Mike Brady

Mike Brady is the former president and CEO of Greyston Bakery, a community-focused Riverdale, New York-based company that’s been in operation since 1982. Brady is also known for his compassion, visionary leadership, management expertise and willingness to continue building on the company’s long heritage of serving its community.

Taking after the former Greyston Bakery CEO and Founder Bernie Glassman, Brady continued the company’s “open hiring” practices, where it aims to get hard-to-employ people via a first-come, first-served waiting list. Choosing to invest in ability rather than in background, his leadership allowed Greyston Bakery to operate on the Buddhist ideal of “non-judgment and embracing uncertainty” established by its founder.

In fact, Brady himself started the same way, volunteering for the company after having heard how it operates. He later joined the board and took over bakery operations before eventually becoming CEO in 2012. Under his tenure, Greyston’s unusual hiring model became a business leadership program, birthing the Center for Open Hiring. The company was also able to continue its Pathmaking Programs and Greyston Community Wellness, both of which address poverty and help provide life skills training and community-based support services.

The results have been amazing, with Greyston Workforce Development graduates earning more than $27.5 million since 2009. Sixty percent of the company’s bakers are also ex-convicts, and its training and transitional employment to released prisoners has a low recidivism rate of 6.3 percent.

Brady holds an M.B.A. from the University Of Pennsylvania Wharton School and also serves as a business advisor to the American Sustainable Business Council and Social Enterprise Alliance. Additionally, he advises, supports and collaborates with the LPO area on humanistic management practices.