Draft article not currently submitted for review. This is a draft Articles for creation (AfC) submission. It is not currently pending review. While there are no deadlines, abandoned drafts may be deleted after six months. To edit or make changes to this draft, simply click on the "Edit" tab at the top of the window. To be accepted, a draft should: Show the subject qualifies for a Wikipedia article by using multiple sources that meet four criteria. The sources should be (1) reliable (2) secondary (3) independent of the subject (4) talk about the subject in some depth. For some topics, there are alternative criteria. Be written from a neutral point of view Respect copyright and do not plagiarize. Do not copy-paste. It is strongly discouraged to write about either yourself or your business or employer. If you do so, you must declare it. Where to get help If you need help editing or submitting your draft, please ask us a question at the AfC Help Desk or get live help from experienced editors. These venues are only for help with editing and the submission process, not to get reviews. If you need feedback on your draft, or if the review is taking a lot of time, you can try asking for help on the talk page of a relevant WikiProject. Some WikiProjects are more active than others so a speedy reply is not guaranteed. How to improve a draft Wikipedia:Contributing to Wikipedia – a basic overview on how to edit Wikipedia. Help:Wikitext – how to use the markup Help:Referencing for beginners – how to include references Wikipedia:Article development – how to develop your article Wikipedia:Writing better articles – how to improve your article Wikipedia:Verifiability – make sure your article includes reliable third-party sources You can also browse Wikipedia:Featured articles and Wikipedia:Good articles to find examples of Wikipedia's best writing on topics similar to your proposed article. Improving your odds of a speedy review To improve your odds of a faster review, tag your draft with relevant WikiProject tags using the button below. This will let reviewers know a new draft has been submitted in their area of interest. For instance, if you wrote about a female astronomer, you would want to add the Biography, Astronomy, and Women scientists tags. Add tags to your draft Editor resources Easy tools: Citation bot (help) | Advanced: Fix bare URLs Last edited by Bearcat (talk | contribs) 6 days ago. (Update) Submit the draft for review!

August Turak (born July 1952) is an American author, entrepreneur, speaker, and leadership expert. He is best known for his books Business Secrets of the Trappist Monks: One CEO's Quest for Meaning and Authenticity (Columbia Business School Publishing, 2013),^[1] Brother John: A Monk, a Pilgrim, and the Purpose of Life (Clovercroft Publishing, 2018),^[2] and Not Less Than Everything: One Man's Quest for Spiritual Enlightenment (Clovercroft Publishing, 2023).^[3]

In 2004, his essay "Brother John" won the $100,000 John Templeton Foundation Power of Purpose Essay Contest, a global competition that asked entrants to answer the question: "What is the purpose of life?"^[4] The essay was later anthologized in The Best Christian Writing and The Best Catholic Writing. Turak also served as a leadership contributor for Forbes magazine.^[5]

Turak's work explores the intersection of spirituality, service, and business ethics, drawing on his experiences as a monastic guest at Mepkin Abbey, a Trappist monastery in South Carolina, his entrepreneurial career, and his experience as a corporate executive in the television and software industries.^[6]

He is the founder of the August Turak Foundation (ATF),^[7] a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization dedicated to service-oriented leadership, mentorship, and personal transformation through storytelling, education, and community engagement.^[8] He also hosts the YouTube channel @RealAugustTurak.^[9]

Turak was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the first of eight children.^[10] He attended The Hotchkiss School on scholarship, an experience he later credited as formative to his intellectual and spiritual development.^[11]

He later attended the University of Pittsburgh, where he majored in history, graduating in 1978.^[12]

In 1972, Turak attended a lecture by Richard Rose, a West Virginia mystic and founder of the TAT Foundation.^[13] Inspired by Rose's teachings, Turak became his student and spent several years helping to start and lead spiritual study groups at universities and communities across the country. Turak later credited this experience with teaching him the importance of community and instilling leadership traits critical to his later business success.^[14][15]

During these years, he supported himself by installing carpets, traveled widely to give talks on Zen and mysticism, and lived simply while pursuing spiritual practice.

In 1978, Turak moved to Washington, D.C., to become a protégé of Louis R. Mobley, founder of the IBM Executive School in 1956 and author of Beyond IBM.^[16] Turak lived with the Mobley family, studying one-on-one with Mobley each morning and assisting with his post-retirement consulting work in the afternoons. Mobley's belief that leadership is rooted in moral character strongly influenced Turak's later work.^[17]

On January 5, 1981, Turak joined Warner-Amex Satellite Entertainment (WASEC), a joint venture of Warner Communications and American Express, which operated The Movie Channel and Nickelodeon.^[18] On August 1, 1981, WASEC launched MTV: Music Television, widely recognized as a turning point in youth culture and global media.

Following his work at MTV, Turak joined The Entertainment Channel, a joint venture of the RCA Corporation and the Rockefeller family. The channel later merged with The Arts Channel, owned by the American Broadcasting Company (ABC), to form the Arts & Entertainment Network (A&E). He subsequently served as National Director of Marketing for A&E before becoming Vice President of Marketing at Adelphia Communications, where he remained until 1985.^[19]

In 1985, Turak moved to the Research Triangle region of North Carolina to join Applied Control Systems (ACS) as Vice President of Sales and Marketing, leaving in 1987. Between 1987 and 1993, he worked as a consultant for clients including Data Broadcasting Corporation, United Press International, Bell Atlantic, Federal News Service, and others.^[20]

In 1993, Turak and three partners founded Raleigh Group International (RGI), a software distribution company specializing in third-party products.^[21]

In 1995, the partners co-founded Elsinore Technologies to create proprietary software. Their flagship product, Visual Intercept, gained substantial traction; in 1997, Microsoft named Elsinore the 47th fastest-growing independent software vendor out of 10,000 surveyed.^[22]

On March 31, 2000, Turak and his partners sold RGI and their ownership stake in Elsinore Technologies to Mutek Solutions, an Israeli software company. Mutek later became Identify Software, which was acquired by BMC Software in 2005 for $150 million in cash.^[23]

In 1989, after delivering a guest lecture at North Carolina State University titled "Five Years with a Zen Master," several students asked Turak to mentor them, leading to the creation of the Self-Knowledge Symposium (SKS).^[24] SKS eventually grew into a network of officially recognized university student organizations at North Carolina State University, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and Duke University.^[25] The organization focused on fostering self-knowledge, spiritual inquiry, ethical leadership, and personal transformation. In the late 1990s, Turak taught one-credit "House Courses" at Duke University.^[26]

In 2002, Turak took a sabbatical to pursue a master's degree in theology at Saint John's University in Collegeville, Minnesota. He wrote the essay "Brother John" in 2004, only a few months before it won the John Templeton Foundation Power of Purpose Essay Contest.^[27]

The success of the essay led to an invitation from Forbes to become a leadership contributor. After a friend shared Turak's "white paper" on Trappist business practices with the Forbes leadership editor, the piece was published under the title "Business Secrets of the Trappist Monks." The article went viral, eventually leading to a book contract with Columbia Business School Publishing.^[28][29]

Following a skydiving accident in 1996, Turak sought recovery at Mepkin Abbey, a Trappist monastery in South Carolina.^[30] His many visits as a monastic guest inspired the essay "Brother John," which generated significant response from readers around the world and ultimately contributed to the formation of the August Turak Foundation. The story was later expanded into the book Brother John: A Monk, a Pilgrim, and the Purpose of Life, illustrated by Glenn Harrington.^[31][32]

The August Turak Foundation (ATF) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization founded from the earlier SKS organizations and dedicated to service, self-knowledge, and personal transformation.^[33] Its programs include the Coach Campbell Award, the Educating Emily Fund, and the Foundations 25 Festival.

• Business Secrets of the Trappist Monks: One CEO's Quest for Meaning and Authenticity (Columbia Business School Publishing, 2013) – ISBN 9780231160629
• Brother John: A Monk, a Pilgrim, and the Purpose of Life (Clovercroft Publishing, 2018)
• Not Less Than Everything: One Man's Quest for Spiritual Enlightenment (Clovercroft Publishing, 2023)

• Official website
• August Turak Foundation
• @RealAugustTurak on YouTube
• Forbes contributor profile
• Mepkin Abbey

Category:1952 births Category:Living people Category:American non-fiction writers Category:American entrepreneurs Category:University of Pittsburgh alumni Category:People from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania