For the past 30+ years I’ve been involved, in various capacities - as an investor, board member, adviser, coach, and academic - with leadership, governance, and value creation in public and private companies and nonprofits. The common theme in my involvements has been helping to brainstorm, debate, evolve, change, and agree on value-enhancing, brand-building visions, strategies, and plans. I've focused particularly on times of stress and uncertainty (performance shortfalls, market shifts, shareholder challenges, transitions in leadership), when the governance process tends to short-circuit (but, doesn't have to). I've also - in more "normal" times (to the degree that those exist) - tried to help build better prophylactic governance: structures and processes that help ensure that things don't get to difficult inflection points, but instead intrinsically support leaders and value creation.
I initially spent a dozen-plus years at Harvard University and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, helping to lead the development of modern activist investing, and advocating for more engaged, supportive, value-focused boards. I then founded an investment and advisory business (Integrity Brands, here) and have spent 20+ years as an activist investor, adviser, and board member at a spectrum of brand-driven consumer-facing companies. In addition to the latter activities I'm presently serving as a Research Professor, at the University of Arizona, based in the Center for the Philosophy of Freedom.