The CEO role is not static. Market conditions shift, employee expectations evolve, and ownership structures shape what leaders can and cannot do. Michael Polk Newell Brands, who has spent more than 40 years in executive leadership across a range of companies and contexts, has thought carefully about what all of this means for how chief executives operate today.Hard Lessons From the Public ArenaPolk's years at Kraft, Unilever, and Newell Brands...
Behind Colcom Foundation is one woman's lifelong commitment to the idea that environmental health and human population are inseparably linked. Cordelia S. May, who founded the organization in 1996, spent more than five decades building a philanthropic legacy rooted in that conviction one that continues to shape the foundation's work today.A Personal History with PurposeMrs. May's environmental outlook took root at a remarkably young age. In...
Choosing a wealth manager is one of the most consequential decisions a family makes, yet many families approach it in ways that set them up for disappointment. They focus on credentials displayed on a website, past performance numbers, or how polished a pitch deck looks. Michael Gold, founder and CEO of Gold Family Wealth in Westport, Connecticut, says those criteria miss the point entirely.Gold has spent more than 25 years working with...
Wall Street rarely celebrates emotional intelligence. The industry runs on data, models, and performance metrics that strip away the messier human dimensions of money. Justin Nelson, a Managing Director at J.P. Morgan Private Bank who oversees more than $15 billion in assets across the Connecticut market, has built a 30-year career on the premise that this approach is incomplete."Wealth management is one of the last areas of finance where the...
The most ambitious business builders are not those who optimize for the next quarter or even the next decade — they are those who build with multi-generational intention, creating organizations and enterprises whose value compounds across time horizons that extend well beyond their own direct involvement. Karl Studer has demonstrated this multi-generational orientation across both his corporate leadership and his agricultural enterprise,...
Wealthy families rarely suffer from a shortage of qualified advisors. What they often suffer from is a surplus of advisors who don't communicate. Michael Gold, the Westport, Connecticut-based founder of Gold Family Wealth, has spent more than two decades building a practice designed to close that gap.Gold describes the failure mode he has observed throughout his career: estate attorneys, CPAs, investment advisors, and business consultants each...
Once Basel Holding acquires or invests in a business, the relationship with management moves from diligence to partnership — an ongoing collaboration focused on realizing the potential that justified the investment. Burak Basel has developed a specific approach to this ongoing management that distinguishes the firm from more passive holding structures.The approach centers on a cadence of strategic review and operational support that is neither...
When Michael Polk retired from Newell Brands in 2019, few anticipated he would return to the CEO role just a year later. But the pull of building something tangible proved stronger than the appeal of retirement. In 2020, Polk became CEO of Implus LLC, a private fitness accessories company backed by Berkshire Partners, and in doing so, began what he calls a "back to the future moment" in his professional life.Revisiting the Fundamentals of...
New York has become one of the world's most significant fintech hubs, with a concentration of payments companies, banking technology firms, and financial infrastructure providers that rivals Silicon Valley's consumer technology ecosystem in economic significance if not in cultural visibility. Within this environment, New York-based Thomas Priore has built Priority into a company that is genuinely significant — not just commercially but as a...
For most homeowners, their home is their largest single financial asset. Protecting that asset requires attention to the full range of threats that can affect its value and structural integrity — and pest activity is among the most significant and most commonly underestimated of those threats. Professional pest protection services are, in this light, an investment in the financial health of the home as well as the physical health of its...