About Paul Zurav

Paul Zurav has spent 30+ years in the places where big decisions get made — and where they fall apart.

He's built AI systems since 1991, run companies as CEO and COO, navigated technology revolutions, and watched brilliant strategies crash because nobody understood how people actually work. He's seen innovation used to solve real problems and twist truth. He knows what works, what's hype, and why the gap between them keeps getting wider.

That experience taught him something crucial: the people with the best information rarely speak the clearest, and the loudest voices rarely know what they're talking about.

So Paul became a translator.

Through CTEK (Change Through Education and Knowledge), he helps organizations navigate AI, leadership challenges, and business transformation without the buzzwords. Through his Substack Taking a Closer Look, he investigates the systems shaping our world — technology, politics, economics, and explains what's actually happening in language people can use.

His superpower? Pattern recognition. Paul sees the connections others miss because he's watched this movie before. When everyone was rushing into the dot-com bubble, he was building sustainable systems. When AI became the hot new thing in 2023, he'd been implementing it for three decades. He knows how technology paradigm shifts play out because he's lived through them.

Paul's also the author of The Biggest Crime in History, an investigative look at environmental destruction and the systems that enable it — and he's currently developing The Greatest Wealth in History, a companion work reframing that destruction as the biggest economic opportunity of our lifetime.

His philosophy is simple: Short-term thinking destroys long-term value. Always. And most of the chaos we're living through right now? It's the bill coming due.

When he's not consulting, writing, or connecting dots people wish he hadn't, you'll find Paul outdoors with his dog Cooper in North Carolina — proving that sometimes the best ideas come from stepping away from the screen.

If you're tired of spin and ready for straight talk, you're in the right place...