Three decades inside the boardroom — two as CEO of public consumer-industrial businesses, one as the advisor founders bring in before the next pivot. I work with operators and investors who'd rather get the hard call right than the easy one fast.
I spent the first two decades of my career as a line operator — running plants, then divisions, then businesses. The second two as a CEO, running a publicly listed industrial consumer company through the financial crisis and an opportunistic acquisition cycle that doubled its enterprise value.
I left the chief executive seat in 2018 because the right thing to do, at the right point in a public company's life, was hand it to someone with twenty more years to give it. Since then I've been an advisor, an independent director, and a sometimes-operating partner to growth-stage businesses figuring out the gap between "this works" and "this scales."
I take fewer engagements now, not more. My calendar holds three board seats, a small advisory portfolio, and time to write — for HBR, for the WSJ op-ed page, and for the management team that asked the right question that week. That's the work.
A condensed track record. The full version is available on request when the conversation calls for it.
I keep the surface area small on purpose. Each engagement is at least twelve months — the only honest unit of time for strategic work.
Independent director on the boards of public-stage and late-private operators. Audit committee chair where useful. One new seat per year, at most.
Embedded with one growth-equity firm. Pre-deal diligence on CEOs and strategy, post-deal counsel to the management teams I helped underwrite.
A small number of standing CEO advisory relationships — one call every two weeks, plus the difficult ones in between. Twelve-month minimum.
"Marcus has been the most important phone call in my CEO life for six years running. Calm when the room isn't, candid even when it costs him, and right about the things that take longest to see."— Jennifer Reyes · CEO, Helix Bio
Most inbound is best directed to email — my assistant routes it. I take roughly one new advisory engagement a year and one new board seat every two; the threshold to add either is intentionally high.