Our Founder

AUGUST TURAK is a highly successful entrepreneur, award-winning author, speaker, and consultant. He has published many popular leadership articles for Forbes and is a former contributor for the BBC. He is the founder of the educational nonprofit the Self Knowledge Symposium Foundation (SKSF). As a frequent guest, Turak has been living and working alongside the monks of Mepkin Abbey since 1996.

Service and selflessness are at the heart of the 1,500-year-old monastic tradition’s remarkable business success. It is an ancient though immensely relevant economic model that preserves what is positive and productive about capitalism while transcending its ethical limitations and internal contradictions. 

After a corporate career with companies like MTV, August Turak founded two highly successful software businesses, Raleigh Group International (RGI) and Elsinore Technologies. In 2000 he sold his companies to Identify Software and in 2006 the combined companies were sold to BMC Software for $150 million. 

Turak has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, Fast Company, Selling Magazine, the New York Times, Business Week, and is a popular leadership contributor for Forbes and BBC’s Business Matters. 

His book, Business Secrets of the Trappist Monks, was published by Columbia Business School Publishing. This book uses 1000 years of Trappist business success and his own entrepreneurial experience to demonstrate that Trappist monks are not successful businessmen despite adhering to only the highest ethical values but because they do.

Brother John: A Monk, a Pilgrim, and the Purpose of Life, published by Clovercroft Publishing, combines Turak’s $100,000 Templeton Prize winning story with original oil paintings from award-winning artist, Glenn Harrington. Brother John offers higher meaning and purpose in a world that so many find bereft of meaning and purpose. 

Learn more at www.AugustTurak.com