Interview with MacKay CEO Forums Founder & CEO, Nancy MacKay

I sat down with Nan­cy MacK­ay, founder and CEO of MacK­ay CEO Forums, Canada’s largest peer learn­ing com­mu­ni­ty for senior leaders.

Nan­cy start­ed the com­pa­ny in 2005 after watch­ing CEOs make too many big deci­sions alone and get stuck try­ing to lead in iso­la­tion. Twen­ty years lat­er, MacK­ay CEO Forums has more than 60 forum chairs run­ning con­fi­den­tial peer groups for over 1,300 CEOs, exec­u­tives, and busi­ness own­ers across the coun­try. One of our own growth advi­sors, Tim Dumas, is a forum chair.

Nan­cy holds a PhD in Busi­ness from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Can­ter­bury, spent time as a uni­ver­si­ty pro­fes­sor, and has writ­ten four books, most recent­ly It’s Lone­ly at the Top. Her firm has been a cer­ti­fied B Corp since 2018, and her mis­sion is refresh­ing­ly sim­ple: pop­u­late the world with inspir­ing leaders.

In this con­ver­sa­tion, we get into the bold moves that took MacK­ay CEO Forums from one woman chair­ing a sin­gle group to a nation­al orga­ni­za­tion, includ­ing the pri­vate equi­ty part­ner­ship that car­ried the busi­ness through COVID and the buy­back that brought Nan­cy back to her entre­pre­neur­ial roots. We also talk about plac­ing bets on tal­ent, the cost of lead­ing alone, and why self mas­tery, not hus­tle, is what actu­al­ly lets CEOs scale.

Here are some poignant moments cap­tured in clips:

Bound­aries for Healthy & Family

Fire Your­self Every Year

Mak­ing a Big Impact

Growth Mind­set

Or watch the full inter­view here:

Addi­tion­al Resources Relat­ed to Nancy’s Story:

• Fire Your­self Every January