THE OFFICIAL
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Michael L. Kaufman, MSW, PhD
Founder & Managing Partner, Premier Education Partners
These days, more and more companies are skipping the usual MBA playbook and looking to an unlikely talent pool for their next leaders: helping professionals. Think social workers, health care specialists, therapists, educators—the folks who spend their days juggling crises, making tough calls, and actually listening to people. In other words, the exact skills corporate America keeps saying it desperately needs but can’t teach in a boardroom seminar.
Enter Michael Kaufman, who has turned that “heart-meets-strategy” blend into a career. A social worker by training and an executive by experience, Michael has led organizations, launched companies, and written a book with a message that flips the script: Doing Good & Doing Well: Inspiring Helping Professionals to Become Leaders in Their Organizations. His premise? Helping professionals aren’t just capable of leadership—they’re tailor-made for it.
Mike never set out to be a CEO. He started his career focused solely on helping others and, to his surprise, found himself in the C-suite by his 30s. As president and CEO of Specialized Education Services Inc. (SESI), he grew a network of 75+ schools across the country. Later, he launched TalkPath™ Live, a teletherapy company that has provided tens of thousands of support sessions for students nationwide. Along the way, he noticed something: his own doubts about leadership echoed the fears of so many other helpers. “I don’t want to be a businessperson,” they’d say. But Mike is living proof that leading doesn’t mean selling out. It means scaling up your impact.
Today, through keynotes, workshops, and his award-winning book, Mike is on a mission to convince helping professionals that they already have superpowers—skills as valuable as any MBA. They just need the confidence to apply them. “You don’t have to give up your calling to be a leader,” he insists. “In fact, you’ll help far more people when you’re the one making the decisions.”
That message is resonating far beyond social work and education. Mike has spoken to audiences in finance, business, and academia, sharing insights on servant leadership, organizational change, and crisis management. His book has earned a Readers’ Favorite Silver Award in Non-Fiction and a Book Excellence Award. With candor, wit, and three decades of hard-earned experience, Mike is challenging old assumptions and championing a new era of leadership—one powered by the very people who’ve always been in the business of helping others.
Q&A with Michael Kaufman
So, Michael, be honest—how does a guy start out in accounting and end up in social work? That’s quite the career plot twist.
It’s true, I earned my accounting degree at Rutgers, but my passion wasn’t there. Meanwhile, everything I did outside of class revolved around people—mentoring kids, volunteering, working with folks recovering from head injuries. That’s what lit me up. Eventually, I realized social work was where my heart lived. I switched gears, earned my master’s, and never looked back. I wasn’t chasing a résumé or dreaming of the C-suite. I was simply following what I loved. I wasn’t aware of the Oprah quote when I made the decision, but later I heard her say, “Do what you love and the money will come.” And I thought, “Yep—that’s exactly what happened.”
A lot of helping professionals seem allergic to the idea of being “the boss.” Why do you think that is?
Oh, that’s spot-on. Many think, “If I lead, I’ll lose my calling.” Or worse, “If I succeed financially, I’ve sold out.” That mindset is so common that it was a big reason I wrote my book. I’ve met incredibly talented people who told me, “The board picked an outsider because they didn’t think we could do it.” My response: “Why not you?” One woman even said, “I’m just a BCBA.” I replied, “You’re not just anything. You’re running caseloads, solving complex problems, bettering lives every day.” A few months later, she started her own company. The truth is, when you move into leadership, you’re not abandoning your calling—you’re expanding it. You go from helping twenty families to helping thousands.
You’ve said one of your early lessons was being told you lacked “CEO arrogance.” That’s an unusual critique. What did you take from it?
Yeah, not something you hear every day, right? A board member once told me, “Mike, you don’t have the CEO arrogance.” I took it as a compliment. He meant it as, “You need to project more authority.” And he was right—without confidence, the financial folks don’t buy in. It taught me that I didn’t need to fake arrogance, but I did need CEO confidence. There’s a big difference. Arrogance says, “I’m the smartest guy in the room.” Confidence says, “I’ll listen, make the tough call, and lead us forward.” I’ll never be arrogant—it’s not who I am—but I can be decisive.
So how do you convince helping professionals to swap “boots on the ground” for the corner office without losing their soul?
I tell them leadership isn’t about becoming some power-suit caricature—it’s about service. You can be tough on results and soft on people. That balance—accountability plus empathy—is the sweet spot. People don’t want to follow someone who barks orders. They’ll walk through fire for a leader who has their back. It’s called servant leadership: you’re not there to be served, you’re there to serve. And yes, sometimes that means trading your sneakers for a blazer, but you’re still the same person at the core.
Okay, but writing a book isn’t exactly light work either. What pushed you to sit down and actually do it?
Honestly? Years of lessons piling up in my head. I wanted to capture them before they got lost to time. Doing Good & Doing Well was my way of saying to the next generation, “Hey, you don’t need an MBA to lead—you already have the tools.” My dream is for it to be on syllabi in graduate schools of social work, psychology, nursing—you name it. But really, it’s for anyone in the helping professions who doubts their potential. If I can convince even one person that they can lead without sacrificing their social mission, then it was worth every late night at the keyboard.
You’ve spoken to everyone from social workers to Wall Street. Be honest—which audience is more fun?
My heart will always belong to helping professionals—they’re my people. But I love surprising the finance crowds too. They come in thinking it’s all about balance sheets, then walk away talking about empathy and crisis management. I once completed a Harvard program for rising CEOs. Sure, we studied budgets and negotiation, but we also dove deep into human behavior. Even Harvard knows that the so-called “soft skills” are actually hard skills—the ones that make or break leaders. So whether it’s nurses or number-crunchers, my message resonates: leadership is about people, period.
Michael L. Kaufman MSW, PhD
Founder & Managing Partner
Premier Education Partners
Website: https://michaellkaufman.com
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/michael-kaufman-msw-phd-b9290a1b