Grit & Growth | Mindful Leadership

Meet Faraz Ramji, founder of Norda Industries and Mindfulness Coach, and Dr. Leah Weiss, Stanford Graduate School of Business lecturer, to hear why mindfulness and emotional intelligence should be part of every entrepreneur’s skillset.

In 2017 a factory fire changed everything for Faraz and his team at Norda, a snack food company based in Nairobi, Kenya. Rebuilding the business required more than Faraz ever imagined, most importantly bringing his personal mindfulness practice to work.

“I don't want to make it sound like mindfulness is a panacea for everything. I just think it helped me personally, as a leader to be more grounded, to be more objective, to genuinely acknowledge the emotion which was coming up and not suppress or deny it, but genuinely feel it and then be able to use some of that data to drive my decision-making.”

Dr. Weiss spends a lot of her time thinking about mindfulness as a researcher, lecturer, consultant, entrepreneur, and author. She teaches “Leading with Mindfulness and Compassion” at Stanford Graduate School of Business and is founding faculty at Stanford’s Compassion Institute. But Dr. Weiss advises that mindfulness isn’t simply about meditation, it’s about the intentional use of attention which is essential for leaders. Listen to Faraz’s story and Dr. Weiss’s guidance so you can breathe easier.

Learn more:
Faraz Ramji:   / faraz-ramji-01700a25  
Stanford Seed: https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/seed