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Crisis in Ukraine: Panel Discussion CrossLead panel discussion, about the ongoing crisis in Ukraine, sponsored by Red Cell Partners. Dave Silverman facilitates a conversation with former vice chairman of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, Roger Ferguson, and former member of the Central Intelligence Agency, John Sipher. Resources Webinar recordingJohn SipherRoger FergusonWant to discuss some of these topics directly with Dave? Join the CrossLead LinkedIn Group. Episode Transcript DaveFor today’s episode, I have the pleasure of hosting a panel discussion on the developing crisis in Ukraine with two exceptional leaders and patriots. Our sponsor for this episode is Red Cell Partners. Red Cell Partners is a design and incubation studio that brings ideas, capital, resources and talent together to build technology led companies that address the nation’s most pressing challenges in finance, health care in the national security space.My first guest is John Cipher. John is a foreign policy and intelligence expert who previously served 28 years in the Central Intelligence Agencies National Clandestine Service. At the time of his retirement. He was a member of the CIA’s Senior Intelligence Service, the leadership team that guides the CIA’s activities globally. John’s has served in multiple overseas tours as both chief of station and deputy chief of Station across Europe, Asia and several other high threat environments to include Russia.He’s a regular contributor to various news outlets and publications and very active, active as a social influencer. My second guest is Roger Ferguson. Roger is a former vice chairman of the Board of Governors of the US Fed. Reserve. We served from 1999 to 2006. He represented the Fed on several international policy groups and served on key Federal Reserve committees, including payment systems oversight Reserve Bank Operations and supervision regulation as the only governor in DC on nine 11.He led the Fed’s initial response to the terrorist attacks, taking actions that kept the U.S. financial system functioning while reassuring the global financial community that the U.S. economy would not be paralyzed. He is a Steven A. Tananbaum Distinguished Fellow for International Economics at the Council on Foreign Relations and the immediate past president and CEO of TIAA, the leading provider of retirement services and the Academic Research Medical and cultural fields, and also a Fortune 100 financial services organization.He attended Harvard for his undergrad, his law degree, and his Ph.D. in Economics In today’s discussion, we talk about Putin strategies. It relates to Ukraine, the current military, geopolitical and economic situation. How this crisis might evolve and the global implications both economically and politically. And I’d like to start with John, and I hope that you could provide some context on Russia and Ukraine and sort of how we got to where we are now.JohnYeah. Well, it’s interesting. Let me start a little bit to talk about Putin and what makes him tick, because, you know, at the end of the day, a week ago, you know, many people would have assumed he wasn’t going to invade Ukraine. And, you know, essentially nobody could answer, was it?Whether he was or wasn’t, wasn’t going to. And as much intelligence as the U.S. and Western officials have they still didn’t know because it was all in the head of one person. You know, when you’re a dictator and you’ve created a system around yourself where, you know, people have to come to you and you don’t know. You know, I have no idea.I was on his head. So a little bit about him. And then and I’ll talk a little about what he cares about, where we are now. So, you know, one thing that is most important to me about Leader Putin is he’s a career Chekist, but that means he’s a career intelligence officer. He’s a kid. It was a career KGB officer.And that term, Chekist, really relates to the original Bolshevik intelligence service called the Cheka. And any Russian intelligence officer calls themselves a proud Chekist because the check out when the Bolsheviks took over in 1918, the first thing that new government did was create an intelligence service to sort of, you know, kill off any potential domestic opponents as well as to keep their enemies at bay.And they did that right from the beginning, doing a lot of the things that we’ve seen since the 2016 election, for example. They use subversion, deception, they use disinformation assassinations around the world, all these kind of things. And they continue to do that throughout the Cold War. So that’s really important to understand. Vladimir Putin, because he grew up in a, in a system where they were using information warfare, creating false stories and disinformation and killing their opponents from the beginning.The other thing to understand about him is, you know, he was in the KGB when the Soviet Union fell. You know, and I think it’s probably hard for us here to understand how that must have affected somebody psychologically. They thought they were in the world’s second greatest superpower. Liberator was the greatest superpower. He worked for the KGB, which is a sword and shield of that of the regime.You know, the most important. Arguably part of the regime in protecting it. And his whole country fell apart. And he tells a story it even in his own biography about what that meant to him. And he talked about when he was a KGB officer in Dresden, in East Germany, when the wall was starting to fall. And there was protesters coming around his consulate where he was working.You know, he contacted the military attaché in Berlin and said, you know, we need Soviet troops here. And the military attache in Berlin called him back shortly thereafter and said, you know, we’ve been trying to contact Moscow, but Moscow is silent. And Putin talks about this and use it in his own book to suggest that when the country needed to use its monopoly on brutality, when it needed to be tough, it was silent.And his point is, whenever he would have a chance to change that, when he would ever have a chance to make sure that the regime was powerful and it used its brutality, his strength when it needed to, he would do it His view is, you know, the weaker beaten in the end. The most important thing about any government is to maintain a monopoly of power and a monopoly of brutality.And so, you know, another thing to understand about him is, you know, we often talk about how does he negotiate? What is he doing? And I think a lot of us are now seeing that he’s gone into the Ukraine. You know, he’s a sort of a serial liar and someone who sort of is always playing others. And so it was Garry Kasparov the famous chess champion that sort of talked about he says, listen, Putin doesn’t play the situation on the chess board.He plays the opponent. And so he has this sort of gift for sniffing out weakness and trying to then take advantage of that weakness to amplify it or to exploit it. So how do we get here? Like what are the things that he really cares about? So I’ll mention a few that he sort of claims and that led to this crisis.But then there’s sort of one that it’s really important that when you talk about dictator sort of the first thing to realize is this whole thing is completely manufactured. There was no threat to Russia. NATO was not expanding. There hasn’t been talks for years about including Ukraine. There is no threat from Ukraine to Russia. It’s a much smaller and weaker country.All of the things that he brought up, you know, that led to this were things that were for like the 1990s. You know, this is stuff that easily could have been discussed, negotiated, dealt with. But it has to do with that sort of mentality of the man. You know, he’s always had this sort of sense of grievance of emotional anger against the West in the United States.His narrative is that when the powerful Soviet Union fell, it was because the West in the in the United States were trying to destroy Russia. They wanted to humiliate Russia and keep it down. And of course, you know, that’s another manufactured thing. I worked in Moscow in the embassy in the 1990s for the very organization that would try to destroy Russia if that’s what we were doing.And the United States government was trying everything they do to bring Russia into the family of nations to support them economically, help them. And if there’s an argument to be had from that period of time, perhaps that we didn’t do enough, not that we were trying to destroy Russia or weaken it. And so there’s there’s a couple of things that he said consistently that he wants the death of NATO’s.He wants NATO’s to go away. He wants he doesn’t want all of these Western security services on his anywhere near his borders. You know, in fact, when he took office, it was the NATO general secretary, I think Rasmussen, who met him and said, you know, Mr. President Putin, my goal is to increase cooperation with Russia. And Putin reportedly responded with the question of his own.He said, Do you know my mission, Mr. Rasmussen? Is to make sure that your organization no longer exists. And so he’s had that view ever since. He wants the U.S. out of Europe and he wants NATO’s dead. And the other thing he wants is he wants countries on his borders to be weak and vassals of the Kremlin. It’s democratic expansion that threatens him really more than veto expansion.He doesn’t want success for democratic countries nearby, which can be a sort of a sign to his own people. What’s what’s certain possible. In fact, you know, bear with me for a second on a quote George Kennan said years ago, too long ago, he said, quote, The jealous, the jealous and intolerant e

Diversity, equity and inclusion with Vivian Greentree In this episode of the CrossLead podcast, host David Silverman speaks with Vivian Greentree. Vivian is the Senior Vice President of the Head of Global Corporate Citizenship at Fiserv. Resources Vivian Greentreehttps://bluestarfam.org/https://www.fiserv.com/en.htmlWant to discuss some of these topics directly with Dave? Join the CrossLead LinkedIn Group. Episode Transcript DaveWelcome to the CrossLead Podcast. I’m your host, Dave Silverman. At CrossLead we exist to help teams, individuals achieve and sustain optimum performance. In today’s episode, I had the pleasure of speaking with Vivian Greentree. Vivian is a senior vice president at Fiserv, where she’s the head of global corporate citizenship, as well as the Care Foundation.Prior role at Fiserv Vivian had the same role at first data, and prior to that, she was a co-founder and ran research and policy for Blue Star families. Blue Star Families is a phenomenal nonprofit that strengthens military families and connects America to the military.Vivian has a Ph.D. in public administration and urban policy. She’s a passionate Navy veteran where she served for eight years as a supply chain officer, and she is also a proud military spouse and mother and her nearly two decades of leadership experience across public, nonprofit and private sectors.She has been a constant champion of community and employee engagement. Vivian was one of the first leaders that I met who had the passion, skill and mandate to operationalize DNI initiatives at scale inside of a large organization. Her ability to connect these efforts to business value was the inspiration to have her on today’s podcast.In our conversation, we discussed diversity, inclusion, future of work, gender pay gaps, how you measure the effectiveness of such initiatives, and so much more. Thank you for tuning in. I hope you enjoy the conversation with my guest and friend Vivian Greentree. Welcome to the CrossLead podcast. I’m your host, Dave Silverman at CrossLead. We exist to help teams, individuals achieve and sustain optimum performance. So I’m super honored to have Vivian as our guest today. She comes to us with a massive amount of amazing experience.Vivian, welcome to the show. I’d love for you to spend a little bit of time educating the audience here on yourself. You know, give us a little background who you are, where you’re from, what sort of shaped and made and informs the way you think about leadership going forward.VivianSure. And I think I’m a big believer that kind of hard work and luck. Hard work increases your surface area for luck. And because I do feel very lucky to be where I am doing what I do now for a living, but I also know that a lot of that, even if it was hard work, but also it was a lot of luck. It was a lot of other people helping me. And so I think that definitely informs my view of, of leadership.And teamwork, and I feel a level of responsibility commiserate with how much I do think I’ve been given or how much people have helped me to get where I am based on that. And so my position right now is I’m the head of global corporate citizenship at Pfizer, which is one of the world’s largest fintechs. And we’d like to think one of the best in my position with global corporate citizenship really looks at how we align or create a culture around diversity and inclusion, associate and community engagement, philanthropy, sustainability because we know that those areas of diversity and inclusion, associate and community engagement, philanthropy, you know where we invest time treasure talent, whether it’s for business or community, when those areas are coordinated and aligned, that’s really where you create high performing teams where everyone can say I am a valued member of a winning team doing meaningful work in an environment of trust. And that’s a good place to be right now because we need we need trust more than anything to to sustain high performing teams through. The unprecedented times, hopefully back to precedented times.DaveYeah, we do. We absolutely do. So where did you grow up originally?VivianSo as a Georgia fan, Georgia. And went to The University of Georgia. On the Hope Scholarship, which again, I think, you know, just thinking of early things that that informed my my outlook. You know, the Hope Scholarship was created to allow students who couldn’t have afforded it otherwise to attend state preeminent state schools in the in the state of Georgia.DaveSo I don’t think I knew about the Hope scholarship. So is that for every every resident of Florida, that that’s qualifies academically for the school, they are eligible too.VivianEligible, right? So the state of Georgia pays the tuition for qualifying students to any state university, which really, you know, when you think of meritocracy, expanded the opportunity for people like me to go to Tier one research institutions like the University of Georgia, which I think is right and which I think it just continues on because I knew that I was going to school based on taxpayer money. The same, you know, being in the Navy you know, being paid by taxpayers, you want to really earn that. And then when you have a good experience somewhere or you know to whom much is given, much is expected, you want to turn around and do that for others.DaveWhat did you major in at Georgia?VivianOh gosh, that was so long ago political science and journalism.DaveOK, and then and then you joined the Navy after after college that we did or.VivianI did, ironically, to get out of the state of Georgia.DaveI’m Georgia to my core, but I want a little break.VivianI I really it was like Dorothy after the Navy took us around for 20 years. There is no place I wanted to be more. But then then the back in Georgia.DaveSo you joined the Navy. What year to join the Navy?VivianSo right after I graduated 2000, 2001.DaveTo right before 9:11?VivianYes, I’m a pre pre-nine eleven.DaveWow, OK. And what did you do in the Navy Supply Corps?VivianAnd so I saw the supply for school, funnily enough, was actually in Athens at the time, though I didn’t know it. That’s not why I chose this course, but my husband was aviation and Pensacola. And now both of those schools are up in Rhode Island. I think so. I served on active dDuty in and in the reserves and the supply corps. Mike, my husband, was aviation. He did his his 20 years. So I was lucky when I transitioned out that, you know, I had things like my health care was, had continuity. I had a my spouse was still earning a paycheck. I use my G.I. bill to go back to school for public administration and really focused on that. That public service aspect, why? Why people want to go into public service in the first place, how we can increase the antecedents towards that and then support them when they do.DaveAnd you got a Ph.D., is that right?VivianI did, like many transitioning service members, use my G.I. bill but also at like military spouses. When you’re moving around, you have small kids, your your spouse is constantly deployed. It’s hard to find. It’s hard to go to. Employers and really sell that. So I put my eggs in the basket of if I can show that I have. This forward trajectory that I have been doing continuous learning. And then started. I did help to found blue star families during that time. But really it was around, you know, several military spouses getting together with these backgrounds in policy or research to say, if we can present a cohesive view of the impact of service on military families to political leaders, military leaders, we can make the all-volunteer force sustainable because we’re supporting the families who choose to serve.DaveYou got out of the Navy in what year in 2013 or something in 2014.VivianSo I I got off active duty around two, I think 2005 and then did the reserves well, because at the same time, Mike, my husband, was taking different orders and so we moved around.DaveOK, sorry. So you got out in 2005. When did you start your Ph.D. program? 2007 2007. OK, and you were doing that while moving around?VivianWell, by then we had. We had moved back to Norfolk. So Old Dominion University is where I received my Ph.D. They actually at the time were sixth in the nation for students utilizing their G.I. bill, which isn’t surprising. I think given that Norfolk’s the largest naval base in the world is right right there, but they had a part time program which I think, you know, just force for service members that are using their GI Bill or military spouses using the transferability of the GI Bill. Universities that do have that flexibility in, they’re recognizing that more and more students are nontraditional are the ones that are going to attract that you know, that talent?DaveAwesome. And then how long it takes to get your see, I know for a lot of people, it takes a long time.VivianIt seems like that, right? It’s an endless. But I think it took me about five years for the coursework and for my dissertation. So when I was pursuing my Ph.D., it was the same time. Around 2007 2008 when military families were really being impacted by the post-9-11.DaveYeah, by then it’s real, right? I mean, it’s go through multiple cycles, right?VivianAnd so it was. Really it was impacting military families, the likes of which had never been seen before. At the same time, there was little research, little data to actually back up. If you went to your congressmen or you went to your military leadership to talk about the workouts, the deployment cycles, the time between deployments, the impact on military kids, things like that. So I was able to structure my research within my Ph.D. program to align with the founding BlueStar

Customer Obsession with Charlie Herrin In this episode of the CrossLead podcast, host David Silverman speaks with Charlie Herrin, President of the Technology, Product, Xperience organization within Comcast Cable. They focus on the leader’s role in creating a compelling vision and building a narrative in support of it. Charlie talks about his obsession with the customer and how technology can meaningfully improve a customer’s life. He also discusses his personal routines and leadership development philosophy as well as his approach to leading change at scale and how you measure progress.“For me, innovation is not feature matching. Innovation is making someone’s life better.” – Charlie Herrin [14:26]“People need to have purpose in what they’re doing and it’s not just a job. It’s not just working on technology. It’s not just writing code or creating a design. You’re doing it for an end goal.” – Charlie Herrin [18:59]“The role of the leader is to lead and to model the behavior they want to see.” – Charlie Herrin [22:47] Resources A Walk Across America by Peter JenkinsCenter For Creative LeadershipTeam of Teams: New Rules of Engagement for a Complex World by General Stanley McChrystal, Tantum Collins, David Silverman and Chris FussellThe Outsiders : Eight Unconventional CEOs and Their Radically Rational Blueprint for Success by William Thorndike Want to discuss some of these topics directly with Dave? Join the CrossLead LinkedIn Group. Episode Transcript DaveWelcome to the CrossLead podcast. I’m your host, Dave Silverman at CrossLead. We exist to help teams, individuals achieve and sustain optimum performance. In today’s episode, I had the pleasure of speaking with Charlie Herrin. Charlie serves as the president of the Technology Product Experience Organization within Comcast Cable.When I first met Charlie in 2015, he had just transitioned to the role of leading the customer experience division. He knew the team tasked with the largest NPS implementation in North America at the time. In today’s episode, we focus on the leader’s role in creating a compelling vision and building a narrative in support of it. We talk about his obsession with a customer and how technology can meaningfully improve a customer’s life. Charlie discusses his personal routines and leadership development philosophy. We talk about his approach to leading change at scale and how you measure progress. A proud father, husband, outdoorsman, an amateur photographer. Charlie’s humility and empathetic leadership style makes him a truly world class leader. Thank you for tuning in. Hope you enjoy the conversation that I have with my friend and mentor Charlie Herrin.Good morning, good afternoon, welcome to the CrossLead podcast. Today, we’re joined with Charlie Herrin, who serves as the president of technology product experience for Comcast Cable. Today we’re going to talk about leadership and we’re going to go back and talk about the leadership development from Charlie’s perspective over his career. So, Charlie, thanks for joining us today. I really appreciate you being here now.CharlieThank you. David, it’s good to be here and appreciate it.DaveSo let’s, let’s go through your life journey and example of leadership, but take me back to where you grew up in, and some of those are formative early experiences in your life.CharlieI grew up in a town called Ponca City, Oklahoma. My dad was a chemist and Conoco had their big R&D facility there. So it was a good town to grow up in a lot of opportunities for kids. Oklahoma was, you know, like most kids, I was sort of bored of where I grew up. I was really, really focused on backpacking and camping.I had read a book called Walk Across America by Peter Jenkins, and it really, I just woke me up to the idea of outdoors because my dad is not an outdoorsman.DaveHow old were you when you read that book?CharlieI was 13 and 13. It’s actually I read the National Geographic articles. That he wrote first and then. And then read the book. But you know, that got me into scouting, which I joined largely because they were going backpacking. In New Mexico, and I wanted to do that. And my other passion was soccer. I play a lot of soccer. I was I’m old enough to remember it was actually the first time they had. Started in my city. So I was like on the first team.But I spent a lot of time doing that. And so I was always outside. And when I went to college, which was at the University of Washington, it was largely to go to the Pacific Northwest again. I had this kind of bug for being in the outdoors, and I just wanted to to be someplace where I could experience a lot of adventure that way. Toyed with soccer at the University of Washington, but they’re far better than I am. So I did not go down that path.DaveSo when you got to when you got to Washington University. Talk about, you know, what was your major? I know you were an economics major, but talk about how that sort of shaped you from a from a leadership perspective.CharlieYeah, I went in to college thinking I’d be a history major and kind of pre-law kind of thing and was a pretty good writer. And that’s sort of what I was drawn to. But I ended up taking some economics classes and microeconomics classes. And I was just fascinated by the idea of. Evaluating how consumers make decisions, which is essentially what the, you know, that’s essentially what microeconomics is. Again, I just loved it. And so I kind of really leaned in. But I think from an early point in my life, I was fascinated with the idea of what consumers wanted and how they evaluated their options. And and I think that has served me well. I actually think as I got into the product game. And and consumer experience game and things like that. Is give me a lens that I think a lot of people just don’t use or maybe think about as a first lens. And that’s always my first lens is, you know, how would this benefit me as. A consumer and how would this benefit my family as a consumer? How would this benefit, you know, consumers in my community? And so it was a really formative for me.DaveYeah, it’s amazing that your college major actually was relevant to your job. So I was an oceanography major in college and other than the fact that I like to surf and I was a navy seal. There wasn’t a lot of overlap there.So the fact that you actually took core lessons from that and were able to apply it to to your to your world is pretty remarkable. You come out of university. And what was your first job out of college?CharlieWell, my first job, actually, I thought I was still going to do pre-law. I had taken the LSAT and done extremely well and kind of was off to going to go to law school. Just on a whim I interviewed at Andersen within was Andersen Consulting, its Accenture now. I remember that I took the interview because I was really tired of eating 19 cent boxes of macaroni. I was really, really living on the edge in terms of finances, and I thought, Well, you know, my assets are good for five years and I’ll just go to this interview. But I didn’t really care because I’ve been accepted to law school. And so I just. Sort of answered. However, I wanted to answer.It was a little bit like that Seinfeld episode where George Costanza sort of says the opposite of everything he thinks he should say. And it works for him, and it worked for me. They call me back and said, You hired the guy we hired. And so I went into Accenture Anderson at the time as a developer because that’s how they started everyone.You know, it’s interesting to me, but I found out pretty. Quickly I was in a great developer, but when I was really good. At was requirements and interfacing with with the clients. And again, I think that sensitivity to what they really wanted and needed and being able to add value there. That’s really what drove me. And so I was there for the typical two years and then hired on at McCaw Cellular. Which was the client I was working at. It was exciting. It was an exciting time.DaveAnd when was this, roughly?CharlieWell, this would have been about 94, I heard. OK. Yeah, yeah. What I loved about it was, I don’t know if you guys remember, but you know, in the early, early days of mobile. It was seen as a huge luxury and car phones and the big Motorola brick phones and the average consumer was sort of on to it yet.But I remember in employee orientation there, they showed a video where they told the story about what people really want. And how important communication is and how how important mobility is. Sort of the nomad. They kind of pinned it into, you. Know, we love travel, we love kind of moving around. It got me to really think about an inspiring vision about what you’re doing and how you’re sort of aligning to Age-Old truths about what people have always wanted. It opened up for me the idea of narratives. I mean, I could keep going. I mean, AT&T ended up buying us that I again was able to start to craft why that was good for them, how that can bring mobility really to the mainstream and got to work on some really interesting projects to to do that.It also showed me some things I didn’t. Want to ever do, which is like gigantic meetings. I remember going with b four of us and like 50 others. At the end of the introduction, the introductions alone would take half an hour. But but that got me to really start to understand teamwork and bringing together lots of different disciplines.And I was there for a few years and then I then I came to Comcast.DaveThen you came to Comcast. Mm-Hmm. Yeah. Why did you come to Comcast? What brought you there?CharlieWell, I mean, like, like a lot of people that have been fortunate in their career, I had some great mento

Role of the leader with Peter Chung In this episode of the CrossLead podcast, host David Silverman speaks with Peter Chung, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of Summit Partners. They focus on what defines cultures of excellence in teams and portfolio companies he looks to invest in, the leadership traits that differentiate the best from the rest, what he looks for in leaders  — from their motivations, how they respond to adversity, willingness to build teams, and tell great stories. Finally, they discuss the evolution of private equity investing and the latest trends in business — such as investment fundamentals in the “meme stock” environment.“You can’t confuse a bull market for brains” – Peter Chung Resources Want to discuss some of these topics directly with Dave? Join the CrossLead LinkedIn Group. The Indifferent Stars Above by Daniel James Brown Episode Transcript DaveWelcome to the CrossLead podcast. I’m your host, Dave Silverman at CrossLead, we exist to help teams, individuals achieve and sustain optimum performance. In today’s episode, I have the pleasure of speaking with Peter Chung. Peter is the managing director and chief executive officer of Summit Partners.When I first met Peter seven years ago, he was already an incredibly successful private equity investor, but was about to become the firm’s first CEO over 30 plus year career. He has been in the Forbes Midas less multiple times, having invested in more than 30 companies, including 18 current or formerly publicly traded companies.Today we talk about what defines a culture of excellence and teams, leadership traits that differentiate the best from the rest, and what he looks for in leaders that he invests in. We talk about the evolution of private equity investing in the latest trends in business.Thank you for tuning in. Hope you enjoyed the conversation with my friend and mentor Peter Chung. But Peter, thanks for joining us today, I really appreciate it. I’d love to just to get a chance to get to know you better today. Maybe start take us back to where you’re from and talk a little bit about your upbringing, if you would.PeterYeah, sure. Well, it’s a pleasure to be here and really, really looking forward to this conversation. But I’m the child of immigrants. I guess that’s sort of the first the genesis story of my life. My parents are came here from Korea and in the mid-sixties, like a lot of immigrants at that time, my father came here.He had just left the Air Force in Korea and he came over to pursue a graduate degree. He was going to go to Carnegie Mellon, but he got off the plane in Chicago and was waiting for my mom to come over.And so instead of just how he had to what, he had to pay his bills. So he took a job as a draftsman at an engineering firm and in the loop in Chicago and just never left.DaveSo did he have like a background in an art, in drafting?PeterOr he was. He studied engineering in college. He had a he was a pilot and then an engineer in the air in the Korean Air Force. And he he he loved America because at the time, you probably familiar with the state, but they had officer exchange programs. And so, you know, he knows every Air Force base in America because he has been to most of them anyway. So he came he came to the U.S. to study to get his PHD in engineering instead of going to Carnegie Mellon. He decided to study at the University of Illinois and and I was born and raised in Chicago.In the Chicago area, grew up in a town called Hinsdale, which is which was a wonderful place to grow up in the seventies and eighties. Because of my father’s history, and my grandfather was also a pilot. I was fascinated with aviation.You know, again, I was a little kid. I’d had a dream of going to the Air Force Academy and becoming a fighter pilot.DaveOh, wow.PeterAnd that was that. It was like layers in life, you know, not necessarily stages, but that was like this foundational layer. And I still have a lot of that in my makeup. You know, I still love aviation. I have deep reverence for the military, not uncommon among children of parents who were, you know, my parents were refugees during the Korean War. So it was sort of a reverence for MacArthur and the Marine Corps. And you know what, the 50,000 young American boys who who were killed or wounded in Korea?DaveYeah, I don’t think I appreciated that until I spent time over in Asia as a young officer in the Navy, and you and you go over there, you would just see the appreciation that people had for, you know, what the U.S. had done all the way from Australia up to, you know, Japan. I mean, it was it was pretty remarkable. And like you, my my father was a pilot, so I know what it’s like to want to be a pilot growing up. And so I found out my eyesight wasn’t that great and then there was like, All right, well, I guess you figured out the alternative.PeterWell, he’s almost exactly the same thing happened to me. I think is, you know this, Dave. But you know, I guess if you’re thinking about the next layer of life like you, it was it was as a student athlete that began probably in middle school, you know, growing up in a town like Hinsdale, where sports are really important, get pulled into sports at an early age and did the Midwestern sports. I played football. I was a wrestler. I played baseball. Over time, I probably midway through high school, dropped baseball and stuck with football and wrestling. But, you know, I just had the opportunity to compete with guys who remained to this day, some of my best friends. You know, I still I really wanted to be a college athlete, but I was still had this dream of going to the Air Force Academy and flying an F16 and that that ended suddenly. I think in like January of my senior year when I didn’t get a vision waiver. I got an appointment getting recruited to play football, but didn’t didn’t get the vision waiver. So wow, that kind of ended suddenly. But you know, when one door closes, another opens oftentimes that. Tough to tell that to a 16 or 17 year old boy who’s been dreaming of this for, you know, on the doorstep of his childhood dream, but the door that opened don’t mean this kind of a funny way to say this as sort of a fallback consolation prize was Harvard. Yes.Very fortunate to have the chance to go to Harvard and play football, and that was a terrific experience. You know, it was a humbling experience and it was a transitional one because I wasn’t as as I wasn’t as good as I thought. I was put it that way when it’s when I went there and.DaveWhat position were you playing in?PeterFootball was running back.DaveBut, you know, back.PeterThen you played both ways as a running back and a defensive back in high school and. But I like I loved carrying football and went off to Harvard and was was probably in over my head in terms of talent.Even back then in the eighties, but that kind of it, it was a period of tremendous personal growth and I’m in so many different ways. There’s sort of this story of a boy becoming a man and that that’s that doesn’t come easily or smoothly.And the same was true for me during my college days. But that that I guess the student athlete, the at least the active participant, the competitive athlete part of it started to change and kind of came to an end.After my senior year, I actually went on a athletes in action wrestling tour of Central America. For some reason, they just they I don’t know why, but they took me on this team because I was a decent high school wrestler.But these guys were really good wrestlers. So we were.DaveYou wrestling at Harvard as well?PeterNow, now you know, it’s wrestling. It’s kind of like water polo. It’s a pretty miserable sport.DaveOh, it’s for a slight weight.PeterYeah, a lot of life lessons, a lot of life lessons. But you know, I fractured my collarbone before my senior season, so I didn’t miss my whole senior season and sort of felt unfulfilled. So I did this. Athletes in action tour as a way to close the book on that sort, a competitive part of my student athletelayer of my life. Now that continues out, you know, it kind of manifested itself in different ways. Can’t play football or wrestle when you get in your thirties and forties. So, you know, I took up mountaineering and rock and ice climbing and surfing and a big fly fisherman.Do you know I like to hunt with you and and all your buddies? And then I saw pass it on to coaching my three boys in a variety of sports.DaveYeah, you’re very active, right? As a coach in the in your local community?PeterI was. Yeah.DaveYeah, yeah. Awesome. Yeah. You know, I find it going from a student athlete. That’s sort of all, you know, you know, all the way through college in your whole life sort of revolves around that. When you when you finally made that, maybe talk a bit more about that transition. You know, when you start to realize, right, what’s the next phase of my life going to look like, you know, I’ve got a friend who actually coaches former Olympians and she’s, you know, these people, these people deal with depression. Their entire life was focused on ten, 15, 20 seconds worth of glory. And then they come home and they’re like, All right. Well, now what?PeterYeah, you know, it’s your identity is wrapped around whatever it is, you’re doing, right? So if you’re a good athlete, you’re you see yourself as an athlete. And I think I was probably a little bit more well-rounded. I was obviously a fairly good student and had other interests and hobbies. But I would say by and large, my identity was as a student athlete. And when that comes to an end, it’s you have to almost redefine yourself and that that can be a challenge at any stage in life. Bu

Embracing peak suffering with William England In this episode of the CrossLead podcast, host David Silverman speaks with William England, Partner and Chief Investment Officer of Walleye Capital Partners, and world-champion rower who raced for Princeton, Oxford, and the US national team.They focus on lessons Will learned in crew teams and how those lessons translate to managing a high-growth investment firm. William talks about Walleye Capital’s operating model, structure, and culture and how they have managed through the last 18 months. He also discusses personal leadership philosophies, his weaknesses, and thoughts on personal development as a senior executive.“Greatest enlightenment comes after peak suffering.” Resources Want to discuss some of these topics directly with Dave? Join the CrossLead LinkedIn Group. Episode Transcript Welcome to the CrossLead podcast. I’m your host, Dave Silverman at CrossLead, we exist to help teams, individuals achieve and sustain optimal performance. In today’s episode, I had the pleasure of speaking with Will England, who was a partner and the chief investment officer of Walleye Capital as chief investment officer, Will England oversees internal and external strategy allocations and is responsible for risk management. He earned a Bachelor of Science and Operations Research and Financial Engineering from Princeton and a master’s degree in mathematics and computational finance from Oxford. Throughout his time at Princeton, Oxford Will England was an accomplished rower appearing in multiple world championships for the United States national team and winning the Oxford, Cambridge poses  Today we talk about lessons we’ll learn as a world and collegiate champion rower and how he’s applied those lessons to life in business. We talk about why capitals operating model and why decentralization is critical for their success. We talk about the impact of meme stocks encoded on their investment fundamentals and how they’ve adapted in the face of change. Thank you for tuning in. I hope you enjoy the conversation about. All right, well, thanks so much for making time today. I’d love to introduce you to the audience and maybe just have you talk about your background a little bit if you’d be comfortable  Sure  Like starting from the beginning  Yeah, yeah, take take us back, you know, through your life, sort of where you’re from and how you got to the position you’re at today  So I like to say I grew up in a town that time forgot a little town called. Marblehead, Massachusetts, north of Boston, and it was the 10th largest town in the first census in 1790, and I don’t think it’s changed very much since then  It’s kind of one of those places where if you don’t wear boat shoes, you’re kind of shunned. So, like, not in the normal world at all. But yeah  That’s where I started. And I sort of break my life down into four stages and not all of which are necessarily obviously connected, but there is a sort of a logic to it and a flow in hindsight  So as I said, I grew up in this little town where. It’s very sheltered upbringing. I wasn’t like flying around on jets, but you know, I had pretty much an idealistic way to grow up, frankly  And sort of the first part of my life, which I’d say up until the end of eighth grade, I  I wouldn’t describe myself as employed as it was now. Frankly, I I didn’t work very hard  I was fairly lazy, a little bit fat. I had a lot of raw talent  Unrealistically, realistically  Both in regards to academics and athletics, but just really didn’t ever have to work that hard because of, you know, that sort of situation  And that sort of seemed fine. And something happened in eighth grade. It wasn’t like  This one died. It wasn’t any terrible like that, but for me, very formative time in my life. So in that, in my world, in that frankly part of the part of the country and how I grew up, everyone, you know, it goes to turn not everyone, but a lot of people will go to boarding school and that’s sort of what my whole family died. My sister, you know, it’s very much like playing college is a very difficult school to get into and you just sort of apply. And it just sort of what I what I assume would happen  And what happened in eighth grade is because  I never really worked hard and frankly, wasn’t that special  I actually didn’t like the first time  When I didn’t achieve a goal that I had, and it was really embarrassing and it sucked. And in hindsight, it’s like, Okay, it’s not the end of the world, but for me, being in eighth grade, it was just sort of terrible  And so something in me kind of really snapped, and I never wanted to feel that way again. And that was really  When I said, OK, I’m never going to not be absolutely dedicated to what I’m trying to achieve, as you know, a 14 year old kid. And so the rest that year and next year, I got basically an AA or an A-plus in every single class I took  I started to work out and learn about fitness and sort of develop some of the core traits that still define me today and everything sort of  Worked out. And the next year I applied and come to exactly where we wanted to go and  See NF going there as as a sophomore instead of as a freshman .Yeah, yeah, exactly. And again, there’s sort of everything else that I went to Andover  Which is a, you know, very, very old elite status school  Yeah  But really interesting too, because it is very difficult  To get into and or there are exceptions to this. Generally speaking, it is really just around very smart people and pushed very, very, very hard and then actually end over from an academic sense is much more challenging there  I went to college or grad school  But yeah, I went there as a sophomore and sort of went a little bit of  My shoulder because I hadn’t gone in the previous year. And it’s not typical for somebody on as a sophomore. And I was just  Like, You know, that next phase of my life, I’d say  Was, you know, when I went from south in your nice gold’s all the way through the grad school or sort of transition from I was in my growing up had been this sort of lazy, not cool. Like I said, Well, the fat kid, you know, like this was very successful growing  I did super well in school. It’s kind of this combination of like a, you know, a jock and a super nerd and was just really successful in all sorts of various different things, probably  To my  Detriment at certain points, because I was probably a bit of a dick after  Some things. But that’s sort of the very formative time in my life  I did start rowing in high school  What drew you to rowing? What brought you to rowing? Just like to suffer?Yeah, no. So actually, I resisted doing it for a while  Because my sister wrote, as well as just a couple years older, me or very competitive with each other, among other things, and I was like, I don’t I’m not doing the stupid fucking sport. You just said  That’s just really dumb. I finally was like, Well, you might actually be really good at it, so why don’t  You just sit down?So I actually didn’t start  Until my junior year  In high school, which is, you know, relatively late  For any sport because I was six years old by then. Yeah. And there’s  This thing called the ERG  Which is like this stationary torture device where you sit. Down and you just pull on something until you pass out. I mean  That’s basically if you’re super  Good at that with a little bit of coaching over the years, you’re just going to be really good at rowing. And then as you get higher and higher like genetics matter and all sorts of things like that  But rowing is this amazing sport because probably more so than any other sport that I can think of, how well you do is directly correlated to what  You put into it. You know, maybe weightlifting is like that to some extent  Yeah, but but very much correlated. So I just fell in love with it immediately, and I went from never having tried the sport  To three or four months later, had the best scores on the team and made the top boat and and really just kind of got obsessed. So I don’t know, I had a natural affinity for for rowing. I still wasn’t that good because it does take a little bit of time to to be very, you know, competitive on that level  But when I got  To college, especially my freshman year of the summer before my freshman year, I spent some time and really thinking about how to how to train on my own, which is a huge part of being successful as sort of a sport is that, you know, a lot of people could sit down over coaches yelling at you and saying, you know, just pulling the fucking handles hard as you can do that, but actually being able to do it by yourself and be intelligent about how to design your own training program. That’s, you know, at some point really separates people  Oh, interesting. Yeah, it’s very thoughtful  Yeah. So I I spent some time doing that  Before I went to college. And then, you know, my freshman year, I got a lot better, you know, and that wasn’t just one better than the guys. Most of the guys around me on my team, but it sort of, you know, very competitive on a national level  You had gotten a lot better  Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So, you know, again, just very good for learning about work ethic. And I mean, there’s all I  Could talk for a long time about rowing. I talked to the people at work now, but all my stories and rowing  But it’s certainly not the only thing that provides sailing lessons for  Life, but, you know, very sort of obvious and transferable images from from rowing that apply to a lot of what we do. So  So anyway, so I it does go back to  What I saying before as far as figuring out just the benefits, frankly, of of. I would say extreme discipline, but being as disci

CrossLead TeaserHow do elite teams achieve and sustain optimal performance?The CrossLead Podcast is here to help teams and individuals achieve and sustain optimal performance — with lessons from Special Operations, Business, Professional Sports and Academia. Our goal with this podcast is to engage with our community of partners and thought leaders to discuss the themes we come across most frequently to the public domain that our broader community can benefit from. In our conversations we will explore the fundamentals of elite teams — Common Purpose, Shared Consciousness, Trust, and Empowered Execution.  We want to hear from you. Send your thoughts and feedback to contact@crosslead.comLooking for some help with your own business transformation? Visit www.crosslead.com ResourcesWant to discuss some of these topics directly with Dave? Join the CrossLead LinkedIn Group.Team of Teams: New Rules of Engagement for a Complex World by General Stanley McChrystal, Tantum Collins, David Silverman and Chris Fussell Episode Transcript Here’s a question how do you define high performance in today’s rapidly changing environment? Now more than ever. Uncertainty rules a day and constant adaptation is mission critical to success. But change is hard, and there’s temptation for all of us to blame failure on factors outside our control.I don’t have the information I need to do my job. We weren’t treated fairly. I have too many priorities and not enough time. We’re understaffed. It was an impossible task to begin with. But feeling comfortable or dodging criticism should not be our measure of success.There’s likely a place in paradise for people who tried hard, but what really matters is succeeding. If that requires you to change, that’s your mission. My name is David Silverman. I’m a former Navy SEAL coauthor of Team of Teams and founder of CrossLead.At CrossLead we partner with teams and individuals to help them achieve and sustain optimum performance from small start ups to high growth unicorns, from elite hedge funds to global five thousand companies crossly offers a leading framework for scaling agile practices across the enterprise.From my experience, there’s no quick fix or silver bullet to achieving sustaining performance. The fundamentals are easy to understand the hard to do continuously, like staying in shape. It requires a level of commitment and discipline that most unwilling to make.People need to have purpose in what they’re doing. It’s not just a job. It’s not just working on technology. It’s just writing code or creating a design. You’re doing it for an end goal. Having an inspirational end goal is a important so that everyone’s excited about what they’re doing and B. having a common mission.And a common understanding allows you to make better decisions down in the trenches and within the teams.To the extent I have a superpower, it’s that I’m extremely disciplined. I eat the same thing every day. I’m very structured in what I do to be super successful in anything. You have to trick yourself that that’s possible.What I remember from rowing and I think was very much from a leadership perspective in business, it’s just almost saying like, guys, yeah, we’re going to do this. You know, we’re going to train, we’re going to think about strategy, we’re going to be about strategy as it related to tactics, just having underlying level like belief that you can do that. And enthusiasm and optimism for that is very helpful.There’s perhaps a common denominator under a lot of very, very successful organizations, and that is that they have a culture of excellence, their organizations comprised of people who have very high standards, high expectations of themselves. And that translates into a group of people who can perform in a relatively selfless way and produce extraordinary results over a long period of time.An organization must be constantly led or, if necessary, pushed uphill to what it must be stopped pushing, and it doesn’t continue or even rest in place and it rolls backwards. This podcast is for people that are on the same journey of constant, never ending improvement.In each episode, I meet with leaders from special operations, business and academia who share their personal experiences on leading in both good times and bad. We’re going to explore the entire set of capabilities that makes teams elite, building trust and aligning a team to a common purpose. How to build shared consciousness to rapidly increase the rate of learning. And finally, how to empower your talent to solve problems and maximize opportunities at speed. The CrossLead podcast is coming soon. So subscribe on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast app.