About Kent Gustavson

I choose to work on projects that matter with individuals and companies that genuinely want to make a difference.

I have a PhD in creativity (actually classical music composition), and I work as both “business therapist” and “kingmaker” for ideas, humans, and organizations. I came honestly by this trade of ideation, intellectual property extraction, and thought leadership development: I was born to a developmental pediatrician and a poetry therapist, both of them bicameral-thinking healers of minds, bodies, and spirits.

First it was a book and a speech. Clients who brought a script or an idea to me asked for wordsmithing and design. Sensing a sea change coming in the world of publishing, I founded independent book publisher, Blooming Twig, releasing hundreds of books, winning awards, and standing for “books that matter”.

I relished ten years of chalk dust and ideas, teaching writing, leadership, service learning, language, and music to bright-eyed Millennials as a professor at three New York universities. I wrote an award-winning book of my own, and was the ghostwriter of more than 50 titles. Then, I stood center stage on a red, carpeted dot, giving a TEDx Talk about the importance of risk-taking and the creative life.

The words I featured as the title of that talk, “We Are Alive,” mouthed by my father’s parched and broken lips around the tubes down his throat, changed my life forever. And now those three words have become anthemic on social media, leading to millions of views, hundreds of thousands of followers, and a humbling task ahead:

How will I become an amplifier for amplifiers? How can I do good by doing well, and do well by doing good?

Much to my joy, I have become a town crier, a social media savant, and a serial entrepreneur. I am committed to working with individuals and businesses who have the courage to step out and be unabashedly unique.