"Rich Aste (MBA, PCC, PhD) founded Rich Aste Executive Coaching LLC in early 2023 to help leaders—at all stages of life—and their teams go to work happy. Coaching who he once was, Rich empowers first-time as well as seasoned leaders to honor more happiness, purpose, and fulfillment in work and life. As a Professional Certified Coach (PCC) through the International Coaching Federation (ICF), he draws on both coaching training and first-hand experience as a nationally recognized CEO celebrated for gracious disruption and positive, lasting change. Among Rich’s positively impacted coaching clients are the University of California, Irvine; the University of Michigan; the University of Pennsylvania; the Sidney and Lois Eskenazi Museum of Art at Indiana University; the Utah Museum of Fine Arts; and Yale University. Shortly after completing his PhD in art history at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York (2015) and leadership training through Columbia Business School (2016), Rich was hired as a first-time executive director of the McNay Art Museum to increase the visibility, reach, and impact of the first modern art museum in Texas. Within six years, he helped transform the McNay from a renowned art destination into a global leader of community. In recognition for his positive changes to the McNay and South Texas, Rich was awarded San Antonio’s 2019 Vistage CEO Impact Award. In 2022, at age 52, Rich announced a change of gears to a career in executive coaching to scale his impact on leaders beyond Texas and the art world to all regions and industries. Today, in addition to bringing his emotional and positive intelligence skills to leaders in the arts and higher education, Rich—now also armed with an MBA from the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan (2022) and a PCC certification from the ICF (2023)—supports executives everywhere determined to make the second half of their lives even more fulfilling than the first. Rich was born in Peru and raised in Miami, Florida. As a lifelong learner, he is a proud first-generation college student and (double) graduate of the University of Michigan, the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, Columbia Business School’s Center for Curatorial Leadership, and Harvard Business School's Strategic Perspectives in Nonprofit Management. Rich lives in Los Angeles with his husband, Max Goodman, whom he credits for helping him see that happiness is, indeed, a birthright— everyone’s birthright."