Tell me about the types of clients you work with.
I spend most of my time working with entrepreneurial clients who share an impact orientation. Their chosen areas of impact vary from environmental and social policy to improving the lives of their company’s stakeholders. The unifying theme is serving and improving outcomes for others.
Many of my clients are technology and life science entrepreneurs and executives, leading growing companies and families when we first meet. They are inherently driven to create, build and be lifelong learners.
Frequently, my clients are the first in their families to create significant financial wealth, an achievement that’s often built on years, even generations, of work. They carry both a humble recognition of their privilege and a deep sense of responsibility and urgency to make the most of their time and resources.
If you didn’t work for Bernstein, what else would you be doing?
If I weren’t a Bernstein advisor, I’d probably be a family counselor, trying to build an impact-focused business or working to maximize the impact of a family office with aligned values. These are all opportunities I’ve considered but are lazy answers, as they all encompass aspects of what I get to do in my practice today.
Who has been the most influential person in your life?
My mother, hands down, has been the most inspiring person in my life. Beyond the fact that she supported herself from age 16 on, my mom had three boys within three years. She homeschooled all of us while simultaneously helping my father run a growing business for 20 years. Next, she had to reinvent herself multiple times in order to survive.
Amazingly, my mom has done it all while maintaining a positive outlook and focus on others. Naturally, she is the one that gave me the Think and Grow Rich cassettes, decades ago, as a source of inspiration when I was working on a sod farm while attending community college.
Accordingly, it’s largely to my mother’s credit that the values of responsibility, service to others and lifelong learning resonate in my life and practice today.