Hector Marcel

Hector Marcel was on his way to a housewarming party in his 20s, hoping to get really drunk, when he stumbled into the wrong gathering by mistake. Instead, he was at Three Jewels in New York City, where he bumped into several monks and nuns and asked them to explain Buddhism. No one could do it succinctly. Eventually, he left and found the party he intended to go to. But that night, he had a strange dream in which a girl he’d met at Three Jewels told him he was home. He returned the next day, compelled to start learning about meditation and seeking answers. “Meditation was the first thing that hooked me into trying to understand why our human experience, why our human condition appears a certain way and you never know exactly how to fix it,” he says. That journey led Hector to a career as a change consultant, where he helps executives drive transformational change in organizations through an emphasis on culture, people, and service. He’s come full circle, currently serving as the president of Three Jewels, a nonprofit that provides free meditation and yoga classes to those in need. Born in Argentina and educated in Australia, Hector has more than 20 years of study of Tibetan Buddhism in the Geluk lineage.