I am obsessed with two things: companies and people. What makes them grow. What gets in their way. What happens when a team truly clicks — and what it costs when it doesn't.

 

That obsession drove 29 years in investment management. For nearly 20 of them I was a technology analyst and portfolio manager — living through some of the most significant paradigm shifts in modern business history. That experience gave me two things I've never lost: a deep respect for how fragile businesses really are, and a genuine excitement for what innovation makes possible.

 

Nearly 12 of those years were at Fidelity Investments, one of the largest investment firms in the world, where we were often the largest shareholder in the companies we owned. Eight more at Polen Capital, where I built what I always thought an investment team should be. True collaborators. Investing as a team sport. In an industry where individual brilliance is rewarded and collaboration is rare, the work was better for it.

 

Across all of it, what I kept seeing was the same thing: the gap between good and great was almost never about intelligence or information. It was about self-awareness. The best investors knew what was driving their decisions. The best leaders knew what their teams needed before they were asked. The best management teams knew how they were being perceived — and closed the gap between intention and reality.

 

I left investment management because I wanted to get closer to the work. Not the portfolio — the people. Pure Path Ventures is the coaching practice I built to do exactly that.