Tell us about your journey since graduating from Woodward.

I graduated Woodward in 1999, and I went to Dartmouth College. And then I went straight to the University of Chicago Law School, and graduated in 2006. In my first year, Illinois state senator Barack Obama was teaching constitutional law. So that was really cool. After that, I spent five years working on private equity mergers and acquisitions at a large law firm in Atlanta. I always knew I wanted to go back to business school, so I accepted a full scholarship to Yale, and graduated in 2013 with my MBA. I took a job at a company called EnPro Industries, a small cap manufacturing company. For seven years I worked in mergers and acquisitions, HR, and general management. It’s where I had a chance to get to the next level of developing my leadership and, really, my servant leadership.

For the last two years I have been a leader of corporate development, which is the group inside of a company that oversees mergers and acquisitions. I help assess and ultimately determine how we’re going to integrate those businesses inside of Adobe so that they will thrive.

How did your experience at Woodward prepare you for your work?

An important thing I learned was acceptance and inclusivity. I really enjoyed playing my sport and played it at a decently high level. I really enjoyed academics. I really enjoyed playing Alto and Soprano saxophone in the band. I learned to be open by having the opportunity to experience so many different things and meet so many different types of people. Woodward made me more sensitive.

And then the summer before my senior year, Mr. [Mark] Carrington and his wife led a trip to Europe that changed my life. It was the first time I’d left the country. We went to Italy, France, and London. It was an exceptional experience, and really teed me up for global living throughout my adult life. It helped me be so much more sensitive to what other people are going through. It made me value the United States that much more. I’m proud to be an American and proud to be a Georgian. And I know where we live is not perfect. But nowhere is.

I look at myself as trying to be part of the solution, because everything is a problem-solving exercise. So some of it is about being content without being complacent. As my mom used to say, “If we all took our problems and threw them in a pot, you’d be begging for your problem back once you saw everybody else’s.” Be sensitive because you don’t know what people are going through. Try to help wherever you can, even if that means just showing up with a positive attitude and being loving to other people. That’s some of what I learned at Woodward.

What does David Brooks' definition of illuminators mean to you?

The first thing to come to mind is ego management. When we say the word “ego,” it has a negative connotation. But ego is what has gotten me up in the morning to fight some hard battles. The key is managing our egos because, like anything, your biggest strength also is your biggest weakness. It can get out of control. So that ego management is a big part of being an Illuminator. You have to quiet your ego so you can make space for caring for, and loving, other people.

That said, I am not a naturally empathetic person (like my wife, Rachel). I’m a naturally hard-charging, aggressive, competitive person. But in the last five or six years, I’ve discovered that being empathetic can be a learned skill. I put in the time with therapy and coaching and just getting the right support because I wanted more from my relationships. I wanted people to feel like they’re heard and respected and cared for in my presence. And in the years since I’ve really been focusing on doing this, my relationships are much more fruitful, and the reaction that I get from people tends to be authentic and kind because I’m offering them that kindness.

What led to the creation of WA Connect?

WA Connect was an idea I had with Garnie Nygren ’02 around 2010. We wanted to bring more impact opportunities to the Alumni Board and really make a difference at Woodward. We started off having alumni come to speak at the school because I had done programs like that through my nonprofit, Boys Speak Out. The idea is “you can’t be what you can’t see.” For kids to be able to visualize and understand what it takes to reach their goals is really invaluable. Then we said, “Hey, it would be great to do some internship opportunities.” So we opened it up to that. I even hired some Upper School students to work with a startup that I was working on. Over time, we set that foundation of creating more engagement and tapping the talent that’s in the Woodward network.

What other experiences have you had as a mentor?

As mentioned, I founded–and for 15 years directed–a national nonprofit called Boy Speak Out. It was born out of a program that I started with two classmates while I was at Dartmouth. We did a lot of research and found that boys struggle with emotional problem solving, and that stands in the way of both their academic performance and their ability to grow personally. A boy will come to school and the first remotely negative thing that’s said to him causes him to lash out and get into a fight. Because he’s unable to say, “Man, my parents separated. I think they’re gonna get divorced. This is really upsetting me. I really need some help thinking through how this is making me feel.” Being able to just organize thoughts about feelings is really important for young men. You gotta be able to ask for help, you know?

Once I began working in a large national law firm, I started what were called four-a-day programs. These were professional programs or school-focused programs where I would bring local kids from all over the country into the best law schools, the best business schools, and the Supreme Court of the United States when Damian Williams ’98 was a clerk for Justice Stevens. Damian was on the board of Boys Speak Out, and he welcomed us with a Knowledge Is Power school in Washington D.C. Shaun Weinstock ’99 was my classmate and his older brother Josh Weinstock ’97, was a producer at Warner Brothers Studios, which welcomed some kids from a local Los Angeles school. We were all over the place, and it was great to give kids visibility into the different jobs they’ve heard about, but might not really understand.

That program ended up morphing into more detailed mentoring. We started working with a group of kids in Atlanta from 8th through 12th grade, providing support for them to get into the trades, get into college, or land internships. By 2017, I had to slow down on Boys Speak Out because I needed to spend more time with my own kid, and my career had grown so much. Currently I am the global co-chair of the employee network at Adobe. So I do a ton of coaching for people who are trying to maintain and develop their careers.

Why does our world need illuminators?

Because we need more people to offer one another grace. We need more people to offer understanding. My mom used to say, “Rest in power. Judge judiciously. And forgive liberally.” It means digging down into ourselves and offering patience and love and care to others.

What I have observed from the top leaders that I’ve worked with and that I respect is that they have two main attributes: 1) They stay calm in chaos. When things are chaotic around them, they leave space to be able to think, and they don’t get caught in the chaos. And, 2) They always think about the impact any decision will have on the people around them. And that’s the way I have tried to show up. And I encourage people to offer more patience and more grace so that we can connect more as human beings.