Steve McIntosh is a first generation American, born to an English mother and Australian father. His parents divorced in 1962 when he was two years old, after which he lived with his mother as an only child, growing up in Los Angeles. In 1979 he dedicated himself to bicycle road racing, and in in 1980 and 1981 participated in America’s “National Tour”, the Coors Classic bicycle race. In 1983 he was a pioneer in the new sport of mountain bicycle racing, riding for Ross Bicycles, the world’s first factory sponsored mountain bike racing team.

In 1984 he graduated from the University of Southern California business school, winning the USC Entrepreneur Program’s “Best Business Plan Award”. In 1987 he graduated among the top of his class from the University of Virginia Law School where he served as articles editor of the Virginia Law Review. After becoming a member of the California Bar in 1987, he worked for California’s biggest law firm, Pillsbury, Madison & Sutro. In 1990 he moved to Boulder, Colorado to become vice president of the start-up environmental products company, Earth Wise, Inc.. In 1991 Earth Wise was acquired by Celestial Seasonings tea company, where McIntosh served as an executive officer and general council. In 1995 he left Celestial Seasonings to found Now & Zen, Inc., where he continues to serve as the company’s CEO.

Now & Zen, Inc., headquartered in Boulder, Colorado, is a growing brand of "natural lifestyle products", featuring the famous Zen Alarm Clock, which wakes users gradually with a series of acoustic chimes. All Now & Zen products have been conceived and designed by McIntosh, with a brand aesthetic that combines the harmonic proportions of sacred geometry with motifs from traditional Japanese culture. The company’s mission is to provide products that remind people that they live in the presence of the sacred, however they may define it. Now & Zen is a profitable enterprise employing over twenty people, and does business both online and through its walk up store on Boulder's Pearl Street Mall.

As a result of his focus on progressive spirituality and cultural evolution, in the late 1990s McIntosh became involved in the integral movement. In 2000 he was invited to join leading integral author Ken Wilber’s Integral Institute, where he served in both the Integral Art branch and the Integral Business branch. He left the Integral Institute on good terms in 2002 in order to establish himself as an independent voice in the integral movement. This led to the 2007 publication of his major work: Integral Consciousness and the Future of Evolution: How the Integral Worldview Is Transforming Politics, Culture and Spirituality (Paragon House 2007).

McIntosh divides his time between his home in Boulder, Colorado, and his desert retreat in Castle Valley, Utah, near Moab. He is married to Tehya McIntosh, and has two sons, Ian and Peter.

In addition to his major work, Integral Consciousness and the Future of Evolution, McIntosh also appears in the DVD interview: The Evolution of Consciousness, and is the author of a variety of scholarly articles on integral philosophy and politics. What Is Enlightenment? Magazine has featured numerous interviews of McIntosh, with a special emphasis on his political views. He has also been interviewed by New Dimensions Radio, the Institute of Noetic Sciences, and other progressive media.

In 2004, his focus on the application of integral philosophy to politics led him to found The Project for Integral World Federation, a non-profit organization dedicated to cultural and political evolution. The organization’s primary activity is the hosting and promotion of the on-line petition: A Declaration of the Value of Global Governance. This declaration, modeled after Thomas Jefferson’s 1776 Declaration of Independence for the United States, seeks to raise consciousness about the benefits of a future system of limited, democratic, federal, integral world government.