Founder’s Story

My name is MaRi Eagar. I am a professionally qualified Personal and Professional Leadership Practitioner and Consultant. I have been teaching personal growth and leadership programs for more than ten years.

I am a chartered accountant, and hold a Masters degree (cum laude) in Personal and Professional Leadership from the University of Johannesburg. My qualifications include formal certification to facilitate individual and group leadership development programs.

Originally from Africa, I now live in North America in the beautiful Beaches area in Toronto, Canada.

After many years of marriage I am still passionately in love with my husband, and he continues to be an inspiration and support for my work. His lifelong commitment to personal growth is also captured in the work that I present.

I now consider myself an “executive nomad”, and have traveled and done spiritual adventures  to  a variety of countries such as Namibia, India, Australia, Peru, Cambodia, Thailand and the UK.

My passion: Leadership and human potential

I have held leadership roles since junior school and started observing that most people  changed (unfortunately often for the worse) when they were given positions of power.  This triggered my interest in leadership, how leadership changes people and how people can use their leadership roles to bring about positive change.

At an early stage in my interest in this field I discovered that scholars and experts were confirming that the biggest challenge in the field of leadership is to create a practical development path that would produce leaders who not only had the desire but also the capabilities and resources to make a positive impact on the world.

Most of the research also indicated that new paradigms were required as current leadership theories and practices were not adequate to  equip leaders with the new skills they require. There were also questions about the way in which leadership was studied, in particular the bias against women and the pre-dominantly western influence on what good leaders are.

My passion for integrating diverse knowledge and practices to create new leadership approaches was the inspiration to study with a variety of teachers and methods for over twenty years. This includes investigating how to preserve indigenous knowledge.

I consolidated some of the insights into my research project for my masters degree – documenting the foundational process and techniques that are applied within most traditions for personal mastery in particular to assist in bringing about internal and external transformation.

Everything I teach others, I have personally applied to my life. I believe in experimenting with concepts first, to seek out the real truth and then distill and share it with others when I find it works very well.  My work combines art, movement and the intellect ensuring that different learning styles are accommodated.

I also believe that the work should be supported by academic rigor and therefore spent a significant period of my life doing formal studies and qualifications in personal performance, leadership and business management at internationally recognized universities.

More information about me is available on my LinkedIn profile,

Ten years ago I was a high achiever. Not only was my career as a management consultant secured, but I was obtaining academic distinctions in a Masters in the Science of Leadership and Innovation through a collaboration between a South African University and the Copenhagen Business School.

At that time it was a vindication of a life that started without too many prospects….One would have thought I would be delighted at accomplishing my goals in particular because I was following all the advice from all the self-improvement programs that I attended about building confidence, success and personal power.

Yet, I had a nagging feeling that, even if I became a partner in my consulting firm (an organization that I still admire to this day), I would not achieve happiness.  I recall vividly the day when I was looking out of the window in my house just before driving to work…. when a crystal clear insight dawned on me. In that moment I knew even if I am fabulously wealthy and successful, I would still have this nagging feeling of unease about never gaining permanent satisfaction or happiness.

Today I know this feeling to be  “Existential Angst” (Victor Frankl) or what the Buddha called “dukkha” – a human condition that he described as ‘discontentment” .

Growing up in a very under-prividleged home, I worked as a lowly paid government employee for a few years before my mother’s death shocked me into understanding that best way I could honour my mother’s gift of life to me, was to start living it as fully as possible.

I then gave up a full time job and studied a degree in business management.  At this time I was also building up a contemporary dance studio, where I discovered my passion, joy and gift for developing the talents of other people. Here I learnt much about how to structure programs that would accelerate my student’s performance beyond that of the other dance studios in the country.

After completing my business degree, I became a Chartered Accountant.  At the time I was also one of only five female qualified chartered accountants in the country. No-one told me it was special. Looking back at my life, I realize it was pretty cool as I achieved this against all odds that were stacked against me at that time.

However, after being told that,  as a female chartered accountant I was considered less qualified than a male with a mere business degree and no formal training, I was restless and decided to move to South Africa to grow not only in my career, but to also grow as a person.

I  started studying a a variety of alternative healing and transformative systems as I folllowed my passion to improve myself and the quality of my life.

I made quick progress in my career, and eventually started studying a Masters in the Science of Leadership and Innovation through the Copenhagen Business School and Leadership Centre of Kwa-Zulu Natal. It restored my love for intellectual pursuit and academic excellence, as I consistently achieved discintions for all the modules on the program.

One day after attending lectures, I decided to go to a small bookshop near the university. Inside I accidently picked up a small little book with the strange title : “The Way of the Bodhisattva” by ShantiDeva.

I started reading it immediately when I arrived back home, as it was the first book that I had found that expressed the mindset I believed to be the ideal of spiritual leadership. Not only that, I realized that none of the personal growth programs I attended ever covered this material. I was very excited as I started glimping a possible way of living that resonated with me.

In the year of 2004 I made a commitment to find my Unique Path, my Unique Reason for being Alive. I went to Peru on a Vision Quest. It was an intuitive, impulsive whim and something I never contemplated before.

I followed my heart, and arrived at a mountain retreat centre with a burning desire… to find out what my gift was, to know what my purpose was, and why I existed.

…I can still  recall the exact moment when I saw exactly why I was born, how my life uniquely prepared me for what I can achieve, and a potential future in using the gift of such a life to express a more meaningful path that will make me happy and also make a difference in the world.

It  came as a total surprise as I did not anticipate or even imagine this vision, but it was also deeply inspiring as it showed me how my contribution is part of a network of similar efforts across the globe.

During the Vision Quest retreat the original seed of miPATH was created in my mind.

I returned to my life, not only a changed person, but my reality literally started shifting as if the universe was conspiring to clear the way to help me achieve this dream. This provided me with the energy and personal motivation to continue building on the vision.

At this stage I was fully engaged in studying a masters degree that focused on leadership development which gave me formal academic and practical internship experience to become a professional in leadership development.  I was given the opportunity to head up a large academy on behalf of a leading bank where I learnt first hand how to practically implement experiential leadership programs at a corporate level.  Here I started introducing the concepts and techniques I had learned from diverse fields, including the insights I gained during the vision quest.  At the time I was lucky to meet a great mentor, Prof Ben Anderson, who encouraged my creativity.  He is now the CEO of a business school and I still connect with him around interesting concepts for leadership development.

Eventually my career progressed into another job where I headed up the learning and leadership division of a large industrial development funding bank. Here I worked directly with the executives and senior managers on their development, and realized the big gap there was in traditional leadership programs and what would be required as the world starts changing and our models and frameworks need to adapt.

I went to Peru for another retreat during 2006, where I realized that I had two clear options -

• Either continue working in the same job and become an executive but give up on my personal path; or

• Take a leap of faith and start formalizing my leadership development practices which aligned more closely to “My True North” – my Soul Aspiration

My decision was instant and simple. I chose to follow my heart and trust in my personal vision.

After I left the formal job market and started building my own company, I continued my spiritual journeys to India, the UK and other countries. In particular I worked with the Gates approach from my husband. I also started doing high impact leadership development work in large corporates and continued to refine my theories and approaches which I have now distilled on this site.

Since childhood I remember thinking about the Mind. I had many quesstions but eventually these all consolidated into one paradox:

“If we accept that internal transformation (transforming the mind and consciousness)  is the pre-requisite for any person to bring about sustainable external change -  How can that be achieved using the very same mind  and consciousness that caused the person to be what they are today?”

This fundamental question culminated in my masters degree research article that explains how contemplative practice can be applied in the field of leadership as a core element of practical leadership development and personal transformation.

The article resulted in the formalizing of miPATH programs.

For more comprehensive background about the history and foundations of miPATH, read History and Foundations of miPATH.