About
Michael Kester is the founder and CEO of Lead Belay, where he’s on a mission to reinvent how leaders at every level grow — not through lectures, but through real conversations, challenges, and the power of peer-supported, coach-led cohorts. Lead Belay’s programs bring together aspiring leaders, new managers, and leaders-of-leaders across industries for authentic, transformative development that sticks.
Before Lead Belay, Michael was co-president of The Regis Company, helping global companies like Deloitte, Coca-Cola, and Cisco create top-tier leadership programs using neuroscience-based approaches and experiential learning. Earlier, he was a consultant at McKinsey & Company and a financial analyst with Lehman Brothers’ Merchant Banking group. Michael holds a J.D. from Harvard Law School and a B.A. in philosophy, summa cum laude, from CU Boulder.