Dr. Alex Pattakos Speaker & Booking Information

Alex Pattakos, Ph.D., affectionately nicknamed “Dr. Meaning,” is the founder of the Center for Meaning, based in Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA, and Crete, Greece. He widely known and respected as a pioneer in transformational thinking. In this regard, he is passionate about helping people realize their highest potential and find authentic meaning in their life and work, as well as helping organizations in all sectors and industries create meaning-centric workplaces and deliver products and services that make a positive difference and are truly meaningful. He is the author of the international best-selling book, Prisoners of Our Thoughts, which is based on the wisdom of and was encouraged personally by the world-renown psychiatrist, Dr. Viktor Frankl, author of the classic best-seller, Man's Search for Meaning. Prisoners of Our Thoughts includes a foreword by Dr. Stephen Covey (author of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People) and is currently available in 15 languages. A second edition of Prisoners of Our Thoughts, completely revised and updated with a new chapter demonstrating the critical links between meaning and happiness, resilience, engagement, and health, will be released in July 2010.

A former therapist and mental health administrator, Alex has also been a political campaign organizer, community & economic development policy planner, and full-time professor of public and business administration (including a graduate program head). He's worked closely with several Presidential administrations in the USA on social and economic policy matters, and served as a personal advisor to the Commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. He was also one of the initial faculty evaluators for the Innovations in American Government Awards Program at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, and has been a faculty member at the Brookings Institution. He is a past president of Renaissance Business Associates (RBA), an international, nonprofit association of people committed to elevating the human spirit in the workplace. During his tenure as president, RBA was active in Australia, Canada, Europe, Nigeria, South Africa, and the USA.

Dr. Pattakos is a passionate speaker and is known around the world for his high energy, inspirational, and dynamic approach to engaging participants and affecting change at all levels. As a personal coach and mentor, he works closely with executives, athletes, celebrities, workers from all sectors, retirees, and others to help them find deeper meaning in their everyday life and work, manage life transitions, and realize their highest potential. He's also an experienced radio show host, newspaper columnist, and featured contributor to several popular blogs, including Basil & Spice, The Huffington Post and Fast Company magazine. Dr. Pattakos, moreover, is a weekly columnist for The National Herald, the leading and oldest (since 1915) Greek-American newspaper in America, writing about a wide variety of topics, including politics and social issues, from an explicit meaning-focused perspective.

Alex proudly describes himself as a “pracademic,” that is, someone who seeks to bridge the worlds of the practitioner and academic by linking practice and theory. In this regard, he has been the director of two university-based research institutes. A pioneer in the use of technology to enhance individual and group learning, Dr. Pattakos is credited by the World Futures Society and IBM as the inventor of the “Electronic Visiting Professor” concept, an innovation in online distance learning when the Information Highway was still a dirt road. His work in this area was shared internationally through the Voice of America and his perspective on “creative learning” can be found in his contributions to the book, Managing in Organizations that Learn. Among his many publications, he is the co-author of the book, From Nation to States: The Small Cities Community Development Block Grant Program, as well as numerous articles, book chapters, and monographs on public policy and management topics. He is also the co-editor/co-author of the book, Intuition at Work: Pathways to Unlimited Possibilities, and a contributing author of the book, Rediscovering the Soul of Business: A Renaissance of Values. Among his current projects, Dr. Pattakos is co-authoring a book on living a happy, healthy, meaningful life inspired by Greek culture and is working on a documentary film/television series based on and inspired by his book, Prisoners of Our Thoughts.