For multiple decades, Gordon has served as both a leader and a strategic consultant in the health care industry. He has identified, observed and engaged the underlying organizational energies and social structures that shape success or predict leadership failure—both for individuals and businesses. Slowly awaking to his own disruptive inner dialogue, he felt a growing sense of inauthenticity in his work and loss of meaning. Most disquieting was a belief that even with hard work and best effort, it never seemed enough.

In his years of consulting, he had encountered this same pattern of inner discontent, restlessness, inadequacy and what might be called “frustrated altruism” in highly regarded and seemingly successful leaders of all ages and levels. Yet he also noted how profound this energy could be with its underlying generative capacity, a capacity to shape personal and professional and organizational transitions in ways expected and unexpected, positive and negative. Recognizing this inner disquiet in himself, Gordon undertook a de facto strategic sabbatical to clear his own personal and professional clutter and better focus his inner call and future effort. What emerged was the formation of Santa Fe Sabbatical.

Determined to encourage others in transcending these feelings of discontent, to use it to their own and their company’s advantage and to improve the overall health of the health-care industry as well, Santa Fe Sabbatical now helps both individuals and teams to step back, to recognize and engage their discontent and to clear away personal and professional clutter. These are but the first steps needed in order to hold one’s future for oneself—and to trigger its transformative possibilities.