Matt Rezac | Mindfulness Coach
Coach, author, consultant, and founder of Wealth | Wellbeing | Wisdom
I’m Matt Rezac and I support individuals and families who seek a mindful, healing-centered, life-force-evoking, and purpose-driven life in the context of wealth.
My clients include individuals, families, and corporations. I am the author of Mindfulness Activities for Adults: 50 Simple Exercises to Relax, Stay Present, and Find Peace. I am proud to be a Certified Mindfulness, Somatic, and Wellness Coach through the Mindfulness Coaching School, where I serve on faculty.
I have three daughters. They are magical. I’m so grateful that we are one another’s forever people.
I love learning. I write songs. I prefer to be on a hiking trail in the mountains or woods, especially near Santa Fe and the north shore of Lake Superior in Minnesota.
How I got here
Inspired by Joseph Campbell, I became interested in the inner life at an early age. I studied world religions, theology, and pastoral studies. I didn’t want to be a minister, but I did want to “follow my bliss.”
I’m also very practical. I became passionate about how the inner life affects the world around us. I studied social change and built a long career in the very odd world of philanthropy.
There, I saw first-hand how the opportunities of wealth are undermined by issues below the surface. Wealth did not translate into personal or social wellbeing. Money, good ideas, good intentions, and talented people weren’t enough. Broken systems aren’t fixed by people who do not have peace within themselves.
This pointed me back to the inner life. My own journey to find peace brought a major personal and professional paradigm shift. I found my way to become a mindfulness coach. I learned to connect the dots between personal growth, intimate relationships, and my purpose in the world.
Career highlights
As a consultant, I have worked extensively with nonprofits, government agencies, and socially conscious companies. My clients have included Meritus Trust, McKnight Foundation, the City of Minneapolis, Medica Foundation, Weitz Family Foundation, Salesforce, Wieden+Kennedy, and Daycos, Inc.
During my time in philanthorpy, I was a Director at Susan Buffett’s Sherwood Foundation (Omaha, NE) and a Senior Program Officer at the Blandin Foundation (Grand Rapids, MN). At the Sherwood Foundation, I launched long-term investments in leadership development, diversity, equity, and inclusion, social enterprise, and locally-controlled philanthropic endowments. The program I directed incentivized millions of dollars in matching funds. At the Blandin Foundation, I learned to leverage “social capital” the way grants leverage financial capital. I facilitated community collaborations focused on education, economic development, and environmental issues.
The following projects were especially meaningful to my career development.
- I led 35 foresters on a series of learning tours, including to Finland and Sweden, as part of an ambitious initiative to support thriving, forest-based communities in northern Minnesota. The project helped catalyze Minnesota’s first Legacy Amendment investment, a forest easement that is the largest conservation project ever undertaken by the State of Minnesota.
- I co-led a city-wide evaluation of the City of Minneapolis’ community engagement through the lens of race and equity. This project began just before the murder of George Floyd and the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic. I am proud of how our team navigated emotionally-charged and uncertain conditions to deliver a comprehensive product that was well-received by the City Council. It was an honor to serve the City during that tumultuous time.
The need for wisdom
Developing wisdom is a lifelong process. I believe our best hope for solving today’s complex global challenges are minds that match the complexity of the challenges we face.
However, less than 1% of adults develop capacities that reflect wisdom. We need more people moving toward this “one percent.” When wisdom is matched with wealth, there is a tremendous opportunity to shift the arc of history.