week they were serving approximately 60 students. She had already launched a teacher-training program because she knew the future of the center couldn’t depend entirely on her.
But almost everything still did. She was teaching nearly every class, leading the retreats, and was running the organization.
One incredible woman handled the books and registrations. Another mother from the community helped keep the center moving forward.
The mission was working. The model wasn’t.
As Caren later explained, she wanted to learn how to grow the center in a way that was aligned with what meditation had taught her.
From the outside, it looked like a beautiful success. Inside, she was wrestling with a question she couldn’t answer.
“If those teachings couldn’t be applied in a business setting… I wasn’t interested.”
That was why she enrolled in the Inner MBA.
Then everything changed.
Just as she began the program, the pandemic forced her to close the physical meditation center she had spent years building. For many organizations, that would have been the beginning of survival mode. For Caren, it became the beginning of an entirely different future.
One of the early insights that stayed with her was the hidden dynamic that keeps so many leaders stuck.
“You have one foot on the gas because you want to grow,” one of the teachers in the Inner MBA explained.
“But somewhere beneath the surface, your other foot is still pressing the brake.”
Caren laughed.
“How did you know?” she remembered thinking.
Because that was exactly what she had been experiencing. She had the vision. She had the commitment. She had the purpose.
But something she couldn’t quite name was preventing the organization from becoming everything she sensed it could become.
Over the following months, she began applying what she was learning , not only to herself, but to every part of the meditation center.
The transformation was measurable.
Before the Inner MBA, the center served approximately 60 students each week.
After moving completely online, that number grew to 120 students every week, allowing the center to reach people far beyond its local community.
Before the program, Caren was essentially the only teacher.
Now, five additional meditation teachers were leading classes alongside her, teachers she had trained and empowered to carry the mission forward.
Before the program, she wrote a paycheck to one person. Now she was writing checks to five team members, each helping grow the organization together.
And then there was the financial transformation.
Before entering the Inner MBA, the center generated approximately $3,000 to $4,000 per month. It covered the rent. It paid the bookkeeper. But Caren wasn’t paying herself. Within months, monthly revenue had grown to more than $12,000.
A 400% increase.
For the first time, everyone was getting paid. The organization was operating in the black. The business had become financially sustainable. Yet when Caren talks about the greatest transformation, she doesn’t begin with the revenue.
She talks about the culture.
One day, members of her team described what it felt like to work at the center. They told her the organization had developed “a backbone of compassion.” Those four words meant everything. Because that was exactly what she had hoped to build.
A place where people loved coming to work. A place where the wisdom practiced in meditation wasn’t left on the cushion, it shaped leadership, communication, hiring, growth, and every decision the organization made.
Halfway through the program, Caren recorded a message for the Inner MBA team.
She was visibly emotional.
“This has exceeded every expectation of what I thought I was going to gain from the program.”
Then she smiled.
“And we’re only halfway through.”
This Is What the Inner MBA Is Designed to Do
Caren didn’t need another productivity system or another business framework. She didn’t need someone to teach her how to meditate. She needed to discover how the wisdom she had spent years cultivating could become the foundation of a thriving organization.
That is the work of the Inner MBA. It’s about helping you close the gap between what you know… and how you lead.
For some participants, that transforms the way they communicate. For others, it changes the way they navigate conflict. For others, it reshapes an entire organization.
Often, it changes all three.
The six-month curriculum that follows was designed to support exactly that kind of transformation.
INSIDE THE PROGRAM
The Inner MBA Curriculum
The Inner MBA is structured across six modules with a weekly commitment of 60-90 minutes, designed to integrate into your life, not interrupt it.
The program combines live and self-paced elements so you can engage on your own terms. All sessions are recorded and available within 72 hours.
You’ll also have access to an extensive library of video teachings to go deeper on the subjects that matter most to you. Live sessions are thoughtfully scheduled to serve a global community across time zones.
How the Program Unfolds
Opening Event
- October 23-25, Berkeley, California
The journey begins over three days in person or live online from wherever you are. You meet your cohort, begin your Personal Inner MBA Compass and are introduced to the inner operating system that anchors everything that follows. Live sessions with Tami Simon, Jeremy Hunter, Nataly Kogan and GGSC lay the foundation, self-awareness, nervous system regulation, and conscious presence as active leadership capacities. The relationships and shared experience of those first days carry through the full six months.
Inner MBA Opening Event Schedule
Three days of teaching, practice, and connection with the Inner MBA faculty
MODULE 1
What’s Mine to Do?
Building on the opening event, you clarify your vision, name your North Star Outcome, and articulate the commitment that will anchor the next six months. The work is generative and forward-facing: inspiration before diagnosis, hope before scrutiny. Awareness, introduced at the opening event, is already the ground you are standing on.
MODULE 2
Foundations of Conscious Awareness
You deepen the inner operating system introduced at the opening event, developing awareness, self-regulation, and embodied presence as active, daily capacities. Jeremy Hunter’s Intention-Results Map gives you a precise, research-backed framework to understand why the gap between intention and result exists, and exactly where to intervene.
MODULE 3
Emotional Intelligence and Being Your True Self
You go deeper into the emotional landscape, meeting the ego patterns, protective personas, and historical narratives that have quietly governed your behavior from the inside. The work shifts from diagnosis to relationship, learning to be with your patterns rather than fight them, and discovering that presence is a more powerful force for change than willpower.
Quiet Week
Integration and Reflection
A deliberate pause after the most confronting interior work of the program. No new teaching. Space to absorb, integrate, and arrive at Module 4 renewed and ready to bring everything inward, outward.
MODULE 4
Conscious Connection
The interior work turns outward. You bring the self-awareness, emotional regulation, and presence you have developed into your relationships, discovering that kindness, compassion, gratitude, and deep listening are not soft skills but the foundational capacities for trust, collaboration, and sustainable performance.
MODULE 5
Navigating Conflict and Hard Conversations
The prior work is stress-tested. You learn to stay present, purposeful, and genuinely curious in the conversations and situations where everything you have built is most challenged. Constructive conflict becomes not a threat to navigate around but a leadership practice to move through.
MODULE 6
Being an Agent of Change
The program launches, not graduates. You finalize your Inner MBA Compass and share your vision for what’s next, stepping forward as a conscious agent of change, carrying a living record of six months of real interior and exterior transformation, and a clear answer to the question you arrived with: What is mine to do?
How The Inner MBA Accelerates Your Growth
1
Learn on your own terms
On-demand video and audio means you can engage, and return to, key teachings whenever they matter most to you.
2
Go deeper in live sessions
Monthly live sessions with Tami Simon, Jeremy Hunter, and core faculty give you space to integrate what you’re learning, ask questions, and engage directly with the people teaching it.
3
Find your people
Connect with a global community of professionals who are navigating the same questions you are. Join groups by region, industry, or interest, and find the kind of accountability that actually moves you forward.
4
Shape your own experience
The Inner MBA community forum lets you create your own conversations, organizing discussions, connecting around shared interests, and going deeper on the topics that matter most to you.
5
Know the difference you want to make, and make it.
The Inner MBA community is not just here to celebrate your growth. It is here to be part of it.
Become Part of a Thriving International Community from 90 Countries
The Inner MBA brings together English-speaking professionals and changemakers from around the world. Here are the countries our past and present students call home.
Just enroll. You’ll meet amazing people with unique and diverse perspectives. The combination of dynamic CEOs and thought leaders exposed me to people I had only dreamed of meeting.
– Melissa Permezel, UN-Habitat, Nairobi
WHAT WE BELIEVE
Something fundamental is shifting, in how we build, how we lead, and what we believe business is for.
The people in this community feel that shift. And we are building this community around convictions like these.
We believe this moment is asking something different of all of us.
Not more effort or more strategy, but a deeper kind of presence, clarity, and courage.
We believe success can be meaningful as well as measurable.
It is possible to build a life and a body of work that reaches new heights of fulfillment, honors your humanity, and serves something larger than yourself.
We believe meaningful work and real financial success are not a trade-off.
You can do work that matters in the world, and be rewarded for doing it well.
We believe making a difference and making a living are not opposites.
The most meaningful work can also be the work that builds the life you want.
We believe work is being redefined.
It is not a title or a position, it is a way of showing up with clarity, integrity, and care in every role, relationship, and room you enter.
We believe the workplace can be a place where inner growth and outer contribution belong together.
When people operate from self-awareness, steadiness, and integrity, a different kind of success becomes possible.
We believe business is one of the most powerful forces available for positive change.
How you build, lead, and serve, the big ideas you bring into the world, and who you are while you do it, determines the kind of future we create together.
We believe transformation happens more fully in the company of others.
When we connect and network with people who care about the same things, we strengthen not only our own path but our capacity to shape a more human future.
If these beliefs feel true to you, you are already one of us, part of a global community of professionals and changemakers who carry these convictions into every industry and every kind of contribution.
Join us for the 2026 cohort, beginning this October.
Meet the Faculty
In the Inner MBA program, you will learn from a carefully gathered faculty of conscious business leaders, purpose-driven teachers, researchers, coaches, and changemakers who have built meaningful careers on their own terms, touched the lives of tens of millions worldwide, and are ready to share what they know.
This group of faculty brings together the lived experience of founders, CEOs, researchers, leadership experts, and inner development teachers, including voices from Sounds True and the Greater Good Science Center.
Tami Simon
Founder of Sounds True
Tami Simon founded Sounds True in 1985 with a clear mission: to disseminate spiritual wisdom. What started as a project with one woman and her tape recorder has grown into a multimedia publishing company that features hundreds of leading teachers and visionaries of our time.
Sounds True has produced over 3,000 titles, including events, certification programs, and transformational online learning experiences, and is North America’s leading publisher of spoken-word spiritual teachings. Tami hosts the popular Sounds True podcast, Insights at the Edge, which has been downloaded more than 15 million times. She is also the founder of the Sounds True Foundation, which is dedicated to bringing spiritual education to people who would otherwise not have access.
Jeremy Hunter, PhD
Self-Mastery Mentor
For his Inner MBA in Action series, Jeremy draws on his background in mindfulness and its application in leadership and business environments to train and coach participants in nervous system self-regulation and other tools to reduce stress, enhance focus, and improve overall well-being.
Jeremy Hunter, PhD is a global authority on mindfulness and leadership as well as the great-grandson of a sumo wrestler.
He serves as the Founding Director of the Executive Mind Leadership Institute as well as Associate Professor of Practice at the Peter F. Drucker Graduate School of Management. He leads the Mindfulness and Effective Leadership certificate for the Weatherhead School of Management’s Executive Education Program and is also co-founder and partner of Transform LLC in Tokyo, Japan.
For nearly two decades, he has helped leaders develop themselves while retaining their humanity in the face of monumental change and challenge. He is primarily concerned with the quality of human experience and how to live a meaningful, engaged and effective life.
He works with healthy companies that aspire to greatness. He has designed and led leadership development programs for a wide variety of organizations, including Fortune 200 aerospace, Fortune 50 banking and finance, the arts and civic non-profits. Program impacts have led to both positive professional, personal and financial outcomes for participants.
Hunter has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, The Economist, The Financial Times, the Los Angeles Times and National Public Radio’s Morning Edition.
His work is informed by the experience of living day-to-day for 17 years with a potentially terminal illness. When faced with the need for life-saving surgery more than a dozen former students came forward as organ donors.
Melissa Bernstein
Innovation Expert And Inner MBA Entrepreneur in Residence. Cofounder, Melissa & Doug Toy Company
With an approach grounded in sustainable habits that enhance overall quality of life, Melissa works with Inner MBA participants to develop routines for building supportive, nurturing environments both personally and professionally.
Melissa Bernstein is an entrepreneur, creative, and working mother of six. In 1988, Melissa and her husband co-founded Melissa & Doug out of their parents’ garage, and in the years that followed, they built Melissa & Doug into a wildly successful company. Melissa has spent the last 30 years helping children discover themselves, their passions, and their purpose through open-ended play.
In 2020, after her own personal journey of self-discovery and acceptance, Melissa co-founded Lifelines. Through Lifelines, she is using her unparalleled creativity and imagination to reinvent well-being products that help adults strengthen their resilience, stay grounded, and unlock their full potential.
Raj Sisodia
Bestselling Author, Cofounder and Chairman Emeritus of the Conscious Capitalism movement, and FEMSA Distinguished University Professor of Conscious Enterprise at Tecnológico de Monterrey in Mexico
Raj Sisodia is FEMSA Distinguished University Professor of Conscious Enterprise and Chairman of the Conscious Enterprise Center at Tecnológico de Monterrey in Mexico…
He is Co-Founder and Chairman Emeritus of Conscious Capitalism Inc. He has a PhD in Business from Columbia University. Raj is co-author of the New York Times bestseller Conscious Capitalism: Liberating the Heroic Spirit of Business (2013) and Wall Street Journal bestseller Everybody Matters (2015). He was named one of “Ten Outstanding Trailblazers of 2010” by Good Business International, and one of the “Top 100 Thought Leaders in Trustworthy Business Behavior” by Trust Across America for 2010 and 2011. Raj received an honorary doctorate from Johnson & Wales University in 2016 and the Business Luminary Award from Halcyon in 2021. He has served on the boards of Mastek and The Container Store.
Raj has published sixteen books, including Firms of Endearment: How World Class Companies Profit from Passion and Purpose, which was named a top business book of 2007 by Amazon.com. His most recent books are Awaken: The Journey to Purpose, Inner Peace & Healing; The Healing Organization: Awakening the Conscience of Business to Help Save the World and The Global Rule of Three: Competing with Conscious Strategy. His most recent book is Healing Leaders: Seven Steps to Recovery of Self, published by Berrett-Koehler in January 2026. Raj has consulted with and taught at numerous companies, including AT&T, Verizon, LG, DPDHL, POSCO, Kraft Foods, Whole Foods Market, Tata, Tesoro, Siemens, Sprint, Volvo, IBM, Walmart, McDonalds and Southern California Edison.
Nataly Kogan
Keynote speaker on emotional fitness and leadership, bestselling author, creator of the Happier Method™ and Happier @ Work
Nataly Kogan is a serial entrepreneur, bestselling author, keynote speaker, and artist who helps leaders and organizations turn change into their catalyst to grow and create their next.
A leading expert in emotional fitness and leadership, she is the creator of REINVENT•ABILITY™, a framework grounded in neuroscience and psychology that helps people embrace change, expand into new possibilities, and create the impact only they can.
Nataly built her expertise from the inside out. She came to the United States at 13 as a refugee from the Soviet Union with no English and no money, starting over in the projects outside Detroit. She went on to build a career spanning McKinsey, Microsoft, and venture capital, becoming the youngest and only female Managing Director at a New York venture firm at 25. As a founder or executive, she built five tech startups, including founding and leading Happier, one of the world’s first gratitude platforms, which helped hundreds of thousands of people around the world lead happier lives.
At the peak of her success, Nataly burned out. That burnout became the catalyst for her most important reinvention, and today, Nataly delivers keynotes and leadership experiences for leading organizations around the world, helping their people grow and reinvent through change. Nataly’s work has been featured in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business Review, Forbes, and hundreds of other publications. She is the best-selling author of Happier Now, The Awesome Human Project, and The Awesome Human Journal, and hosts the DARE YOURSELF podcast.
Emiliana Simon-Thomas, PhD
Science Director of the Greater Good Science Center
Emiliana R. Simon-Thomas, Ph.D., is the science director of the Greater Good Science Center, where she directs the GGSC’s research fellowship program, is a co-instructor of its Science of Happiness and Science of Happiness at Work online courses, and runs key study initiatives like Expanding the Science and Practice of Gratitude.
Emiliana is a leading expert on the neuroscience and psychology of compassion, kindness, gratitude, and other prosocial skills that bolster human happiness. She earned her doctorate in Cognition Brain and Behavior at UC Berkeley, where her dissertation used behavioral and neuroscience methods to examine how unpleasant emotions influence thinking and decision-making. During her postdoc, Emiliana shifted to studying the origins and effects of prosocial states like love of humanity, compassion, and awe. Before joining GGSC in 2010, Emiliana served as Associate Director/Senior Scientist at CCARE (the Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education at Stanford University), focusing on how compassion benefits health, well-being, and psychosocial functioning.
Today, Emiliana’s work spotlights the science that connects health and happiness to social affiliation, caregiving, and collaborative relationships, as she continues to examine the potential for – as well as the benefits of – living a more meaningful life
Kia Afcari
Director of Greater Good Workplaces, Greater Good Science Center
Kia Afcari is the director of Greater Good Workplaces at GGSC. He has over 20 years of experience helping leaders, teams, and organizations with collaborative change and has served as a consultant to a wide variety of organizations, including tech, biotech, and fintech companies, health care organizations, universities, NGOs, UN agencies, and nonprofits.
Kia grounds his work in the science of well-being, prosociality, and contemplative practices and uses creative methods like “instant dance parties” and Boal-informed theater techniques to achieve results. He is a certified executive coach, an Appreciative Inquiry Facilitator, Zenger Folkman 360 Extraordinary Leader Facilitator, and Core Strengths Facilitator.
Kia’s TEDx talk on How We Can Reshape Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Together has over 77,000 views, and for his work supporting major culture change efforts at scale, Kia was awarded Chief Learning Officer Magazine’s Silver Award for Innovation for his accomplishments in helping shift the organizational culture of UC Berkeley’s 8,000 staff.
Chip Conley
Founder and Executive Chairman at MEA, NYT Best-Selling Author, Speaker
A three-time TED speaker on the big stage, Chip Conley is one of the world’s leading experts at the intersection of business innovation, psychology and spirituality…
As one of the creators of the boutique hotel movement and the “modern elder” to the young Airbnb founders, Chip’s been a disruptor and expert on entrepreneurship and business leadership. He’s a globally-recognized thought leader on the future of work and the competitive advantages of a multi-generational workplace.
Inspired by his experience of intergenerational mentoring as a “modern elder” at Airbnb, where his guidance was instrumental to the company’s extraordinary success, Chip founded MEA and has since dedicated his midlife years to reframing the concept of aging and supporting people in navigating midlife with a renewed sense of purpose and possibility.
Richard C. Schwartz, PhD
Creator of Internal Family Systems
Richard C. Schwartz, PhD, is the creator of Internal Family Systems (IFS), a highly effective, evidence-based therapeutic model that de-pathologizes the multipart personality. His IFS Institute, founded over 24 years ago, offers training for professionals and the general public…
He is currently on the faculty of Harvard Medical School and has published five books, including No Bad Parts: Healing Trauma and Restoring Wholeness with the Internal Family Systems Model. Dick lives with his wife Jeanne near Chicago, close to his three daughters and his growing number of grandchildren.
Lorna Davis
Former CEO & Chairwoman of Danone; B Corp Global Ambassador
Lorna Davis has served as President of multinational consumer goods companies for 20+ years, in Danone, Kraft, and Mondelez. Lorna has been a key leader in Danone’s purpose journey and is a Global Ambassador for the B Corp movement…
In 2017, she served as CEO and Chairwoman of Danone Wave (now Danone North America), where she established that $6 billion entity as a Public Benefit Corporation and achieved B Corp status in 2018, making it the largest B Corp in the world.
Lorna is a member of the Social Mission Board of Seventh Generation, the board of the Volgenau Climate Initiative and the Advisory Board of Radical Impact.
She has lived and led businesses in 7 countries including the UK, France, and the USA, and served on the Global board of Electrolux for 6 years.
Lorna was also based in Shanghai, China for 6 years, where she was the CEO of the merged Danone and Kraft business.
Tama Kieves, J.D
Best-Selling Author
Tama Kieves, an honors graduate of Harvard Law School, left her law practice to write and help others live and breathe their most meaningful self-expression. She is the bestselling author of 5 books including her newest, groundbreaking book Learning to Trust Yourself: Breaking Through the Blocks that Hold You Back…
Featured in USA Today, Oprah media, and more she is a sought-after TEDx speaker and visionary career/success coach, who has helped thousands of high achievers to discover and thrive in the life, calling and work of their dreams. She’s also taught the international wisdom program of A Course in Miracles for years and is known for her smart, spitfire spirituality, electric humor, and the big possibilities she brings out in others. Join her for online programs and destination retreats.
LeeAnn Mallorie
Founder and CEO of Guts & Grace
LeeAnn Mallorie is on a mission to make business a force for good, bridging the gap between the hard-driving logical mind and the deeper wisdom of the soul.
LeeAnn began her career in 2005, as an executive coach for leaders around the globe, but soon found something was missing from traditional models: the body. This led her on a journey of physical, mental, and spiritual healing, to fully embrace the feminine side of leadership. She now brings these innovative lessons to clients in the corporate, non-profit and government sectors.
LeeAnn specializes in bringing feminine wisdom and diverse cultural values into the boardroom to solve some of our world’s stickiest problems. She has supported leaders at diverse organizations like Google, Apple, Nasa, Logitech, Nextera Energy, Verizon, Silicon Valley Bank, Campbells, Roche, Zymergen, Pace Women’s Justice Center, and the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation. Inspired by her personal work with plant medicines, meditation, sacred voice activation, nature-based ritual and ecstatic dance, as well as cutting edge science, her programs spark creativity and innovation. LeeAnn’s book, Guts & Grace, provides a roadmap to integrate simple, actionable somatic practices at work, creating a more balanced approach that amplifies your existing gifts, skills and tools.
Blake Mycoskie
Founder of Toms Shoes
Blake Mycoskie is an entrepreneur and the founder of TOMS, where he pioneered the One for One model: for every pair of shoes sold, TOMS donated a pair to a child in need.
He started TOMS in 2006 after a trip to Argentina, where he met children who did not have shoes. Over the years, TOMS gave more than 100 million pairs of shoes to children in need and expanded its giving to include sight services, clean water resources, and health programs.
Beyond TOMS, Blake has launched five other businesses and is the author of the New York Times bestseller Start Something That Matters, a book about purpose-driven business and incorporating giving into entrepreneurship. In 2015, he founded the Social Entrepreneurship Fund to invest in socially conscious companies. In 2020, he cofounded Madefor, a program developed with scientists and experts in neuroscience, psychology, and physiology to help people develop and sustain positive habits and practices.
More recently, Blake’s work has focused on mental health and wellness. He is the founder of ENOUGH, a purpose-driven company focused on mental health, community impact, and expanding access to science-backed healing and wellbeing initiatives. He is also the founder and host of No Magic Pill, a podcast exploring mental health and wellness through conversations with people about depression, anxiety, trauma, and the approaches that have helped them heal.
Additional Faculty
The broader Inner MBA faculty brings together respected teachers and practitioners from the fields of leadership, psychology, conscious business, creativity, purpose, emotional intelligence, organizational development, and personal transformation.
Additional faculty and masterclass teachers will be announced as the 2026 program develops.
Each is selected for more than their expertise.
They are chosen for their ability to meet participants honestly, translate their work into meaningful practice, and share what they have learned without pretending the path has been simple.
The Inner MBA is an amazing contribution, precisely in the bullseye of what the culture needs right now. I am convinced that going through the inside will make you more effective on the outside. The program brings together an astonishing set of topics and faculty.
– Erica Ariel Fox, author of Winning from Within and former Inner MBA workshop presenter
Tami Simon
Founder of Sounds True
Tami Simon founded Sounds True in 1985 with a clear mission: to disseminate spiritual wisdom. What started as a project with one woman and her tape recorder has grown into a multimedia publishing company that features hundreds of leading teachers and visionaries of our time.
Sounds True has produced over 3,000 titles, including events, certification programs, and transformational online learning experiences, and is North America’s leading publisher of spoken-word spiritual teachings. Tami hosts the popular Sounds True podcast, Insights at the Edge, which has been downloaded more than 15 million times. She is also the founder of the Sounds True Foundation, which is dedicated to bringing spiritual education to people who would otherwise not have access.
Jeremy Hunter, PhD
Self-Mastery Mentor
For his Inner MBA in Action series, Jeremy draws on his background in mindfulness and its application in leadership and business environments to train and coach participants in nervous system self-regulation and other tools to reduce stress, enhance focus, and improve overall well-being.
Jeremy Hunter, PhD is a global authority on mindfulness and leadership as well as the great-grandson of a sumo wrestler.
He serves as the Founding Director of the Executive Mind Leadership Institute as well as Associate Professor of Practice at the Peter F. Drucker Graduate School of Management. He leads the Mindfulness and Effective Leadership certificate for the Weatherhead School of Management’s Executive Education Program and is also co-founder and partner of Transform LLC in Tokyo, Japan.
For nearly two decades, he has helped leaders develop themselves while retaining their humanity in the face of monumental change and challenge. He is primarily concerned with the quality of human experience and how to live a meaningful, engaged and effective life.
He works with healthy companies that aspire to greatness. He has designed and led leadership development programs for a wide variety of organizations, including Fortune 200 aerospace, Fortune 50 banking and finance, the arts and civic non-profits. Program impacts have led to both positive professional, personal and financial outcomes for participants.
Hunter has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, The Economist, The Financial Times, the Los Angeles Times and National Public Radio’s Morning Edition.
His work is informed by the experience of living day-to-day for 17 years with a potentially terminal illness. When faced with the need for life-saving surgery more than a dozen former students came forward as organ donors.
Melissa Bernstein
Innovation Expert And Inner MBA Entrepreneur in Residence. Cofounder, Melissa & Doug Toy Company
With an approach grounded in sustainable habits that enhance overall quality of life, Melissa works with Inner MBA participants to develop routines for building supportive, nurturing environments both personally and professionally.
Melissa Bernstein is an entrepreneur, creative, and working mother of six. In 1988, Melissa and her husband co-founded Melissa & Doug out of their parents’ garage, and in the years that followed, they built Melissa & Doug into a wildly successful company. Melissa has spent the last 30 years helping children discover themselves, their passions, and their purpose through open-ended play.
In 2020, after her own personal journey of self-discovery and acceptance, Melissa co-founded Lifelines. Through Lifelines, she is using her unparalleled creativity and imagination to reinvent well-being products that help adults strengthen their resilience, stay grounded, and unlock their full potential.
Raj Sisodia
Bestselling Author, Cofounder and Chairman Emeritus of the Conscious Capitalism movement, and FEMSA Distinguished University Professor of Conscious Enterprise at Tecnológico de Monterrey in Mexico
Raj Sisodia is FEMSA Distinguished University Professor of Conscious Enterprise and Chairman of the Conscious Enterprise Center at Tecnológico de Monterrey in Mexico…
He is Co-Founder and Chairman Emeritus of Conscious Capitalism Inc. He has a PhD in Business from Columbia University. Raj is co-author of the New York Times bestseller Conscious Capitalism: Liberating the Heroic Spirit of Business (2013) and Wall Street Journal bestseller Everybody Matters (2015). He was named one of “Ten Outstanding Trailblazers of 2010” by Good Business International, and one of the “Top 100 Thought Leaders in Trustworthy Business Behavior” by Trust Across America for 2010 and 2011. Raj received an honorary doctorate from Johnson & Wales University in 2016 and the Business Luminary Award from Halcyon in 2021. He has served on the boards of Mastek and The Container Store.
Raj has published sixteen books, including Firms of Endearment: How World Class Companies Profit from Passion and Purpose, which was named a top business book of 2007 by Amazon.com. His most recent books are Awaken: The Journey to Purpose, Inner Peace & Healing; The Healing Organization: Awakening the Conscience of Business to Help Save the World and The Global Rule of Three: Competing with Conscious Strategy. His most recent book is Healing Leaders: Seven Steps to Recovery of Self, published by Berrett-Koehler in January 2026. Raj has consulted with and taught at numerous companies, including AT&T, Verizon, LG, DPDHL, POSCO, Kraft Foods, Whole Foods Market, Tata, Tesoro, Siemens, Sprint, Volvo, IBM, Walmart, McDonalds and Southern California Edison.
Nataly Kogan
Keynote speaker on emotional fitness and leadership, bestselling author, creator of the Happier Method™ and Happier @ Work
Nataly Kogan is a serial entrepreneur, bestselling author, keynote speaker, and artist who helps leaders and organizations turn change into their catalyst to grow and create their next.
A leading expert in emotional fitness and leadership, she is the creator of REINVENT•ABILITY™, a framework grounded in neuroscience and psychology that helps people embrace change, expand into new possibilities, and create the impact only they can.
Nataly built her expertise from the inside out. She came to the United States at 13 as a refugee from the Soviet Union with no English and no money, starting over in the projects outside Detroit. She went on to build a career spanning McKinsey, Microsoft, and venture capital, becoming the youngest and only female Managing Director at a New York venture firm at 25. As a founder or executive, she built five tech startups, including founding and leading Happier, one of the world’s first gratitude platforms, which helped hundreds of thousands of people around the world lead happier lives.
At the peak of her success, Nataly burned out. That burnout became the catalyst for her most important reinvention, and today, Nataly delivers keynotes and leadership experiences for leading organizations around the world, helping their people grow and reinvent through change. Nataly’s work has been featured in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business Review, Forbes, and hundreds of other publications. She is the best-selling author of Happier Now, The Awesome Human Project, and The Awesome Human Journal, and hosts the DARE YOURSELF podcast.
Emiliana Simon-Thomas, PhD
Science Director of the Greater Good Science Center
Emiliana R. Simon-Thomas, Ph.D., is the science director of the Greater Good Science Center, where she directs the GGSC’s research fellowship program, is a co-instructor of its Science of Happiness and Science of Happiness at Work online courses, and runs key study initiatives like Expanding the Science and Practice of Gratitude.
Emiliana is a leading expert on the neuroscience and psychology of compassion, kindness, gratitude, and other prosocial skills that bolster human happiness. She earned her doctorate in Cognition Brain and Behavior at UC Berkeley, where her dissertation used behavioral and neuroscience methods to examine how unpleasant emotions influence thinking and decision-making. During her postdoc, Emiliana shifted to studying the origins and effects of prosocial states like love of humanity, compassion, and awe. Before joining GGSC in 2010, Emiliana served as Associate Director/Senior Scientist at CCARE (the Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education at Stanford University), focusing on how compassion benefits health, well-being, and psychosocial functioning.
Today, Emiliana’s work spotlights the science that connects health and happiness to social affiliation, caregiving, and collaborative relationships, as she continues to examine the potential for – as well as the benefits of – living a more meaningful life
Kia Afcari
Director of Greater Good Workplaces, Greater Good Science Center
Kia Afcari is the director of Greater Good Workplaces at GGSC. He has over 20 years of experience helping leaders, teams, and organizations with collaborative change and has served as a consultant to a wide variety of organizations, including tech, biotech, and fintech companies, health care organizations, universities, NGOs, UN agencies, and nonprofits.
Kia grounds his work in the science of well-being, prosociality, and contemplative practices and uses creative methods like “instant dance parties” and Boal-informed theater techniques to achieve results. He is a certified executive coach, an Appreciative Inquiry Facilitator, Zenger Folkman 360 Extraordinary Leader Facilitator, and Core Strengths Facilitator.
Kia’s TEDx talk on How We Can Reshape Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Together has over 77,000 views, and for his work supporting major culture change efforts at scale, Kia was awarded Chief Learning Officer Magazine’s Silver Award for Innovation for his accomplishments in helping shift the organizational culture of UC Berkeley’s 8,000 staff.
Chip Conley
Founder and Executive Chairman at MEA, NYT Best-Selling Author, Speaker
A three-time TED speaker on the big stage, Chip Conley is one of the world’s leading experts at the intersection of business innovation, psychology and spirituality…
As one of the creators of the boutique hotel movement and the “modern elder” to the young Airbnb founders, Chip’s been a disruptor and expert on entrepreneurship and business leadership. He’s a globally-recognized thought leader on the future of work and the competitive advantages of a multi-generational workplace.
Inspired by his experience of intergenerational mentoring as a “modern elder” at Airbnb, where his guidance was instrumental to the company’s extraordinary success, Chip founded MEA and has since dedicated his midlife years to reframing the concept of aging and supporting people in navigating midlife with a renewed sense of purpose and possibility.
Richard C. Schwartz, PhD
Creator of Internal Family Systems
Richard C. Schwartz, PhD, is the creator of Internal Family Systems (IFS), a highly effective, evidence-based therapeutic model that de-pathologizes the multipart personality. His IFS Institute, founded over 24 years ago, offers training for professionals and the general public…
He is currently on the faculty of Harvard Medical School and has published five books, including No Bad Parts: Healing Trauma and Restoring Wholeness with the Internal Family Systems Model. Dick lives with his wife Jeanne near Chicago, close to his three daughters and his growing number of grandchildren.
Lorna Davis
Former CEO & Chairwoman of Danone; B Corp Global Ambassador
Lorna Davis has served as President of multinational consumer goods companies for 20+ years, in Danone, Kraft, and Mondelez. Lorna has been a key leader in Danone’s purpose journey and is a Global Ambassador for the B Corp movement…
In 2017, she served as CEO and Chairwoman of Danone Wave (now Danone North America), where she established that $6 billion entity as a Public Benefit Corporation and achieved B Corp status in 2018, making it the largest B Corp in the world.
Lorna is a member of the Social Mission Board of Seventh Generation, the board of the Volgenau Climate Initiative and the Advisory Board of Radical Impact.
She has lived and led businesses in 7 countries including the UK, France, and the USA, and served on the Global board of Electrolux for 6 years.
Lorna was also based in Shanghai, China for 6 years, where she was the CEO of the merged Danone and Kraft business.
Tama Kieves, J.D
Best-Selling Author
Tama Kieves, an honors graduate of Harvard Law School, left her law practice to write and help others live and breathe their most meaningful self-expression. She is the bestselling author of 5 books including her newest, groundbreaking book Learning to Trust Yourself: Breaking Through the Blocks that Hold You Back…
Featured in USA Today, Oprah media, and more she is a sought-after TEDx speaker and visionary career/success coach, who has helped thousands of high achievers to discover and thrive in the life, calling and work of their dreams. She’s also taught the international wisdom program of A Course in Miracles for years and is known for her smart, spitfire spirituality, electric humor, and the big possibilities she brings out in others. Join her for online programs and destination retreats.
LeeAnn Mallorie
Founder and CEO of Guts & Grace,
LeeAnn Mallorie is on a mission to make business a force for good, bridging the gap between the hard-driving logical mind and the deeper wisdom of the soul.
LeeAnn began her career in 2005, as an executive coach for leaders around the globe, but soon found something was missing from traditional models: the body. This led her on a journey of physical, mental, and spiritual healing, to fully embrace the feminine side of leadership. She now brings these innovative lessons to clients in the corporate, non-profit and government sectors.
LeeAnn specializes in bringing feminine wisdom and diverse cultural values into the boardroom to solve some of our world’s stickiest problems. She has supported leaders at diverse organizations like Google, Apple, Nasa, Logitech, Nextera Energy, Verizon, Silicon Valley Bank, Campbells, Roche, Zymergen, Pace Women’s Justice Center, and the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation. Inspired by her personal work with plant medicines, meditation, sacred voice activation, nature-based ritual and ecstatic dance, as well as cutting edge science, her programs spark creativity and innovation. LeeAnn’s book, Guts & Grace, provides a roadmap to integrate simple, actionable somatic practices at work, creating a more balanced approach that amplifies your existing gifts, skills and tools.
Blake Mycoskie
Founder of Toms Shoes
Blake Mycoskie is an entrepreneur and the founder of TOMS, where he pioneered the One for One model: for every pair of shoes sold, TOMS donated a pair to a child in need.
He started TOMS in 2006 after a trip to Argentina, where he met children who did not have shoes. Over the years, TOMS gave more than 100 million pairs of shoes to children in need and expanded its giving to include sight services, clean water resources, and health programs.
Beyond TOMS, Blake has launched five other businesses and is the author of the New York Times bestseller Start Something That Matters, a book about purpose-driven business and incorporating giving into entrepreneurship. In 2015, he founded the Social Entrepreneurship Fund to invest in socially conscious companies. In 2020, he cofounded Madefor, a program developed with scientists and experts in neuroscience, psychology, and physiology to help people develop and sustain positive habits and practices.
More recently, Blake’s work has focused on mental health and wellness. He is the founder of ENOUGH, a purpose-driven company focused on mental health, community impact, and expanding access to science-backed healing and wellbeing initiatives. He is also the founder and host of No Magic Pill, a podcast exploring mental health and wellness through conversations with people about depression, anxiety, trauma, and the approaches that have helped them heal.
Additional Faculty
The broader Inner MBA faculty brings together respected teachers and practitioners from the fields of leadership, psychology, conscious business, creativity, purpose, emotional intelligence, organizational development, and personal transformation.
Additional faculty and masterclass teachers will be announced as the 2026 program develops.
Each is selected for more than their expertise.
They are chosen for their ability to meet participants honestly, translate their work into meaningful practice, and share what they have learned without pretending the path has been simple.
The Inner MBA is an amazing contribution, precisely in the bullseye of what the culture needs right now. I am convinced that going through the inside will make you more effective on the outside. The program brings together an astonishing set of topics and faculty.
– Erica Ariel Fox, author of Winning from Within and former Inner MBA workshop presenter
Teaching Is Only One Part of the Experience
A powerful teacher can change the way you understand a problem. But understanding alone rarely changes the way you live.
That is why the Inner MBA surrounds the teaching with opportunities for practice, application, reflection, coaching, and relationship.
Monthly Live Teaching
Engage directly with Tami Simon, Jeremy Hunter, and members of the faculty as they bring the program’s central ideas into the decisions and pressures of modern professional life.
Guided Practices
Work with tools designed to help you cultivate awareness, regulate your internal state, clarify your intentions, listen more closely, and respond more consciously.
Small-Group Sessions
Meet regularly with other participants to explore what you are learning, speak honestly about what you are facing, and experience the kind of accountability that supports meaningful movement.
Individual Coaching
Receive one-on-one support translating the curriculum into the specific questions, relationships, decisions, and opportunities in your own life and work.
Faculty Office Hours
Bring your questions closer to the people teaching the material and explore how the work applies beyond the recorded lesson.
Your Inner MBA Compass
Create a living map of what you are learning, the commitments you are making, the patterns you are recognizing, and the future you are choosing to build.
It becomes a personal alignment tool you can return to whenever the outer world becomes loud enough to pull you away from what matters most.
The People Beside You Become Part of the Curriculum
Many people enter the Inner MBA because of the faculty. They leave talking just as much about the community. That surprises some participants. They expect an online program to feel informational. They do not expect to feel known or to build meaningful relationships with people living thousands of miles away. They do not expect another person’s question to clarify something in their own life. They don’t know ahead of time the rich network that will give them collaborators, friends, sounding boards, referral partners, accountability partners, or people who continue walking beside them after the formal program ends.
Yet that is what has happened across previous cohorts.
“The program has changed my life through the people I’ve met. It’s been an absolutely wonderful part of my life, Thank you Tami for letting me stay on the island. It’s been life changing for me. And how has it been life changing? I get to meet the most incredible people, some who have become very close friends. It’s the power of the stories of the people that I find to be the most transformative, and as faculty, we catalyze that. And then the participants are also their own kind of ecosystem of support and development. The value of it has been for me really just absolutely delightful.”
– Jeremy Hunter, PhD, and Inner MBA Faculty
The Inner MBA has brought together participants from more than ninety countries.
They have included executives, entrepreneurs, physicians, therapists, educators, coaches, nonprofit leaders, consultants, creative professionals, organizational changemakers, and people discerning what their next contribution will be.
Their backgrounds differ. Their industries differ. Their spiritual beliefs differ. Their visions differ. But many arrive carrying a similar experience. They want to create something meaningful. They want to be effective. They want to succeed without disconnecting from themselves. They want to lead with greater clarity and courage.
And they no longer want to figure out every part of that alone.
A Global Community With Room for Your Real Questions
Professional life can become isolating, especially when you are the person others depend upon.
You may have colleagues, employees, clients, friends, and family around you and still have very few places where you can speak honestly about what leadership asks of you.
The uncertainty. The self-doubt. The ambition you are sometimes reluctant to name. The part of you that wants more. The part of you that is tired. The vision that feels difficult to explain to people who cannot yet see it.
The Inner MBA community creates room for those conversations.
It is a group of like-minded people where connection is built through shared practice. You will have opportunities to meet people by geography, profession, industry, interest, and the questions you are exploring.
You may find people who understand the work you already do. You may also find that the person with the most useful perspective comes from a field entirely different from your own.
That breadth is part of the education. You begin to see how a physician thinks about care, how a founder thinks about risk, how an educator thinks about human potential, how an executive thinks about culture, how a therapist listens beneath the words, and how someone in another country understands responsibility, community, and contribution.
The community expands not only your network, but your field of vision.
What I didn’t expect was this powerful, kind, and generous community of human beings moving toward a common goal: making a difference in this world through awareness, compassion, and efficiency.
– H.B., Inner MBA alum
The Moment Helen Began to See Herself Differently
When Helen Brazil considered enrolling in the Inner MBA, her first obstacle was not finding the time. It was believing she belonged.
Helen had spent roughly twenty years on a healing path. She had become an energy psychology therapist and transformational coach, helping women release old experiences, beliefs, and patterns so they could step more fully into their own power.
She had real experience. She had knowledge earned through decades of practice. She had meaningful work. But she did not see herself as a leader. She did not see herself as a businesswoman.
Her parents had been employees of the French government, and entrepreneurship had not been modeled for her growing up. Building a business felt unfamiliar. Speaking publicly about the depth of what she knew felt even harder.
She almost convinced herself she would not be accepted into the program. Even clicking the button to apply required her to move through a level of self-doubt. But something in her knew she needed to do it. So she clicked.
And over the months that followed, Helen began doing something that once felt almost impossible.
She began speaking up. Not after the nervousness disappeared, but while her heart was still shaking. She learned to feel what was happening in her body, return to her breath, reconnect with her intention, and say what mattered anyway.
The program gave her repeated opportunities to be seen and heard. Each time she used one, she gathered new evidence that she could trust herself. She stopped waiting to become perfectly confident before acting. She began practicing courage as something embodied.
“I can feel the nervousness. I can feel that my heart is shaking. And I decide that I’m going to do it because this is important.”
That change reached directly into her business. Helen became clearer about the values she wanted her work to express and the intentions she wanted others to understand.
She found that naming those intentions changed how she worked with people. Instead of assuming everyone was moving in the same direction, she learned to articulate the direction and invite genuine agreement. She became more comfortable having challenging conversations. She became more willing to reveal her limits rather than using perfection as protection. And she became more productive.
Helen said that in the same amount of time, she was accomplishing considerably more than she had before. But the most meaningful business shift was larger than efficiency. For years, she had accumulated experience without fully claiming it. During the Inner MBA, she began recognizing that her twenty years of work formed a body of knowledge with real value.
She identified an important idea that had been sitting on her website for years without her recognizing its potential. She began the process of registering her first trademark. Six months earlier, she had not even known what that step involved. Now she was preparing to turn two decades of healing experience into something she could name, protect, develop, and bring forward more boldly.
Her vision expanded with her confidence. She had entered the program as a solo practitioner. She began imagining a company with a full team: people working and growing together while helping others reconnect with what made them feel alive.
That was not simply a new business plan. It was a new relationship with her own capacity.
“Where I am now is not where I want to be. My vision and my willingness to make a difference in the world expanded.”
Helen also experienced a form of belonging she had not expected. Her learning community met every two weeks. The relationships became deep, supportive, and personally meaningful. She was not only consuming lessons from respected teachers. She was practicing being the person she had come there to become, surrounded by people who could witness that emergence.
Near the end of her alumni interview, Helen noticed what was happening in real time. She was speaking openly, confidently, and at length about her business, her vision, and what she believed. Six months earlier, she said, she could not have imagined doing that. The woman who had once wondered whether she belonged had begun to understand that her voice was part of the reason she was there.
For Helen, the Inner MBA became a turning point in how she ran her business and how she intended to show up in the world.
The change was exciting. It was uncomfortable. It was larger than she had expected. And it felt true.
This program has armed me with the tools to take the business strategy I already had forward in a way that is more supportive, compassionate, and collaborative with my team. It feels right. It feels better. And I am enjoying it more.
– Annette Brennan, Franchise System Owner
What Maria Luisa Changed When She Stopped Trying to Be Right
Maria Luisa Alderuccio was already leading two companies when she joined the Inner MBA. She was responsible for marketing strategy in both: a marketing and human-development consulting firm and a growing digital platform devoted to tools for more conscious living.
She was accomplished, busy, and committed to her own development. She had also meditated for years. Yet when tension emerged with partners or employees, she often reacted before she could use any of what she understood.
She wanted better relationships. But in difficult moments, she also wanted her perspective to prevail. She wanted to resolve conflict, but on her own terms. That pattern was becoming an obstacle to the needs and development of her companies.
Maria did not need someone to tell her that self-awareness mattered. She needed a way to access it at the moment her buttons were being pushed. That is what began to change.
The early inner work of the program helped Maria pause inside the reaction and turn her attention toward what was happening within her.
What was she thinking?
What was she feeling?
What story had she attached to the situation?
What energy was she bringing into the room?
What response did the relationship, the person, and the company actually need?
That pause created something that had not been available before. Choice. She could continue trying to prove that she was right. Or she could choose a response capable of producing a better relationship and a better outcome.
As she began choosing differently, her relationships changed. She listened more. She spoke sooner instead of allowing difficult issues to build. She became calmer and more patient. She approached hard conversations with less avoidance and less need to make her own viewpoint the only acceptable answer. She became more capable of looking for a place where multiple needs could be acknowledged.
The changes affected her partners. Her employees. Her boyfriend. Her personal relationships. And her relationship with herself.
“With that self-awareness, I could choose a different answer. That not only transformed me. It transformed the relationship.”
Maria also began experiencing a different quality of leadership. Because she was less consumed by the immediate reaction, she could see more of the situation. She described it as becoming able to see the forest and the trees. She had greater clarity about what needed to happen. She felt more confident with her team. She made different strategic choices with employees and partners. She became more capable of holding productivity and human relationships at the same level of importance.
Before the program, Maria often swung between them.
At times, she became so focused on tasks, production, client deliverables, and company performance that relationships and inner development receded into the background.
At other times, she focused so much on keeping everyone together that her own needs and the requirements of the work became harder to hold.
Through the diverse faculty, she saw another possibility. Strong business performance and human development did not need to take turns. Each could strengthen the other. That realization changed the way she saw her companies. It also changed how she experienced her work itself.
Before the Inner MBA, much of Maria’s day was organized around what had to be completed: The task. The job. The deliverable. What the client needed.
Afterward, she began experiencing work as part of her spiritual and developmental path.
Everyday professional life became a place to ask:
Who am I being in this situation?
What energy am I bringing?
Who do I want to become?
What does the other person need?
What am I here to contribute?
The meaning of work expanded beyond the list of things she had to produce. Her business became one of the places where her inner life was practiced. And that shift produced concrete professional results.
Maria said that becoming more present, calm, patient, and clear led to broader thinking and more resources in her business. She was better able to recognize opportunities, take different actions, and create different results.
She gained confidence both inwardly and outwardly. She challenged some of the limiting beliefs and assumptions that had been quietly shaping her decisions. And she felt increasingly able to manage her companies in a different way.
The program did not ask Maria to step away from ambition, productivity, or strategy. It helped her hold them inside a larger understanding of leadership. One that included the team, the relationship, her own internal state, the needs of the moment… And the kind of person she was becoming through the work.
“You will not only become a better leader, but a better person. What you learn will be with you for the rest of your life.”
Maria Expected an Online Course. She Found a Community.
Maria had assumed that because the Inner MBA was online, meaningful networking would be limited. Her experience was the opposite. She found many opportunities to connect with people from different countries, fields, and perspectives.
That community became especially important during the early interior work of the program. Other participants did not prescribe what she should do. They walked beside her. They reminded her of the commitments she had made. They encouraged her. They helped her see situations from angles she would not have reached alone.
And as she listened more closely to their experiences, she discovered how much of herself she could recognize in people whose lives looked very different from her own.
That is one of the paradoxes of a truly international learning community. The differences expand you. The shared humanity steadies you.
Learn in a Way That Fits the Life You Are Already Leading
The Inner MBA is substantial. It is also designed for people with real careers, businesses, families, teams, clients, responsibilities, and full calendars. The core weekly commitment is approximately 60 to 90 minutes.
The experience combines live and self-paced learning, allowing you to engage seriously without needing to place the rest of your life on hold. Live sessions are recorded and typically made available within 72 hours. The teaching library allows you to return to material as your own questions evolve. Some lessons will speak to the situation you are facing now. Others may become more relevant months or years later.
You are not expected to absorb every available idea at once. You are invited to discern what you most need, practice it seriously, and return to the deeper library over time.
I’ve been pleasantly surprised by what a deep dive is being facilitated. I hoped I would learn some new skills, but this program is so much more. I’m surprised and excited by how I feel my internal landscape rearranging.
– Emily Fanjoy, Inner MBA alum
What You Will Receive
Your enrollment in the 2026 Inner MBA includes:
- The three-day Opening Event attended in person or live online according to your enrollment tier
- Six months of integrated inner and outer leadership development
- Monthly live teaching with Tami Simon, Jeremy Hunter, and program faculty
- Monthly small-group learning sessions
- Individual one-on-one coaching sessions depending on your tier
- Office hours with members of the Inner MBA core faculty
- An extensive library of masterclasses and supporting materials depending on your tier
- The Inner MBA community forum and networking opportunities
- Your personal Inner MBA Compass
- A Certificate of Completion issued by Sounds True
You Will Not Be Doing This Alone
The future you are imagining may be yours to build.
That does not mean you have to build it by yourself. For six months, you will be surrounded by people who understand that inner development and outer contribution belong together.
People who are ready to think seriously about what this moment asks of them. People willing to examine how they lead, not only what they achieve. People carrying visions, responsibilities, uncertainties, and questions of their own.
You may arrive looking for a curriculum. You may leave with something more difficult to find: A community in which the person you are becoming makes sense.
Choose the Level of Experience That Fits You
Every Inner MBA enrollment tier includes the full six-month program.
You will receive the same core curriculum, monthly live faculty sessions, monthly small-group sessions, individualized coaching varying by tier, faculty office hours, access to the global community, alumni network access, your Inner MBA Compass, and a Certificate of Completion issued by Sounds True.
The difference between tiers is not the quality of the program.
It is how you participate in the Opening Event and the degree of additional access, intimacy, and support included in your experience.
The 2026 cohort begins with the Opening Event, October 23-25th in Berkeley, California.
Seats for the in-person experience are limited.
Early applicants can save up to $1,400 on tuition.
Core
Live online · Attend from anywhere
The full program, joined online.
- Live online access to the opening event · Oct 23–25
- Full six-month program · 6 modules + Quiet Week
- One 1:1 coaching session
- Monthly live teaching + small-group sessions
- Office hours with core faculty
- Global cohort + alumni network
- Certificate of Completion from Sounds True
$3,795
Only $2,595 or
$265/mo
$1,200 Savings · Early-applicant pricing
$265/month for 10 months · approximately $8.84/day
Signature
Limited to 290 Students
For most readers, the right yes.
- In-person seat at the kick-off event · Oct 23–25
- Full six-month program · 6 modules + Quiet Week
- Two 1:1 coaching sessions
- Monthly live teaching + small-group sessions
- Office hours with core faculty
- Global cohort + alumni network
- Certificate of Completion from Sounds True
$5,795
Only $4,395 or
$445/mo
Save up to $1,400 · Early-applicant pricing
$445/month for 10 months · approximately $14.84/day
Premium
Limited to 50 Students
For those who want to go all in.
Everything in Signature, plus:
- Private dinner with faculty
- Four total 1:1 coaching sessions (twice the access)
- 1:1 Special coaching sessions with Tami Simon & Jeremy Hunter
- Premium small groups across all six months
- Peer networking sessions
$7,795
Only $6,395 or
$645/mo
Save up to $1,400 · Early-applicant pricing
$645/month for 10 months · approximately $21.50/day
Not Sure Which Inner MBA Experience Is Right for You?
Talk it through with a member of our team.
I believe that now, the most valuable and admired business leaders will be those who engage directly and honestly with other humans in a professional setting. The Inner MBA helped me put this into practice through simple but powerful exercises that blend modern science with ancient wisdom.
– Fernando Alday, Inner MBA alum
What Your Tuition Supports
Choosing a program at this level is a meaningful decision. You are considering far more than access to a series of lessons or another online program.
You are choosing six months of structured development designed to touch the way you work, lead, communicate, decide, relate, and move through uncertainty.
Your tuition includes:
- A six-month developmental curriculum
- Live access to internationally respected faculty
- Individual coaching
- Small-group integration
- Faculty office hours
- Guided practices
- A substantial on-demand teaching library
- An international professional community
- Continuing alumni access
- Your Inner MBA Compass
- An opening event hosted at International House Berkeley
- A certificate from Sounds True
You could find pieces of this experience in separate places. A leadership course. A coaching package. A contemplative program. A professional network. A live conference. A certificate program.
The Inner MBA was created because those pieces rarely speak to one another.
Traditional business education may strengthen strategy while leaving the person executing it largely unexamined.
Personal-growth programs may create meaningful insight without connecting that insight to the demands of a team, a company, a career, or a complex organization.
Networking programs may introduce you to people without creating the conditions for genuine relationship.
In the Inner MBA, those dimensions are part of one integrated journey.
Maria Luisa entered with years of meditation practice and leadership experience, yet still found herself reacting in ways that interfered with her companies and relationships. The program helped her access self-awareness during the moments when it mattered, leading her to become calmer, clearer, more strategic, and more capable of navigating difficult conversations.
Helen entered doubting that she belonged in the room at all. Within months, she was speaking publicly with greater confidence, becoming more productive, preparing her first trademark, and expanding her vision from solo practice toward a company and team.
Neither transformation came from collecting more information.
They came from learning, practicing, being supported, and returning to the work long enough for a different way of operating to take root.
That is what the structure is designed to make possible.
This Is a Meaningful Investment
The Inner MBA is designed for people ready to participate. You will receive the most from the program when you are willing to make time for the practices, bring your real questions into coaching and community, and apply what you are learning in the life you are already living.
That does not require perfection, attending every session live, or completing every lesson the moment it is released.
Helen was candid that she had not absorbed everything available to her. She chose the teachings that were most relevant to her current edge, practiced them, and returned to other material as she was ready.
Maria Luisa was running two companies while completing the program. She found that the flexible structure allowed her to catch up when professional demands became intense.
The program asks for commitment. It is also built with the understanding that the people joining it have full lives. The question is not whether you can become the perfect student. The question is whether you are ready to make your own development a real priority.
You’ve Made It This Far. Still Have Questions?
You’ve read about the program, the experience, and what’s included. But sometimes a web page can only tell you so much.
If you’re still wondering whether Inner MBA is right for you, let’s talk.
Book a one-on-one call with a member of our team. Bring your questions about the program, coaching, time commitment, tuition, payment options, or anything else you want to know.
Frequently asked
Common questions
- How is the Inner MBA structured?
The Inner MBA is a six-month certificate program combining live teaching, self-paced learning, guided practice, small-group sessions, individualized coaching, faculty office hours, and community engagement.
The experience begins with the three-day Opening Event at International House Berkeley, California.
Depending on your enrollment tier, you will attend the event either in person or live online.
Following the opening gathering, the curriculum unfolds across six modules, with a deliberate integration period built into the program.
The six-month experience includes:
- Monthly live faculty sessions
- Monthly small-group sessions
- Individual coaching
- Faculty office hours
- Guided practices
- On-demand teaching
- Community conversations and networking
- Development of your Inner MBA Compass
The core weekly commitment is approximately 60 to 90 minutes, although you may choose to engage more closely with the teaching library, community, and optional opportunities.
- When does the program begin?
The 2026 Inner MBA begins with the Opening Event in the city of Berkeley, California from October 23-25, 2026.
The six-month virtual program continues through the end of April 2027, with accommodations made for the holiday season.
- Do I need to attend the Opening Event in person?
No.
All participants are welcome to attend virtually.
Core participants attend the three-day Opening Event live online.
Signature and Premium participants are also invited to attend in person in Berkeley, California.
Both formats are designed to help you meet your cohort, begin your Inner MBA Compass, and establish the foundational practices that carry through the six months ahead.
In-person space is limited.
- What if I cannot attend all of the live sessions?
All primary live sessions will be recorded and added to the course platform, generally within 72 hours.
The live schedule is designed to serve an international community across multiple time zones, but you will not need to attend every session live to participate meaningfully.
Recordings allow you to remain engaged during busy professional periods and return to the teaching when it is most relevant.
- How much time should I expect to commit?
The core weekly commitment is approximately 60 to 90 minutes.
Some weeks may involve more time if you choose to attend additional live sessions, participate actively in the community, or explore more of the teaching library.
The program is designed to integrate into your life rather than require you to step away from it.
Much of the work happens through applying what you are learning inside the meetings, relationships, decisions, and challenges already present in your day.
- Is this a traditional MBA?
No.
The Inner MBA does not teach the standard curriculum of finance, accounting, operations, or business analytics associated with a conventional Master of Business Administration degree.
It develops the inner capacities that shape how business knowledge and professional expertise are used.
These include:
- Self-awareness
- Emotional intelligence
- Nervous system regulation
- Discernment
- Presence
- Purpose
- Conscious communication
- Constructive conflict
- Collaboration
- Values-aligned leadership
- The ability to create meaningful change
The Inner MBA is a professional certificate program, not a graduate degree.
- Will I receive a certificate?
Participants who meet the program’s completion requirements will receive a Certificate of Completion issued by Sounds True. The program is developed in consultation with the Greater Good Science Center, whose work advances the study of compassion, resilience, and human flourishing.
The certificate recognizes your participation in a structured six-month program devoted to the development of self-awareness, emotional intelligence, human flourishing, conscious connection, and leadership capacity.
It is not an academic degree or university credit.
- Is the program suitable for someone who already has an MBA or extensive leadership experience?
Yes.
Many Inner MBA participants already have advanced degrees, significant credentials, or decades of professional experience.
They are not joining because they lack expertise.
They are joining because expertise alone does not answer every leadership question.
You may understand strategy and still struggle to remain steady in conflict.
You may know how to grow an organization and still feel disconnected from the life you are building.
You may be highly accomplished and still sense that your next level requires greater integration, clarity, or courage.
The Inner MBA develops the human capacities that allow existing knowledge and experience to be used more wisely.
As Rose Marcario, former CEO of Patagonia and former Inner MBA faculty member, has said:
“The most essential part of being a great leader, a great manager, and a great person in the world is the inner reflection, inner confidence, and inner strength to do the things required in this moment.”
- Is the Inner MBA only for executives or business owners?
No.
The program is designed for people who build, lead, guide, serve, create, or contribute across many kinds of professional life.
Past participants have included:
- Executives and organizational leaders
- Entrepreneurs and founders
- Coaches and consultants
- Physicians and healthcare professionals
- Therapists and wellness practitioners
- Educators
- Nonprofit leaders
- Technology professionals
- B Corp leaders
- Meditation and yoga teachers
- Creative professionals
- People transitioning into a new chapter of work or contribution
You do not need to manage a large team to be a leader.
You may be leading a company, a project, a client, a classroom, a community, a family, a body of work, or the next chapter of your own life.
- What if I am new to contemplative practice or personal-development work?
No previous meditation, contemplative, coaching, or personal-development experience is required.
The program is designed to be accessible to people entering this work for the first time while still offering depth for those who have practiced for many years.
Maria Luisa had meditated for at least five years before entering the Inner MBA. She still found that the program gave her something her prior practice had not: tools she could use in the immediate moment when conflict activated her.
The value of the program does not depend on how long you have studied inner work.
It depends on your willingness to practice.
- Is the program a form of therapy?
No.
The Inner MBA is an educational and developmental program.
It is not intended to diagnose or treat any physical or mental-health condition, and it is not a substitute for therapy with a qualified, licensed mental-health professional.
Some participants may choose to engage in therapy alongside the program.
The Inner MBA can complement personal therapeutic work, but it does not replace it.
- How does individual coaching work?
All enrollment tiers include individual coaching sessions – frequency and access depends on your tier.
Your coach will help you apply the program to the actual situations in your professional and personal life.
These sessions may focus on questions such as:
- A difficult conversation you need to initiate
- A recurring leadership pattern
- A transition or decision
- The vision you are clarifying
- A relationship affecting your work
- The way you are responding under pressure
- The next step in bringing your values into your professional life
Core students receive one coaching session. Signature participants receive two individual coaching sessions. Premium participants receive four.
Coaching is included as a structural part of the program because insight becomes more useful when it is connected to the reality you are living.
- What is the Inner MBA Compass?
Your Inner MBA Compass is the personal alignment tool you will develop throughout the six-month program.
It is a dynamic map of what you are learning, what you value, the patterns you are recognizing, the outcomes you are working toward, and the contribution you feel called to make.
There are familiar directions outside us: north, south, east, and west.
The Compass also points inward.
Toward the center of what is true for you.
As the program unfolds, your Compass helps you connect the individual teachings into a coherent understanding of your own path.
You can return to it during moments of decision, transition, pressure, or uncertainty long after the program concludes.
- Will I be able to connect with other participants?
Yes.
Community is a central part of the Inner MBA experience.
You will have opportunities to connect through:
- Small-group learning sessions
- The community forum
- Networking experiences
- Regional and interest-based conversations
- The Opening Event
- Peer groups
- The continuing alumni network
Past participants have frequently described community as one of the most meaningful and unexpected aspects of the program.
“I would say, just enroll. You will meet amazing people with unique and diverse perspectives. The combination of dynamic CEOs and thought leaders exposed me to people I had only dreamed of meeting.”
– Melissa Permezel, UN-Habitat, Nairobi
- How long will I have access to the program materials?
You will receive life-time access to the core course materials and recordings so that you can return to the teachings after the six-month live experience concludes.
The live community, coaching, and scheduled faculty experiences take place during the active six-month program.
- What is the refund policy?
We understand that life doesn’t always go according to plan. If you need to withdraw from the Inner MBA, here’s how our refund policy works:
Before October 1, 2026
You may withdraw from the program and receive a refund of your tuition, less the $50 USD non-refundable deposit, by notifying us in writing HERE.
On or After October 1, 2026
After October 1, tuition is generally non-refundable. However, we recognize that extraordinary circumstances can arise. Refund requests may be considered in cases such as:
- A serious medical emergency
- A life-threatening illness
- Other exceptional circumstances (reviewed on a case-by-case basis)
If a refund is approved, it will be prorated based on your participation in the program and will be subject to an administrative fee.
To request a refund after October 1, please submit your request in writing along with any relevant supporting documentation.
- Are scholarships or financial assistance available?
Sounds True offers a limited number of partial and full scholarships for applicants experiencing genuine financial hardship.
Scholarship resources are limited, and we ask that you apply only if assistance is truly necessary for you to participate.
Apply for Financial Assistance
- Can my employer pay for the program?
Many employers provide professional-development, leadership-training, continuing-education, or executive-coaching budgets that may be used toward programs such as the Inner MBA.
We recommend speaking with your manager, human-resources department, or professional-development team about reimbursement or sponsorship.
Program staff can provide enrollment documentation and a detailed overview of the curriculum when needed.
- Are payment plans available?
Yes.
Ten-month payment plans are available for each tier so you’ll have a flexible option.
Payment-plan amounts shown reflect early application tuition.
- How do I choose the right tier?
Choose Core if you want the complete program and prefer to attend the Opening Event live online.
Choose Signature if beginning in person in the city of Berkeley, California, and developing face-to-face relationships with your cohort are important to you.
Choose Premium if you want the most intimate experience, additional individual coaching, closer faculty access, and a higher level of peer connection throughout the program.
Every tier includes the complete six-month Inner MBA curriculum.
- What happens after I apply?
“How does the application process work?”
To enroll in the Inner MBA, you must first submit your application and pay a non-refundable $50 application fee. Once your application fee has been received, your application will be placed in our review queue. Most applications are reviewed within 24–48 hours.
If accepted into the program, you will be automatically enrolled in Inner MBA, and your first tuition payment will be processed according to the payment plan you’ve selected.
The $50 application fee will be credited toward your tuition.
Applying does not obligate you to enroll.
Six Months From Now
It is impossible to know exactly what will change for you. Your life is not Helen’s. Your company is not Maria Luisa’s. Your leadership challenges, relationships, history, responsibilities, and vision are your own.
The Inner MBA cannot promise a particular job, promotion, revenue outcome, or external milestone. That is not the promise.
The promise is that for six months, you will have the structure, teaching, practice, coaching, and community to meet yourself and your work differently.
You may become more aware of the pattern beneath a problem you have tried to solve strategically for years, initiate the conversation you have been avoiding, or discover that the next chapter is not asking you to abandon what you have built, but to inhabit it differently. You may learn to stay present when pressure would once have taken over, trust your voice enough to protect an idea, name a vision, or take the next step. You may begin seeing your work as more than an endless series of obligations, or find the people who remind you that the questions you are carrying are not yours alone. You may become more capable of holding success without being consumed by it.
More willing to lead without pretending certainty.
More able to care for the human beings affected by your decisions.
More grounded in what matters.
More fully yourself.
That is not a small outcome. It changes the quality of what you bring into every room.
The Next Chapter Begins With the Person Who Will Live It
You already know how to accomplish things. You have learned, adapted, carried responsibility, solved problems, helped people, built expertise, and made it through seasons that asked more of you than anyone else could see. You are not standing at the beginning. You are standing at the threshold of what comes next. The question is no longer simply:
What else can I achieve?
It is:
Who do I want to become through what I build next?
What do I want the people around me to experience because I am leading?
What part of myself am I ready to stop leaving outside the room?
What would become possible if my ambition, values, intelligence, inner life, and work no longer had to exist in separate compartments?
And what is mine to do now?
The Inner MBA will not answer those questions for you.
It will help you become the person who can answer them. With greater awareness. Greater courage. Greater steadiness. Greater clarity. And a community of people asking what this moment requires of them, too.
The Inner MBA transformed my performance in business. Most important, it transformed my relationship with myself. I would encourage anyone who wants to evolve as a leader and as a person to enroll.
– María Luisa Alderuccio, cofounder of two companies
This is the year things change.
The 2026 Inner MBA cohort begins October 23 in Berkeley, California.
Enrollment opens once each year.
Early applicants can save up to $1,400
Seats for the in-person Opening Event are limited.
If something in you recognizes this work, we invite you to take the next step.
Not because you need to become someone else.
Because the person your next chapter requires may already be here.
- Ready to be trusted.
- Ready to be developed.
- Ready to lead.
When I started Sounds True in the mid-1980s, I was in my early twenties and largely on my own, figuring out how to build something meaningful at the intersection of inner work and the outer world of business. There weren’t many people doing that then. Today, the number of professionals committed to doing business differently, with more consciousness, more purpose, and more integrity, has grown in ways I could not have imagined. And that gives me genuine hope.
– Tami Simon, Founder, Sounds True
Still Wondering If Inner MBA Is Right for You?
Sometimes a web page can only tell you so much.
Book a one-on-one call with a member of our team to talk through your questions about the program, coaching, time commitment, tuition, payment options, or anything else you want to know.
You already sense that how you build, lead, and serve from here matters, the body of work you’re creating, the people you’re leading, the life you’re shaping. The Inner MBA program is where that next version begins to take shape. If this is calling to you, join us.
Enrollment opens once a year. This is that moment.
Early applicants save Up to $1,400
Questions? We are here. Contact us at innermba@soundstrue.com
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