Michael Ventura is an accomplished entrepreneur and creative director. In 2009, Michael founded Sub Rosa, a award-winning strategy and design practice that helps leaders and their organizations explore, learn, and grow. Sub Rosa's clients include a variety of Fortune 500 companies (GE, Google, Marriott, Nike), the United Nations, the Obama Administration, and some of the world's most progressive start-ups (SoFi, Warby Parker).

Michael has served as a board member and advisor to a variety of organizations including Behance (An Adobe Company), The Burning Man Project, The Smithsonian’s Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, Friends of +POOL, and the U.N.'s Tribal Link Foundation. A dynamic writer and lecturer, Michael is frequently engaged as an advisor to entrepreneurs and leaders of some of the largest corporations across the globe. He is also a visiting lecturer at Princeton University and The United States Military Academy at West Point where he teaches design thinking and his Applied Empathy curriculum. Outside of this work, Michael and his wife Caroline have co-founded the New York-based retail store Calliope, as well as its adjoining gallery And&And. In his personal time, Michael is an active practitioner of eastern and indigenous medicine, working through his private practice, Corvus Medicine, and leading workshops on how to bring these powerful traditions into a modern life and workplace.

Applied Empathy, his first book, was published by Simon & Schuster in May of 2018.