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Contemplative Leadership

About Me

My name is Rick Raymond. I'm an educator, personal and business coach, mentor to entrepreneurs, seeker of spiritual wisdom, contemplative photographer, advocate for elderhood, husband and father.

I've been teaching all my adult life. I taught scuba diving as an undergraduate at the University of Scranton. I conducted teacher-education workshops for the New York State Sea Grant Program and a leadership-training workshop for the New York State Legislative Commission on Science and Technology. I ran workshops at the New England Aquarium in Boston, and for the New York State Marine Education Association where I was a founding member and the first executive director.

I graduated from Humboldt State University in Northern California with an M.S. in Natural Resource Management with an emphasis in oceanography. For many years I worked for various concerns that had an environmental focus. I was a Peace Corp Volunteer in Chile where I helped develop their fisheries industry. I worked on maritime issues for the New York State Legislative Commission on Science and Technology. For ten years I was a contractor for the New York City Department of Environmental Protection as a liaison between the city and the communities where work was being done.

Over the years, though, I began to see that I preferred working with people rather than fish. I found inspiration in helping people achieve their goals. And I realized that I missed teaching. One day I met a man whose profession was a match for my slowly realized occupational preferences.

This man was a personal coach. He suggested I explore training as a coach as a way of realizing my emerging aspirations. While continuing to work under a contract with New York City’s Department of Environmental Protection, I completed a five-year program in personal and executive coaching. I've now been coaching individuals, entrepreneurs, and family businesses on leadership and business growth for over 20 years.

I returned to classroom teaching by way of NYU where I designed and taught Ecological Principles of Business Management and Environmental Ethics. At Baruch College, The City University of New York, I taught entrepreneurship and family business management; and recently I started teaching a summer course on entrepreneurship in China at the Shanghai University of Science and Technology.

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