I established the Pardon family office for Nicholas Pardon. I architected the portfolio of holdings, recruited our Head of Finance and our Head of Product, and established an operating system for the family office that parlays our strength in inbox publishing into building  ventures across multiple industries. Aside from managing our portfolio companies, Pardon acquires art for its Collection, hosts exhibitions with an emphasis on contemporary collage, develops real estate, and makes early-stage investments. Pardon has hubs and team members in in Orange County, Denver, and New York City.

Super Age is a lifestyle brand focused on longevity, extending health span, and thriving in the complicated world that we now live in. Super Age’s flagship publication, The Mindset newsletter, reached 1M subscribers in just 7 months, demonstrating a deep resonance with audiences increasingly interested in accessible information about longevity. As a culture-forward brand, Super Age is the final word in longevity as the new luxury.

Upon establishing the Pardon family office, we re-constituted and reconfigured the owned-and-operated inbox-first media companies of the portfolio into a single global brand: Optimism. We changed and added leadership in multiple executive roles, re-ignited the brand launching capability, modernized the revenue strategy, raised the bar for brand quality and data infrastructure, and launched three of the most successful brands in the company’s history, including Nice News. Those efforts have led to Optimism becoming an iconic American media company, reaching 7M Americans each week. This turnaround effort has resulted in substantial increase in free cash flow, as the business grew from a plateau around $XXM/year to ~$YYM/year in revenues and double digit YoY growth, while also growing margins from ~A% to ~DD% in the same time period.

I advised a Greenwich CT based single family office in their talent strategy as they adapted a longstanding capability in mature company turnarounds into an early-stage venture studio model of acquiring stuck companies and pivoting them into success. I advised on hiring multiple Partners and the firm’s first Chief of Staff, strategizing on several portfolio CEO and CXO hires, and architecting a best-in-class talent infrastructure for building pipelines quickly, effectively, and at a fraction of the cost of recruiting firms.

HR&A Advisors is an industry-leading firm in urban and economic development, advising private, public, and philanthropic clients on how to improve quality of life in cities. When I met them, they had a talent function that was sorely in need of upgrades and the development of a strategic roadmap. I built them a roadmap, recruited multiple Directors and dozens of Analysts while diversifying their team, recruited their first Head of People, and designed a fundamentally new organizational model that would allow them to effectively scale their high-performing, cohesive culture. All of this took place over several years, enabling them to grow from $AAM/year to $BBM/year.

BerlinRosen is an industry-leading communications & public affairs firm. When I met them their business growth was being held back by an outdated and underperforming people department. I re-architected their people department, overhauled their processes and approach to searches, and recruited several team leads across the company. As their growth compounded from $XXM/year to $YYM/year, they eventually raised private equity funding, created a parental company called Orchestra, and began acquiring other communications firms. I advise Brightmode Talent, their spin-out communications search firm.

I built Formidable, a boutique talent consultancy and executive search firm. I used a network of org design consultants, recruiters, and other specialists to help companies navigate challenges and opportunities related to talent, recruiting, and organizational performance. Formidable used a mix of retainer and project/search-based models to serve a wide range of companies. In addition to HR&A and BerlinRosen, Formidable's clients included other organizations leading sustainable development in New York City, including The High Line and the Waterfront Alliance.

I cofounded ReWork, a recruiting firm centered around meaningful work, with two friends. ReWork came out of my fellowship at the Unreasonable Institute, a social venture accelerator program which has since become the Unreasonable Group. ReWork helped nonprofits, social enterprises, foundations, and other impact-driven organizations hire the best talent. I was CEO for the first few years of operation. ReWork was acquired by Koya Leadership Partners.

During and after college I started several businesses and enterprising projects of various types, most notably Hired Hands, a simple service of hiring friendly recent college grads (starting with me and my friends). We built the business on Craigslist, made tens of thousands of dollars over the course of a few seasons and – most importantly – had a ton of fun and interesting stories helping the people of Pittsburgh that hired us.

My first experience with business was a “turnaround” of the Vermont university newspaper. I took the business manager job from a friend who was uninspired by it, because it was the only work-study role on campus with uncapped pay (from ad sales commissions). Over the course of two years, I rebuilt a team of sales reps, overhauled the workflows for ad sales, and put the Cynic back on strong business footing. We went from having -$25K in our student government bank account, to be being profitable with a balance of $200K when I graduated.