Cecily Mak
Cecily Mak
Cecily Mak is a venture investor, author, and speaker whose work sits at the intersection of wellbeing, technology, and human flourishing. Before founding Wisdom Ventures, Cecily spent two decades, from 2001 to 2022, as a lawyer and tech executive, holding General Counsel, Chief Revenue Officer, and Chief Operating Officer roles in various Silicon Valley tech and media mid and late stage startups. That path gave her a front-row seat to what actually builds and breaks value in companies, and the human beings doing the work.
Across that career and since, Cecily has spoken on stages around the world in cities including London, Paris, New York, Los Angeles, Miami, Tokyo, and Cannes, on leadership, mindset, company growth, and founder and team care. Recent engagements include Ignite San Francisco, Macmillan Learning, the US Alcohol Policy Alliance, The Hivery, The Battery, the Institute of Child Psychology, The Portal, the Reimagining Science Education Summit, and Human + Tech Week. Her Ignite talk on alcohol and breast cancer was described by Ignite Talks founder Brady Forrest as “raw, smart, and unexpectedly funny in places,” and at The Hivery, founder Grace Kraaijvanger called her “such a magnetic speaker and storyteller.”
In connection with her debut book, Undimmed: The Eight Awarenesses for Freedom from Unwanted Habits (Flatiron Books (Macmillan) / Ebury (Penguin Random House) UK, January 2026), Cecily has spoken widely on the habits that quietly numb us, the practice of reclaiming clarity and intuition, and what it means to build a life and a career fully awake rather than dimmed by distraction, overwork, or avoidance. She weaves her years as an advocate inside startups and maturing companies into rooms where people can connect that guidance and inquiry to their own personal and professional lives. She hosts the Undimmed podcast, speaks regularly to a community of more than 130,000 people, and her work has been featured in GQ, Oprah Daily, The New York Times, SELF, Yahoo, the San Francisco Chronicle, MSN, and Publishers Weekly.
Whether the room is a boardroom, a conference stage, or an intimate private gathering, Cecily brings warmth and the full weight of that experience with her: two decades inside companies, a venture investor’s eye for what makes people and teams thrive, and a personal reckoning that gives every talk its edge.
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Undimmed is a revolutionary guide to help you break free from the habits that dim your life.
When Cecily Mak decided to take a break from drinking, the most common response she got was “Oh, I didn’t know you had a problem.” A problem? She was not an addict, or even committing to sobriety. She had simply realized that alcohol ...
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Clarity Over Comfort: Choosing Presence in a Distracted World
Many high-performing people move through life successful on paper yet slightly numbed in practice, by alcohol, overwork, social media, or other subtle “dimmers.” But what does it mean to reclaim clarity and agency in a culture that rewards constant stimulation and escape? Through personal story, research to back it up, and practical insight, Cecily offers a framework for noticing what dims us, and how to live more present, intentional, and fully awake.
The Clarity Dividend: What Dimming Habits Cost Your Judgment, and What Undimming Buys Back
Every dimmer, alcohol, overwork, distraction, avoidance, taxes decision quality before it costs anything else. As an investor, Cecily has watched hundreds of founders make high stakes calls under pressure, and seen clarity, or its absence, separate the good decisions from the costly ones. Drawing on her own reckoning with the habits that dimmed her judgment, she makes the case that clarity isn’t a wellness nice to have. It’s the variable behind every good decision, in the boardroom and beyond.
Guided by Discomfort: From Numbing to Capacity
What if resilience, creativity, and deeper intuition are unlocked not by dimming our emotions, but by experiencing them? Many of our numbing habits (dimmers) exist not because we are weak, but because we have never been taught how to sit with discomfort and learn from it. Cecily shares practical ways individuals and teams can build emotional capacity in a fast, high-pressure world.
Investing in Undimmed Capital Human Flourishing as an Asset Class
What if the smartest investment thesis of the next decade isn’t a sector or a technology, but a bet on human clarity? As co-founding partner of Wisdom Ventures, Cecily invests at the intersection of technology and human flourishing, and has a sharp eye for founders whose edge comes from undimmed judgment rather than sheer output. She shares what her fund looks for, why she believes flourishing is underpriced, and what dimming habits cost us long before they show up on a balance sheet.
Informed Consent: Rethinking Public Information About Alcohol in Light of New Evidence
How do cultural narratives around alcohol shape our choices? For decades we’ve been told that moderate drinking, especially red wine, might be good for us. New research tells a very different story. Drawing on her experience navigating breast cancer alongside emerging science, Cecily makes the case not for abstinence, but for accurate information and clearer labeling, and explores what it looks like to rethink our relationship with alcohol without stigma, moralizing, or an anti-alcohol stance.
The Founder’s Dimmer: Why the Habits That Build a Company Often Erode the Person Running It
Overwork, isolation, achievement as identity, success as anesthetic: the habits that make founders effective are often the same ones that quietly dim them. Cecily has watched this pattern up close, both as an investor sitting across from founders in the thick of it, and in her own life building companies while quietly numbing out. This talk names the specific dimmers of founder life without moralizing about ambition, and offers a way to keep building without losing ourselves and our humanity in the process.
Presence as a Leadership Skill
What would it mean to show up fully present in the rooms that matter most? In a world of distraction and pressure, presence has become a rare and powerful leadership quality. Cecily explores how subtle habits like workaholism, multitasking, constant stimulation, and perfectionism erode our ability to lead with clarity. Leaders leave with a new understanding of clarity as a strategic advantage, and practical tools to cultivate it.
Undimmed Intuition: Rebuilding the Internal Compass That Numbing Habits Quietly Erode
Investors and leaders are paid, ultimately, for pattern recognition: the gut call that data alone can’t produce. But intuition doesn’t survive numbing. Every dimmer, alcohol, distraction, constant stimulation, blunts the same instrument leaders rely on to make their best decisions. Drawing on her own path back to trusting her own read on things, and her work evaluating founders where instinct matters as much as diligence, Cecily makes the case that undimming isn’t just personal work. It’s how you get your judgment back.
Raising Undimmed Teens: How to Talk About Alcohol, Habits, and Choice Without Shame
How do we prepare our teens for a world full of dimmers without resorting to fear tactics or looking the other way? Parents are navigating a complex reality: teens will encounter alcohol and other “dimmers,” whether we’re ready or not. This talk offers a grounded, non-binary framework for honest conversations—moving beyond fear or permissiveness toward clarity, self-awareness, and real-world decision-making.
Drawing from her own journey growing up “in alcohol” and raising two teenage sons, Cecily introduces a practical way to distinguish between healthy and unhealthy patterns without moralizing, and equips parents with language and tools to help teens build an internal compass around stress, social pressure, and habit formation.
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Drinking red wine increases your risk of getting cancer. Warning labels should say so
Rethinking Your Drinking? Watch For These 5 Signs.
Undimmed: The Eight Awarenesses for Freedom from Unwanted Habits
New Fund for a New Age: Wisdom Ventures Raises $77.7 Million
