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On quiet Sunday morning at his father’s pharmacy in a small Massachusetts town, a young boy learned lessons that would shape a lifetime. He straightened shelves, greeted neighbors, counted change, and watched how his father treated every person who walked through the door with dignity and care. “It wasn’t just a place to fill prescriptions,” Todd Zive recalls. “It was where people gathered. My dad taught us how to be good to others. He lived it.”

Those lessons did not fade. They were seared into memory after tragedy struck. When Zive was just four years old, his father was murdered during a robbery at that same pharmacy. Overnight, stability disappeared. His mother was left to raise three young boys while navigating grief, financial uncertainty, and a long criminal trial. For Zive, the loss became an early reckoning with life’s unpredictability.

“You never know what’s going to happen or what each day will bring,” he says. “You can’t control what happens to you, but you do get to decide how you move forward.”

That idea, choosing response over circumstance, became the foundation of a life shaped by resilience, service, and ultimately leadership. At age eleven, overwhelmed by grief and anger, Zive stepped outside after a snowstorm. In the quiet that followed, he grabbed a shovel and began clearing his family’s driveway, then a neighbor’s, then another’s. “It felt good to help people,” he says. “And by helping them, I was helping myself heal.”

What began as a moment of solace became a small business, then a worldview. Service was not just altruism. It was a path forward. That instinct deepened in high school through the Key Club, where Zive volunteered at Shriners Children’s Hospital. Expecting sadness, he instead encountered joy and resilience. “Those kids lifted my spirits,” he says. “They changed how I saw adversity.” The experience led him to study biomedical engineering and ultimately build a career improving patient outcomes through medical technology.

Zive’s professional trajectory took him from early-stage startups to senior executive leadership in the medical device industry, managing global teams and complex strategy. Yet as his responsibilities grew, so did his desire to lead with intention. Seeking a deeper understanding of business fundamentals and leadership, he enrolled in the Fully Employed MBA program at the Paul Merage School of Business.

Merage proved transformative. “It was the first time I really understood the power of vulnerability,” Zive says. “I realized the opportunity you have, through sharing your story, to help influence others.” In the classroom, real-world challenges met theory. At work, ideas moved immediately into practice. Just as important, Merage offered a safe environment to lead authentically. “We had excellent professors and experienced leaders who helped guide us through that journey,” he says.

Those experiences now converge in Zive’s book, The Mensch Method: Achieving Success Through Character in Life and Business. The Yiddish word mensch, he explains, captures the ethos perfectly. “It’s all-encompassing,” he says. “Being a good person. Treating others well. Trying to make the world better.” The book is not a memoir, but a leadership framework rooted in lived experience. It argues that lasting success is built not by stepping on others, but by lifting them up.

“At its core, it’s about servant leadership,” Zive says. “Helping people rise, and rising together.”

His story reflects the Merage School’s enduring values: principled leadership, real-world impact, and growth shaped by character. From a small-town pharmacy to executive boardrooms and now the written page, Todd Zive’s journey is a reminder that the most powerful leadership lessons often begin not with ambition, but with humanity.