Justin Milano is an entrepreneur, executive coach, and bridge between modern leadership and ancient wisdom.
After graduating from university, Justin spent over twenty years building companies and navigating the high-stakes world of entrepreneurship. During this time, a serendipitous meeting with his founding partner, a Yale emotion researcher, catalyzed what would become his life’s purpose. Together, they led a global study of more than 1,300 leaders, uncovering patterns that would shape the curriculum and frameworks at the heart of Abroad’s work.
For the past fifteen years, Justin has served as an executive coach to some of the world’s most influential leaders, founders, and organizations. He has worked with CEOs navigating billion-dollar decisions, entrepreneurs in the trenches of startup uncertainty, and executives seeking alignment between outer success and inner fulfillment.
This leadership development journey eventually led him to create Abroad’s Wisdom Quests, immersive journeys to the world’s great wisdom traditions. These experiences bring leaders to the monasteries of Bhutan, the sacred mountains of Peru, the ancient forests of New Zealand, and other lands where ancient knowledge still lives. Participants don’t just learn about wisdom. They experience it, embody it, and integrate it into their leadership and lives.
In collaboration with Māori co-facilitators and New Zealand government partners, Justin helped develop New Zealand’s most promising leaders, achieving over five years of demonstrated scientific impact on leadership development. He now teaches at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, where he brings these frameworks into one of the world’s most prestigious business schools. His work demonstrates that the future of leadership is not just about strategy and execution, but about self-awareness, emotional intelligence, and the courage to lead from wisdom.
Justin lives with a foot in two worlds, equally at home in a boardroom with Fortune 500 executives and in ceremony with Indigenous wisdom keepers. This is not a contradiction.
It’s his calling.