Impact Wealth Winter 2021

WINTER 2021

INVESTING IN

ART

in the Wake of a Worldwide Pandemic

ASSET ALLOCATION STRATEGIES:

Hedging the Bull Market in Equities

JAMIE MONTGOMERY

What’s Next in Technology

GINA DIEZ BAROSSO

Diversity as an Investment Opportunity

TIM DRAPER The Visionary Venture Capitalist

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Simply an unprecedented level of luxury sleep

Invest in the REST of your life

CONTENTS EVENTS

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History in the Making at Sir Anthony Ritossa’s 12th Global Family Office

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By Candice Beaumont

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Coronavirus Cannot Stop Billionaires Joining for the Elite Exclusive 1640 Society Family Office Wealth Forum

By Caroline Singer

INVESTING

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Asset Allocation Strategies: What should we do about TINA?

By Neal Berger

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Investing in Art in the Wake of a Worldwide Pandemic

By Carolina Ghertsos

PROFILES

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GINA DIEZ BARROSO Diversity as a Business & Investment Opportunity

By Yvonne Beri

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JAMIE MONTGOMERY Technology Pioneer

By Hillary Latos

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GORDON WINSTON Redefining Authenticity and Innovation Technology

By Hillary Latos

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ANTHEM BLANCHARD From Setting the Gold Standard to Betting Big on Bitcoin

By Hillary Latos

FEATURE

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TIM DRAPER The Visionary Venture Capitalist

By Hillary Latos

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44 THOUGHT LEADERSHIP

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EXECUTIVES IMPART ‘What it Takes’ to Lead in Today’s Business Landscape

By Merilee Kern, MBA

STYLE & FASHION

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The Move

Private Islands Offer the Ultimate in Safety, Seclusion and Peace of Mind Amid Changing Times

By Candice Beaumont

LUXURY LIVING

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Post-Pandemic Travel Planning: Planes, Trains & Automobiles

By Merilee Kern, MBA

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Next Gen Leadership in Turbulent Times

By Jason Ma

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Aston Martin Residences Miami captures The Art of Living

By Caroline Singer

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Family Office Association and Impact Wealth Magazine Host an Investment Workshop in Miami

By Jaime Pavon

REAL ESTATE

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58

Miami’s Winter Season Heats Up

By Hillary Latos

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60

Building the Caribbean of the Future

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Female entrepreneurship

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Unlock Your Highest Potential

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How to Prepare to Exit Your Business

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Will the Future of Transportation be Fueled by Hydrogen?

By Janelle Brown

By Didi Wong

By Amilya Antonetti

By Alex Gorman

By Caroline Singer

PHILANTHROPY

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A Better World through Dignity

By Candice Beaumont

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EDITOR’S NOTE

Reflections on a new Beginning As I look back on 2020, I realized that the whole world had changed from a year ago and we live in a new reality that one could not have fathomed. When the world was in full swing, we were always looking outward where we were in a constant influx of travel, conferences, business meetings, and activities that we thought were essential to our livelihood and existence. But in March the whole world shut down and we were suddenly forced to quarantine at home with a sudden abundance of alone time and start to look inward while assessing what was truly important – family, friends, health, mental and physical well being. Suddenly everything that we thought was so critical to our lives were merely distractions. But as human beings we are resilient, adaptable, and we learned how to continue with our daily lives and business in new ways.

For our debut issue, we wanted to spotlight family offices, global leaders, and pioneers in venture capital and technology to get their insights on how the pandemic has changed the business landscape, where to invest, and how to make a difference in educating the next generation. Gordon Winston, the grandson of the legendary Harry Winston said it best, “If you can instill a strong moral compass in another person, coupled with critical thinking and judgement to determine between right or wrong or malintent, you’ve won half the battle.” As much as technology and AI can play a positive role in the evolution of humanity it can also be devastatingly detrimental to society without the right leadership. Other family office members we highlighted included were Anthem Blanchard, Gina Diez Barroso, and technology pioneer Jamie Montgomery.

One of the common themes discussed was the growing need for authenticity creating an unlimited potential of blockchain applications across every sector coupled with artificial intelligence which is where some of these family offices are parking their investments. Our cover features legendary venture capitalist Tim Draper who made a big bet on Bitcoin over 7 years ago that has paid off. How exactly does Tim Draper identify winners? Rather than focus on what will be big next year, he envisions what will be big 15 years from now. Instead of looking for everything that can go wrong with a company he asks what if this works and how great it will be. Instead of regretting investing in the 20 companies that may have failed, he embraces his mistakes cuts the loss once, and focuses on the other 30 companies that could go up 1000% or more. Tim tells us in this issue what he thinks will be the next big thing.

We hope that you enjoy reading insights from our illustrious group of thought leaders who understand the unique issues that family offices face as we head into 2021 and the start of new beginnings.

Hillary Latos Editor in Chief hillary@impactwealthmagazine.com

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Creating Wealth. Creating Impact.

WINTER 2021 ISSUE

Hillary Latos EDITOR IN CHIEF

Candice Beaumont MANAGING EDITOR

Merilee Kerns FEATURES EDITOR

Emil Pavlov ART DIRECTOR

Brittainy Newman, Jaime Pavon CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHERS

Amilya Antonetti, Neal Berger, Yvonne Beri, Janelle Brown, Carolina Ghertsos, Alex Gorman, Jason Ma, Angelo Robles, Caroline Singer, Didi Wong CONTRIBUTING WRITERS

Angela Gorman, Adam Weiss PUBLISHERS

Colin Thompson DIRECTOR OF SPONSORSHIP

Impact Wealth Media LLC 222 Broadway, 18th Floor New York, NY 212 542 3146 www.impactwealth.org info@impactwealth.org

Impact Wealth Magazine is published quarterly. Copyright 2020 by Impact Wealth Media. All rights reserved. Reproduction of any material from this issue is expressly forbidden without permission of the publisher. Unsolicited manuscripts and photographs are welcome on an exclusive basis, but Impact Wealth Magazine cannot be responsible for unsolicited materials submitted. Printed in the U.S.A.

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EVENTS EVENTS

Left to right: H.R.H. Prince Michel de Yougoslavie (centre), Khalid Al Zayani, Honorary Chairman, Al Zayani Investments; and Grand Ambassador Mohamed Al Alirary Chairmain, Al Zayani Investments Photographs By Cyril Bailleul

HISTORY IN THE MAKING Sir Anthony Ritossa’s Global Family Office Investment Summit in Dubai Following the Israeli-Emirati Peace Agreement

By Candice Beaumont

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Dubai hosted 250 prestigious family offices, private investors, Sheikhs, Royal Families, CEO’s and leading businesses from 30 countries around the world for the 12th Global Family Office Investment Summit hosted this week by Sir Anthony Ritossa and held under the High Patronage of His Highness Sheikh Ahmed Al Maktoum. CEO & Advisor to Sheikh Ahmed Al Maktoum International Investments Enterprise Mohamed Al Ali served as Distinguished Grand Ambassador for the event, which will be recorded in history books as the first-time that an Israeli business delegation traveled to the UAE following the signing of the IsraelEmirates peace agreement earlier this fall.

Israel’s stature as a gateway for global innovation and entrepreneurship led the agenda with a discussion of how the country, with a population of 8 million+ people, is uniquely positioned to lead as #1-#2 in the world in the number of engineers, #2 in the number of stock exchange listed companies, and as home to an impressive number of companies leading the way with sophisticated technology, artificial intelligence, biotech and medicine, solid waste solutions, safe and sustainable food, fintech, and more.

The delegation emphasized that it hopes Israel will be able to collaborate with the UAE to build multinational design centers, hi-tech startup hubs, and strategic partnerships in the UAE with the first step being that the countries to get to know each other’s culture and business traditions. The goal is to continue to turn past limitations into new ideas with an evergreen mentality and passion for growth.

In addition to future UAE-Israel strategic partnerships, high-level topics discussed by the leading global families in attendance included: how family offices should invest for a brighter future; how to grow and preserve wealth; social responsibility; succession planning; education; healthcare; emerging technologies; family legacy and philanthropy. Global concerns related to the U.S. presidential election, trade wars, healthcare pandemic, and inflation fears were also top of mind. “When great minds meet it always opens doors for new ideas and I am so honoured to have hosted in person such

a prestigious group of individuals whom I count as among my most trusted colleagues, friends and extended family office family during a health pandemic. While we were delighted to establish new friendships with our Israeli delegation it is also a distinct pleasure to welcome old friends back to Dubai for my seventh event in the UAE,” said Sir Anthony Ritossa, Chairman of Ritossa Family Office, a family business dating back 600 years to the Venetian Empire in Europe.

The 3 key themes of the Summit included Leading Women in Family Offices from across the Globe, The Financial Revolution & Technology, and Ideal Asset Classes for the future including fintech, AI and machine learning, bitcoin and digital assets, biotech, healthcare, medicine, online learning, alternative energy, venture capital, real estate and private debt.

Some of the highlights included Adil Alzarooni, CEO of Alzarooni Emirates Investments in the UAE, who told Summit guests he believes one must deal with staff as a closely as family and insist on a customer-focused culture within all of the family businesses.

At times such as a crisis, it is essential that everyone make sacrifices in order to preserve wealth, retain jobs and help return our world to a sense of normalcy and optimism. When we stop fighting fires, we identify opportunities, he said. While we are often raised to do life in steps, what truly matters is learning how to be happy, passionate and thankful. Dana Al Salem, CEO of Merit Capital and Co-Founder of Yahoo Europe, UK gave some great perspectives of entrepreneurship, such as as leveraging talent from peers, and tapping talented board advisors to make money with a greater purpose and meaning.

H.R.H. Prince Michel de Yougoslavie pointed out the importance of humility and that families must teach children what it means to make money and insist on rules and regulations geared around lasting family values. While many family offices have 1000-2000 years behind them it is essential to look to the future, have contingencies in place, remain agile, insist on governance and discipline, and stay humble in order to stay in power. From a young age, children must be taught to listen and adapt.

Left to right: H.E. Zakyah Al Qaydi, Co-Founder and Board Member, Majestic Group, The Private Office of Her Highness Al Nahyan; and H.H. Sheikha Hend Al Qassemi, Editor & Owner, Velvet Magazine.

Left to right: Sir Anthony Ritossa with CypriotIsraeli billionaire businessman Teddy Sagi

Left to right: Strategic Partner, His Highness Sheikh Ahmed Bin Faisal Al Qassimi and Sir Anthony Ritossa.

“The 12th Global Family Office Summit event is always a great opportunity for us to host new friends and old friends in Dubai.

By bringing together leading families and private investors from around the world, including the Israeli delegation we are indeed making history,” said Mohamed Al Ali, CEO & Advisor, Sheikh Ahmed Al Maktoum International Investments Enterprise, UAE. For details on future events, including the next Ritossa Summit in Dubai please visit www.DubaiSummit.org.

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EVENTS

CORONAVIRUS CANNOT STOP BILLIONAIRES From Joining the Elite 1640 Society Family Office Wealth Forum

By Caroline Singer

Photos by Brittainy Newman

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As one of the premier events in the summer, the highly anticipated annual 1640 Society Family office conference gathers some of the leading family members, family offices, and wealthy leaders from around the globe for a closed door private discussion about issues affecting the global elite and top one percent. Participation in the network is by invitation only and includes some of the most prominent family members, heirs and high net worth investors from across the globe including Asia, Mid East, Europe & Latin America, as members of its exchange. Due to the pandemic, this year the forum was a more intimate event held in the outdoor garden with mainly US based guests who all followed the socially distanced protocols.

The Forum was shortened to a half a day, with leading CIO’s comparing asset allocation strategies, several billionaires discussing philanthropy, families speaking about buying islands in the Caribbean, the heads of Lenox Hill Hospital giving an outlook on the coronavirus pandemic and billionaire Brock Pierce speaking about politics and his run for President of the United States. Entrepre-

neur Dr Nicholas Perricone led a health and wellness panel enlightening guests with an astute investor talking about the Oura ring that when worn can monitor your health via software, as well as the CEO of ChromaDex speaking about defying the aging process, as well as gifting all guests with the valuable TRU NIAGEN® dietary supplement that promotes healthy aging and combats daily stress on your body. The Forum wrapped up with powerful panelists Jim McCann, Chairman of 1800 Flowers, Anthony Scaramucci, Founder Skybridge Capital and legendary venture capitalist Tim Draper sharing the stage.

The day ended with emerging pop jazz singer Kait Kinley performing as well as up and coming country singer Sirena Carey belting out her latest hits for over an hour while guests mingled over cocktails.

In order to maintain the integrity of this intimate annual gathering, the 1640 Society steering committee runs the forum like a country club with a rigorous approval and vetting process, and only two hundred families are approved to join on an annual basis.

Families who got past the ultimate selection process include leading names like the Pitcairns, Kennedy’s, Bush, Firestone’s, Ford’s, Rockefeller’s, Bronfman’s, Kettering, Getty’s, Kluge, Pritzker’s, Johnson’s, Heinz, Hunt’s, Musk (co-founder of PayPal), along with international magnets like the Mittal family from India and the Pears families from Europe. www.1640society.com

FAIRFIELD, CT I $14,500,000 I MLS#170337878 Al Filippone Associates, 203.258.1595

FISHS EDDY, NY I $13,900,000 Wallis Mautner, 508.221.4154

GREENWICH, CT I $12,000,000 I MLS#111708 Anthony Ardino, 203.249.9833

WESTPORT, CT I $10,900,000 I MLS#170337394 Michelle&Company, 203.454.4663

WELLESLEY, MA I $9,750,000 I MLS#72730626 Kelly Schmidt, 617.828.7120

SANIBEL, FL I $7,195,034 I MLS#220011928 Alicia Robyn, 239.898.3501

NEWTON, MA I $6,195,000 I MLS#72741575 Robin Allen, 617.921.1019

JAMESTOWN, RI I $6,000,000 I MLS#1260911 Patsy Ewenson, 401.862.5512

W. FALMOUTH, MA I $5,999,900 I MLS#22007340 Russlyn Seiler, 203.216.7750

LONDONDERRY, VT I $5,500,000 I MLS#4822484 Carrie Mathews, 802.236.8458

QUOGUE, NY I $4,499,000I MLS#3240316 April Kaynor, 203.216.2194

NAPLES, FL I $4,299,000 I MLS#220023252 John & Anthony Turco, 239.210.8888

NAPLES, FL I $3,850,000 I MLS#220023111 John & Anthony Turco, 239.210.8888

NAPLES, FL I $3,725,000 I MLS#220034951 Bruce Miller, 239.206.0868

NAPLES, FL I $3,150,000 I MLS#220066591 Bruce Miller, 239.206.0868

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INVESTING

Asset Allocation Strategies:

WHAT SHOULD WE DO ABOUT TINA? If you are an investor and you think TINA is a woman who is of no concern to you, you are in for a rude awakening.

By Neal Berger

Founder/CIO Eagle’s View Capital Management, LLC, nberger@evhedge.com

TINA is not a woman, rather, it is an acronym standing for “There Is No Alternative (to equities)”. The acronym refers to the current state of the investment landscape characterized by the perceived insanity of the ongoing bull market in equities, the extraordinary low or negative bond yields across the world, and in general, a world in which an ocean of liquidity has driven investors to take on ever increasing levels of “risk on” exposure in the form of equities or equity-like exposure despite rather lofty valuation levels.

Considering the incredibly challenging environment and circumstances for almost all corporations around the world with few exceptions, due to the ongoing pandemic and it’s implications, it is quite challenging to reconcile with any level of logic or fundamental analysis to justify the mere fact that everything is exceedingly expensive. According to a report put out by J.P. Morgan in August, 2020, the S&P 500 is pricing in a 0% chance of an economic recession while the US 5 year note is pricing in 100% chance of one. This is because historically when bond yields fall as dramatically as we’ve seen, it presages the market’s expectation of a recession. Conversely, when equities rally to the extent we’ve seen, it indicates that the market has no fear whatsoever of an economic recession. A perverse situation indeed! Plain and

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simple, approximately $15 Trillion of sovereign debt trading at a negative nominal interest rate, meaning you pay the government to hold your money, is simply not something that should occur in the natural world.

So why is all of this happening? There are numerous theories, however, central bank printing presses working overtime and creating an environment flooded with liquidity around the globe seems to be the most reasonable answer. Where has this liquidity been flowing? In one form or another, into “risk-on” assets such as equities in both public and private form. In fact, this is such an usual and persistent phenomena, the acronym TINA was coined standing for There is No Alternative (to equities). Hard to justify buying a 10-year German Bund at -50 bps! Where else can an investor go with all of this liquidity aside from equities or proxies for equity (such as private equity, direct deals, venture, angel, etc.).

Family offices around the globe may not even realize their portfolios are essentially 100/0 now versus the classic 60/40 model of years past. As the Founder of Eagle’s View Capital Management, LLC an advisor to ultra-high net worth individuals and family offices, I can tell you firsthand what a typical family office portfolio looks like.

As follows:

1 Portion of assets in a public equity portfolio Obviously directly correlated to stock price movements

2 Portion of assets in hedge fund strategies such as long/short equity, event driven, distressed, relative value credit If you think these hedge fund strategies provide diversification to equities, you needn’t look past any previous downturns in the equity markets such as March, 2020, 4Q 2018, 2008, etc. The vast majority of mainstream hedge fund strategies are simply a diluted proxy for the overall direction of equities. It is no coincidence that the hedge fund industry has a very high monthly correlation to the direction of equities. Equities up, the average hedge fund up, equities down, the average hedge fund strategy down.

3 Portion of assets in private equity This has “equity” right in the name! If you think private equity doesn’t correlate to equities, it’s only because you don’t get a statement each month or see the movements daily as one does in the public equity markets.

4 Portion of assets in direct deals This is essentially private equity that you are running yourself without a professional private equity manager. Nevertheless, a rising tide floats all boats and vice versa, including private deals.

5 Portion of assets in real estate While this varies by locale, in general, asset prices move in tandem over time. Remember the Tokyo real estate and the Japanese stock market of the late 1980s? Still nearly -50% down more than 30 years later.

6 Random smattering of lending strategies both to businesses or individuals Works great when there are no defaults and coupon is paid. In a downturn, try attaching to the collateral and selling it off. Your LTV cannot be low enough given the frothiness we’ve seen in a world awash in liquidity. Unless you think the business cycle is dead forever, and, this time is TRULY different, the music will stop and we’ll be looking at ourselves as if we were insane.

7 A grouping of random lottery tickets such as Bitcoin, Angel Investments, some VC investments, etc.

This is a function of simply having too much money and wanting to hit a grand slam on one of the hot ideas floating around.

Please accept the above with a healthy dose of humor. Not every family office’s portfolio looks identical or has all of the above, however, having seen hundreds of them, this would be very common. I’ll characterize the above portfolio as 100/0 (Equities or Equity like risk/ True diversification). TINA at his finest. According to Kerry Craig, a global market strategist at JP Morgan Asset Management who contributed to the report, “new portfolio for a new decade”, they state, “Alternative investments such as hedge funds will become essential parts of post-pandemic portfolios due to low interest rates and few opportunities for diversification”.

Mr. Craig goes on to say, “The returns from traditional asset classes have just become more and more challenged over time”.

If you’ve been partying like it’s 1999 and enjoying the 500%+ run in Tesla this year, congratulations to you. If you bought bitcoin at $900 in January, 2017 and still hold today at $19,000 congratulations to you. Nobody is suggesting equities or proxies for risk-on should be cut completely. We have no way of predicting how or when liquidity flows will reverse or stabilize and seemingly one-way market bets will all of a sudden succumb to the “emperor has no clothes syndrome”.

For my own family office, as well as for our advisory clients and discretionary pools of assets, Eagle’s View has put itself squarely in the space of providing truly non-correlated diversification from risk-on exposure both for better or for worse. When hardly anyone else made money in Mar., 2020, we had a strong month. We achieve this by broadly being in the business of seeking to capitalize upon market inefficiencies or otherwise finding positive expectancy opportunities that take advantage of dislocations within the market microstructure without regard to the overall direction of any market. Specific examples of the type of strategies we’ve invested in would include, congestion trading across the US electricity grid, inefficiencies within the dry bulk cargo shipping markets, ultra-high frequency statistical arbitrage, cryptocurrency arbitrage (non-directional), US new issues trading such as IPOs, Secondaries and Block trades, volatility arbitrage, SPACs, etc.

Essentially, we look at anything where there is an “edge” or an inefficiency that is reasonably liquid and does not correlate to the overall direction of broader markets. These strategies are often “niche-oriented” and capacity constrained whereby the demand/supply equation for opportunities are greater due to fewer investors being aware or having the knowledge or ability to invest in these type of opportunities. We are one of the most well-known players in this vertical and have a long-term proven record of generating pure absolute returns throughout all types of market environments.

In sum, the only solution to the TINA problem is to allocate a portion of one’s assets to truly non-correlated strategies at a time when bonds which have historically played this role are simply not a viable option. In general, I refer to certain types of hedge fund strategies. As mentioned above, in general and broadly speaking, the vast majority of hedge fund strategies are highly correlated to the overall direction of the equity market. However, there are some truly unique and interesting strategies that do provide an investor with much desired, non-correlated diversification. Understanding, sourcing, and vetting these opportunities is a challenging endeavor, however, based upon the fact that this is all we’ve been doing since our inception over 15 years ago, we’ve proven that it’s possible and very valuable in providing true diversification to an investor’s portfolio without simply placing money into a 0% money market fund.

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INVESTING

INVESTING IN ART

in the Wake of a Worldwide Pandemic I tried to escape the art market world a long time ago and follow a more personal philanthropic approach. I tried to romanticize about the art market through its purest form to be grasped by its enhanced emotions and not by its mere value. After the great collectors of the 20th century, the art market became a ‘luxury’ asset, a business venture where investment became the new faith.

The new credo of the postwar history art market is a story of unstoppable and exuberant growth. New gallerists became the new leading protagonists who were ‘popularizing’ the art market.

By Carolina Ghertsos

However, the entire art world has been faced with new challenges which can only draw parallels to a a science fiction movie. Every layer of the art world had to reinvent itself and switch in a fresher, unstigmatized and ultimately digital survival mode. Fascinating and controversial conversations have been held, discussed, and at times, only whispered on the present art market trend throughout my art endeavours.

Well-established galleries, museums and art institutions had to remain temporarily closed in the hope to stop the virus spread. The urge to go digital became a present cure used to help artists sell their work directly from their studios and exhibitions came alive digitally!

In my travels have around Europe, art world insiders were posed with the most controversial question, besides melancholic reminiscences of when we will return ‘back to the past’- how will the art market influence and nurture today’s creativity and how will it survive?

According to Matteo Lampertico, owner of ML Fine art gallery that specializes in Italian Post-War Art and focuses on abstract and conceptual artists, feels that the cancellations of in person art fairs has not helped small galleries. The European market has lost its audience of overseas visitors who cannot attend the great European art fairs and this has been a crucial element for

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the art market visibility. Even though art has become a luxury asset, it is the only asset that enhances a spiritual value to our life.

Marco Mercanti, an Italian art financier-advisor, believes that our society has been bombarded, in the decade leading up to the COVID-19 pandemic, by a never-ending onslaught of art fairs. To their credit, these fairs provided a crucial platform for galleries to showcase their inventory and program to a wider range of collectors, who were in turn exposed to pieces, artists, and galleries they may have otherwise missed. Many galleries depended on these fairs to stay in business, with the majority of their annual sales derived from these events.

However, as a plethora of galleries competed for attention at every event, they prioritized flashy, easy-to-digest, and highly Instagrammable art works that do not demand too much analysis from an overstimulated, “fair fatigued” brain over pieces representing cultural/ historical importance and quality. The pandemic has placed us into a forced deprivation period with little opportunity to stand in front of works of art. Marco hopes that the ‘silver lining’ is to see art in the ‘flesh’ again, to remember how much it can enrich one’s mind and spirit, and to savor the joy to really spend time with a work and enjoy all the details. His profound wise words remind collectors as well as consumers of culture, to aim for quality over quantity, both in terms of what art they choose to look at, and how they look at it.

Mercanti also feels that the art economy has been relatively slow to adapt to technological innovation. The restrictions imposed by the coronavirus, and the wave of cancellations of benchmark fairs accelerated online sales strategies. Hiscox Online Art Market Report shows that online-only auction sales by Christie’s, Sotheby’s and Phillips generated 5 times more in the first half of 2020 than the same period one year ago. Specialists and dealers needed to be creative in terms of how they conduct art viewings and studio visits. In the long term, e-commerce will not necessarily supersede in-person transactions, but there will be a more mature and seamless integration of e-commerce and more habitual use of remote online viewing and selling techniques as an option for clients desiring greater flexibility in their buying experience.

Through technological innovations, smaller investors can also ride the wave of investing in artwork thanks to ArtSquare.io which provides a more transparent starting point to the secondary market.

Created by serial entrepreneur Fabrizio D’Aiola and Francesco Boni Guinicelli, a business lawyer and venture capitalist, their platform transforms artwork into tradeable shares and their digital fractionalization helps small investors invest in art while getting a good return.

expertise and AI to assist investors in acquiring quality artworks which are also sound financial investments that carry the highest degree of liquidity and opportunity of return by exploiting the geographical arbitrages and information asymmetries arising in the global art market. Gibbi believes art as an investment brings the opportunity of capital conservation and a sound financial return as well as the pleasure of owning blue chip masterpieces.

Understanding the broad investment opportunities offered by the international art market as well as the need for more transparency and efficiency for the investor, Francesco Gibbi, an art collector and expert in 18th century Neoclassical etchings, founded LotArt.com. This search engine combines big data analytics, market

From an artist’s perspective, Micha Cattui believes that artwork should engage and reflect a passionate art dialogue with the viewers on current and past events. ‘Free speech is being questioned and challenged everyday. Art should be pushing these boundaries beyond physical borders!´ He believes that a new digital platform/sales format allows artists to promote their work andreach a new world of customers.

The art market has demonstrated how ephemeral life can turn when facing a surreal state of ‘pandemic’ reality. Our traditional art preconceptions had to be radically extirpated in order to find alternative ways to be positive and overcome human weaknesses, but it leaves us with these lingering questions. Will the art market be the same as before?

This is an ‘incognito’ factor that one will only know in the next few months. Who has the right to possess or buy Art? (Micha Cattui) Will society find its art ‘compass’ through this life endurance? Will the artists overcome the antagonist world of digitalization? Will the art market rediscover the beauty of its creativity? Alas! This is another story...

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PROFILE

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DIVERSITY

as a Business & Investment Opportunity Granddaughter to Televisa´s media mogul, Gina Diez Barroso takes us through her journey to finding her purpose in life and in business.

By Yvonne Beri

Gina has been a pioneer in the fields of arts and education for over 20 years. In 1990, she created Grupo Diarq, one of the most prestigious real-estate development and design firms in Latin America. In 2005, she founded CENTRO, the first university in Mexico City specialized in creative studies with a strong emphasis in business and entrepreneurship; and later on, in 2016, she founded Dalia Empower, a lifelong personal and professional learning platform for women enabling them to reach their full potential and own their power. She is the Mexican representative of W20 and of C200 (200 Women Business Leaders). She is an active philanthropist of women causes and education. She is the mother of five accomplished children.

IW: Being that your grandfather was the founder of Televisa – a Mexican mass communication and media company, the largest in Latin America and the Spanish-speaking world, how did you start your professional career path?

Gina: I started my career when I was 20 years old, working in the editorial division of Televisa. During the six years that I worked there, I ascended into an executive position in the editorial division and created “TU”, a publication that became one of the most important magazines for teenagers. However, since I always wanted to do something on my own, when I turned 26 years old, I left Televisa and began my career in real-estate development, founding my own business.

IW: What inspired your interest in real estate development and design?

Gina: Real-estate has constantly been my passion and I have always thought that it was a field I wanted to work on. I remember that when I was really young, I was frustrated because in Mexico we had amazing houses from the 20s, 30s and 40s that architects would simply demolish. I thought that when I grew up, I was going to save those houses and refurbish them. Later on, I founded Grupo Diarq, one of the most prestigious real-estate development and design firms in Latin America. It is currently comprised of 9 affiliated companies, employs more than 700 people, and has completed over 850 residential and hospitality projects in Mexico and the United States.

Q: Did your childhood inspire your entrepreneurship and passion for education?

Gina: My father and grandfather were my inspiration and role models. When I was 11 years old, my father died in a plane crash and therefore, I was brought up by my grandfather. My grandfather was an amazing person.

He believed in television, communication, and satellites - I am talking about the 1930s, when nobody, literally, nobody saw their potential. He was an absolute visionary. He had so much love for Mexico and a firm commitment to giving back to the country, and particularly, helping those who were less fortunate. It was a blessing for me to have him and my father as role models!

Q: What was one of the most important lessons you learned from your grandfather?

Gina: I learned to fight for what I believe in and never take no for an answer.

Q: How do you express your creativity in your professional and personal life?

Gina: Every single day in every single way. I love to see what is missing or what does not work and try to fix it. I express my creativity in the way I work, in the way I act and the way I do business. Also, In the teams I lead, I always encourage creative thinking and innovation. That is how I operate.

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PROFILE

I always thought that the best thing you can give to anyone is the opportunity to have a career. When I was 43 years old, I thought I would give my money and my time to education. The more I looked, the less I was convinced I wanted to give my money only to philanthropy.

As far as my hobbies, I like all kinds of sports and I love art, design, painting, collecting art and going to auctions. In my spare time, I love going to the theatre and exhibitions.

Everything is related to creativity. I don’t see myself ever doing anything that is not creative. I also love the art of storytelling.

When I meet someone that is good at it, I just love spending time with that person.

Q: You have five amazing children. Did they follow your career path in realestate and/or entrepreneurship?

Gina: All five are creative and work in their own company. One daughter is a graphic designer in NY. She works for LVMH and has her own design company called NOUN, dealing with branding identity and design.

My two boys are owners of Lemon Studios - the number one content developing media company based in Mexico and US. My youngest daughter, Ivana, founded a company called Story Place, an app that focuses on storytelling where ordinary people can share extraordinary stories. I love this company; it’s all about using technology for a good purpose. It is already working in over 50 countries. My children are all amazing!

Q: What advice would you give to those who aspire to be entrepreneurs and business owners?

Gina: I always advise them to find a purpose in their life, an outlet for their passion, and to follow their dreams. Success is not an easy path and one must enjoy the journey. I really believe one can achieve anything. At times the road might be bumpy but if you build resilience you can overcome the obstacles. Get

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together with others, nothing can be done alone, that is for sure. You need to bring together a group of people that believe in what you believe and make your project their project. If you achieve this, anything can be done.

Q. At 43 you wanted to leave a legacy in education for the younger generation of creative people and for your country. Is this what led you to found Centro University? Why do you believe this type of education is so important?

Gina: I always thought that the best thing you can give to anyone is the opportunity to have a career. When I was 43 years old, I thought I would give my money and my time to education. The more I looked, the less I was convinced I wanted to give my money only to philanthropy.

I was very frustrated to see how education was not evolving at the same pace and direction as what is happening in the world. Institutions are still teaching as if we have two brains: If you are creative, you go this way and if you are a person of numbers you go the other way. 60 percent of students graduating from high school now, will work in companies that do not even exist today! Seeing that there wasn’t a truly balanced education at the university level that would prepare students for the future, motivated me to start my own university.

Q: How did people react when you told them that you were starting a university?

Gina: When I went to speak with my mentor, he thought I was crazy. He said that “no one starts a university out of the clear

blue sky” and stressed that I wasn´t an academic with a thousand degrees.

The first real obstacle was dealing with the authorities. Also, the business community didn’t believe that creativity was important. So, I hired a market analyst to do a study. The study predicted that the University wasn’t going to work. Knowing that I did not take that easily no for an answer, I decided to go forward with the project anyway.

I got together a diverse group of people in the team - creative thinkers, business people, academics -who were working not for me but with me, for my vision and my passion, which they made theirs. We fought hard. It took six and a half years of research and development. CENTRO has now been running for 16 years. We have graduated over 8,000 students and have 3,000 students currently enrolled. For five years it has been the best creative university in the country and it is the most difficult to get into.

Q: How do you compare CENTRO university to other universities?

What do you do differently?

Gina: CENTRO promotes a very disruptive way of teaching. Compared to other universities that offer a four-year degree, we added 1,100 more hours of teaching on business and entrepreneurship to the creative curricula.

When students graduate, they understand how to create business plans, how to do an elevator pitch, how to raise money and understand the legal aspects of owning a business, among other things. That is, we develop both sides of the brain, not just one.

CENTRO is building a truly creative economy.

Schools are as good as their students, so we constantly follow up with our graduates. Most have their own business and are employing many others. Others work in the top creative companies. As you can see, we are interested in creating a culture of entrepreneurs. It is not often how the creative world works, so we are very happy with the outcome. We also believe in sustainability and, in this sense, I am very proud that we are the first full campus LEED Platinum certified university in the world.

Q: At 59 years old, why did you launch Dalia Empower? Do you consider Dalia Empower as a social impact business?

Gina: I’ve been a member of the C200 for 18 years. The C200 is a powerful international community of the most successful women in business, representing companies with more than $1.4 trillion in combined revenue and employing more than 2.5 million people. We help each other personally and professionally. The C200 is not just about being good at what you do, it’s about giving back to other women, particularly women in business. It is an amazing network of powerful women.

As a member of the C200 we were invited to the best universities in the world to speak with female MBA and PHD students about ourselves, our careers, our experiences and how do we balance our lives. I found that the women I spoke with were often outstanding in their academic skills and degrees, yet, they didn’t have the soft skills needed to succeed in the business world. I understood that I had found my purpose in education with Centro University and that I was going to dedicate my life to helping women reach their professional and personal goals and potential. This is what inspired me to launch Dalia Empower.

Q: What is Dalia Empower?

Q. What motivates your Philanthropy?

Gina: Dalia Empower is a 360 degrees global education project that, through a powerful platform and interactive system, prepares women with the soft skills needed to succeed in business. In Dalia Empower we believe that women have the power and can do anything they want in life. We prepare from women entering the workforce, entrepreneurs and business women, to women in leadership positions, providing full immersion courses to prepare them for Board of Directors´ positions.

Q: What are your goals for the future?

Gina: I would like to see Dalia Empower continue building a global community for the promotion of the economic advancement of women. I also would like to see the implementation of our ambitious expansion plan growing in North America, LATAM and Europe.

Gina: I don’t see a life without giving. One of our duties is to give back to the less fortunate.

I always quote David Rubinstein from Carlyle Group when he states that “giving back is not always writing a check”. I believe that giving back is also giving time. It is like a boomerang, the more you give the more you get back.

At CENTRO we sponsor scholarships for 35 percent of the students (1,000 students).

We believe that talented students should be able to study, even if they don’t have the money (in Mexico donations are not tax-deductible like in the United States).

My biggest satisfaction is giving students the chance to be prepared and provide them with the tools necessary to succeed.

I finish saying this: “Don’t give someone a fish to eat, better teach him or her how to fish”.

Additionally, six years ago I was invited by the Mexican Government as a representative of the country at the W20, the women initiative at the G20. It was then when I was certain that my next chapter in life was going to be dedicated to achieve gender equality in all fields.

Dalia Empower is most certainly a social impact business and doing very well. I believe that the way to break the cycle of economic disparity is through conscious capitalism: There can be profit in doing good.

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PROFILE

JAMIE MONTGOMERY Technology Pioneer

By Hillary Latos

Jamie Montgomery is a pioneer in the field of technology, and a leading venture capitalist who founded March Capital, one of the top performing venture capital firms in Los Angeles. He has backed numerous successful companies in cyber security, artificial intelligence, software and the internet of things. Jamie has a long history of success in the technology sector having founded the well-known investment bank Montgomery & Co that he led as CEO. Jamie advised and financed hundreds of leading technology companies over several decades. He is also the Founder of The Montgomery Summit, an annual technology conference that attracts over 1,000 global entrepreneurs, investors, and corporate executives to Santa Monica.

Jamie has served on the Board of numerous tech companies and is a beacon of knowledge and experience, guiding emerging entrepreneurs to success. His venture capital firm focuses on identifying disruptive technology companies and providing capital

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at a critical inflection point. Jamie has a track record of successful exits including the IPO of the Rubicon Project (NYSE: RUBI) and the sale of TeleSign to BICS. Jamie has a special talent for backing winners and was an active early investor in CrowdStrike (NASDAQ:CRWD), a leading cyber security company.

Montgomery and his family are active philanthropists, supporting a wide range of causes with a focus on education, technology, and helping underserved children. Jamie actively supports programs for innovation and entrepreneurship at the University of California, San Diego, Claremont McKenna College, the University of Southern California, and Chapman University. Jamie is also the Vice Chair of the $3B capital campaign for University of California, San Diego. He has also initiated several programs to support and promote women entrepreneurs, as well as highlight and acknowledge successful female CEOs with the Mont gomery Summit Female Founders program.

IW: How did you get started in the tech and innovation space?

JM: While I was in graduate school at Cambridge University, I was a research assistant for a company in Los Angeles that did systems analysis work for the future of the military for the Defense Department. Upon graduation, I went to The Pentagon to work for the Chief of Naval Operations and was assigned to his Executive Staff, working on long range projects which had to do with the impact of technology on future warfare. Back in 1983, we forecasted what 2000 would look like and what technologies would be changing.

While I was there, I saw that communications and biotech were going to be really important in the next couple of decades.

In 1986, I started an advisory business, and we helped a lot of aerospace defense companies diversify into the consumer world. Our clients included IBM, Siemens, Boeing, AT&T, and I realized that while we helped the large companies work with small companies, the small companies were much more dynamic and interesting. For example, CISCO was a small company back then and within a decade became one of the world’s largest companies measured by its market cap. We morphed the business into a full-service investment bank and branded it Montgomery and Co, which eventually evolved into a large technology focused investment bank.

In 2012, I wanted to focus more on investments and leverage my relationships with other venture funds and entrepreneurs from Silicon Valley. I partnered with Sumant Mandal, and we started a venture capital firm, March Capital, that closed its first fund, March Capital I, in 2014. We fully invested in March Capital I ($240 million) and then in 2017, closed March Capital II ($300 million). We are closing March Capital III in December 2020.

IW: Where do you see the growth and opportunity now in tech?

JM: We’ve been very focused on five areas.

The first area is AI enabled enterprise software, which is the next generation of software based on using artificial intelligence which could be a multi-trillion market in the tech world. The second area is what we call Cloud Infrastructure which is AI enabled

software that runs the cloud. While the first category might be application software, this category is more infrastructure software that enables the applications. The third area would be industrial software. Currently, the industrial world is just starting to utilize technologies for operations. We’ve backed a number of companies in this industrial software space including SparkCognition which is a leader in this area. The fourth area would be cyber security. CrowdStrike is a good example. And the fifth area would be software supporting the fintech, payments, and ecommerce sectors as these parts of the economy are being re-invented. All of these areas have experienced accelerated growth in 2020.

IW: How do you work with family offices as investors?

JM: I’d say in our first two funds about 90% of our investors were single and multi-family offices. They look at the tech sector as being very interesting but hard to access. Three things come to mind when our investors look at the innovation economy. One, venture investing has the highest returns. Two, it’s the most tax efficient with long term capital gains treatment, and sometimes we can invest in a small business for 5 years and there is no federal income tax. Finally, it’s also the most interesting and something that the next generations in the families can relate to.

We focus on software that’s critical to run enterprises. Companies are not going to stop using this technology. Software is a global, scalable and high margin business with recurring revenue. I think it’s the best business in the world. And we’re backing companies at a relatively early stage, typically at 2 to 5 years into their evolutions or some other inflection point. As an investor, you can either invest in a private company or wait until they go public; but by the time they go public, they are fully valued and there’s often not a lot more upside.

Companies used to go public after 5 years.

Salesforce went public about 15 years ago which was worth $500 million at its listing. But if you invested after the IPO, it’s about 150x return.; Now it’s unlikely a company will go public with that valuation - they are going to wait and go public when they are more highly valued. In the public market, the majority of

the returns came from Amazon, Microsoft, Google, and Facebook. As an investor, you have to have access to the innovation economy. The question is, how are you going to do that? Investing in enterprise tech is a great option. Also, it’s important to understand how technologies impact the overall economy and market. Technology exposure is not just “nice to have” – it is a “must have” for our clients.

IW: What are some of your philanthropic endeavors?

JM: We’ve always been very philanthropic. You can give money or provide leadership. We try to do both. We have four kids, now in their 20s, and focused on education over the last 25 years. For example, we sponsor an education program at the Getty Museum which enables 130,000 inner city kids to visit the museum every year. We also try do a lot with homelessness, which is a big issue in Santa Monica. We’ve taken about 1,000 people off the streets with programs here over the last 10 years, and we try to humanize the issue.

We just hosted Thanksgiving lunches at several shelters across the greater Los Angeles area.

We do a lot in the inner city with underprivileged youth, and we support community health programs. Recently, we established the March Capital Foundation to institutionalize our efforts. We have also funded centers for innovation and entrepreneurship at a number of local universities. Many students will work at a tech company for a couple of years and eventually start their own business. We want to give students access to the innovation economy. For example, at Claremont McKenna College, the number of students going into the innovation economy has risen from less than 10% to over 40%.

My primary goal is to help others, including our entrepreneurs, be successful. We couldn’t be prouder of our entrepreneurs, like George Kurtz, CEO of CrowdStrike, and many others. It’s just great to see them grow and succeed. There’s also a lot of diversity, at least half of our entrepreneurs are immigrants, and there is an increasing number of women. My philosophy is if you are a leader, others will follow. We hope others will follow our leadership example in the innovation economy and within their communities.

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PROFILE

GORDON WINSTON

Redefining Authenticity and Innovation Technology

By Hillary Latos

Gordon Winston, grandson of Harry Winston, started out on Wall Street working at Lehman Brothers while still a student at Cornell University. He continued a successful career on Wall St on the trading floor at Lehman and later at Kidder Peabody in structured debt capital markets. As a loving father and husband, he raised 2 wonderful children, both now attending University Southern California. He was also tasked with heading up a family office and managing a diversified debt and equity portfolio. Initially with family capital he gained an impressive track record investing in innovation and healthcare and gained a following with some of the large institutional investors and pension funds raising over $3 billion into several life science royalty funds. Winston has since emerged as a leading investor in life sciences and biotech having invested over $1.5 billion in over 40 companies over the past decade. As dedicated as he is to his business, he shows an equal dedication to his philanthropy with his family. He is actively involved in a number of SDG initiatives and the application of innovation ecosystems to achieve impact objectives. He is also an active member of YPO, and also spends his spare time perfecting his black belt in karate having been a third dan black belt Tang Soo Do national champion and is passionate about heli skiing.

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IW: What is your vision for the future?

Digital transformation is rapidly evolving global supply chains, business models, consumer habits, and we can envision a future in with the average global citizen has insight into the authenticity of all goods, services, and news that they consume.

IW: Can tell us a little bit about the projects that you’re invested in?

GW: I’ve spent the better part of the last 17 years investing in innovation intensive knowledge-based businesses and intellectual capital whether intellectual property in the life sciences industry and acquiring royalties on underlying pharmaceutical products, devices and diagnostics or the use of IP-based financing models in technology more broadly. I would take a portfolio of investments in these intangible assets and ultimately securitize them and have them agency rated. We would then use that as a proxy for scaling our own internal funding capabilities, eventually reaching $1.5 billion.

We started off with a family office that had no exposure to this greenfield asset class, got involved in hostile acquisition as a white knight, and transformed a life sciences incubator into a leading innovators in that space ultimately raising over $3 billion in equity capital across four funds and $1.5 in debt. I led a vast majority of the key initiatives at DRI Capital giving me a very robust perspective on how to build this this nascent industry into what would become a $100 billion industry.

While navigating this realm of financing I wanted to apply deeper learning capabilities and data analytics into underwriting processes to inform how we would invest in late stage pharmaceutical research and development programs, portfolios of drugs that had failed clinical trials where billions of dollars had been spent, and the pursuit asymmetries under an absolute return strategy. To broaden the scope on investing into IP and innovation more broadly worked with Edward Jung who was the founder of Intellectual Ventures.

Winston and Nathan Myhrvold started IV with this objective of investing in intellectual property as an asset class. Ultimately, they would raise about $8 billion in capital. They identified 40+ of the fastest growing technological segments in the world and acquired intellectual property relating to that. There was a lot to be learned from that model as they were an incubator of ideation, and the broad investment mandate was to buy, build and monetize intellectual property and intellectual capital through licensing, technology transfer, start-ups, partnering with Fortune 1000 companies, lift-outs, hybrid structures and even litigation; whatever it took to translate intellectual property into technological deployment, even earning them the recognition as an 800 pound patent troll with a club and all.

GW: I also realized that there was a very different framework for intangible assets and innovation models which are ecosystem and platforms. A lot of that experience informed my perspective on identifying asymmetrical risk rewards situations across and along an investment continuum.

Another project we are invested in is building an authenticity platform for a peer-topeer ecosystem that tracks the authenticity of a product across a supply chain through the relationship with a consumer before and after their initial purchase. Just through PPE, we have seen how things are readily and easily counterfeited. This authenticity platform can be applied to many industries including luxury goods, pharmaceuticals, medical device technology and food. We’re also looking at the same sort of application in the cannabis space because of the need for reference authenticity and standards.

GW: This past year we have been faced with the issue of transparency and authenticity.

Today the world is hyper connected. Even in traditional news reporting, facts and journalism have been so blurred for their speed to entertain vs the authenticity and veracity of checking and reporting the facts. Digital transformation is rapidly evolving global supply chains, business models, consumer habits, and we can envision a future in with the average global citizen has insight into the authenticity of all goods, services, and news that they consume. I am obsessed with this idea at the moment and finding ways to authenticate every step of the way and bring this service to mainstream consumers.

Rhetorically speaking, would the idea of traveling to the moon be such a bad idea?

Provided the opportunity to do that, it would be interesting. I do believe that the world will be a very different place 20 years from now. It’s hard to imagine, and not all parts of the world are going to advance with the same fervor as others, but I don’t feel like there are any limitations to innovation.

I think there are greater efficiencies in the way that we live, yet there are greater problems with the ethics of how we live as human beings. I’d like to believe in the betterment of the world and that as a collective we can find ways to be helpful and address some of the most vexing problems of our time. There is a lot of work required to do that. I think it also leads to a series of other potential problems that will need further resolve in the future.

Where do I think we’ll be in 20 years and what will we be doing? I think that looking at innovation is going to be an interesting way to think about investing. It could potentially be in the form of intellectual property. Or it could be setting up funds that use revenue insurance financing to get finance, help scale emerging businesses or using real, absolute return strategies that take a holding company approach to working broadly across technology categories and advancing those.

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PROFILE

I see taking some of the learnings from the pharmaceutical space and applying those to other industries. There are smarter ways to invest and get a toehold strategy into a company’s capital structure to help that business grow whether that’s a form of diluted or non-dilutive financing and think about using the intellectual property or the human capital in different ways than we are thinking today. Advance what they are doing and then navigate to reflection points and provide investors with a very unique set of investment opportunities.

IW: What are some of the philanthropic endeavors that your family office is involved in?

GW: My mother is the president of the UN Women for Peace Association an NGO granted consultative status by The Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) of the United Nations. The Organization’s Mission is gender equality, inclusion, ending violence against women and children, and promoting peace, education and advancing sustainable development goals. I have been working with and in discussions with futurist, family offices, Business Counsel for International Understanding, International Finance Corporation and others to advance ESG investing both from a top down and bottom-up, transformative vs impact investment. While the pandemic will likely end up killing about 1.75 million people globally, 150 million people will move into poverty due to Covid, and more than 540 million children will be out of school-40% of these because they lack internet connectivity. In additional to destroying SME business, mom and pop shops, the intergenerational wealth destruction has been severe. I fear that there will be a lost generation of children who will not receive or return to education.

We need to think in terms of transformation something dramatic is done and we engage to create a more transformative and equitable approach to building back where WE create investable and bold platform initiatives which challenge conventional models and innovation ecosystems for a better future.

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I think if you can instill a sound moral compass in your child or in another person that you’ve won a good part of that battle. The ability to be able to develop critical thinking and judgment to determine between right and wrong or malintent are critical in today’s world.

IW: When you mentor the next generation what, what kind of advice do you have for your kids in terms of their future?

GW: Find your intent, be passionate and mindful of how you allocate your time, the choices you make and be prepared to make mistakes along the way while pick yourself up again and again to continue on your journey.

Having passion and a “love of the game” is essential to happiness and success. I try to lead by example with my kids so they can see that dad is passionate about his work, loves what he is doing every day and finds it fun and challenging. My hope for my kids is that they pursue their passions and are dedicated to excel at them too. I think that science and technology are important, but I also do think humanities, history, ethics inform judgement and an understanding of the world that you live within and its complexities.

I think if you can instill a sound moral compass in your child or in another person that you’ve won a good part of that battle. The ability to be able to develop critical thinking and judgment to determine between right and wrong or malintent are critical in today’s world. Data and information easily be manipulated or forget with keystrokes.

Without these basic tenants, I think that our children would be challenged. Look, we’ve dealt with difficult business and personal

situations, failure, mistakes and poor judgements, and questionable people, most can attest to the fact that it’s not always a bowl of cherries. Get knocked down, stand up and go again. What makes me most proud of my children is that my wife and I were good role models and instilled that strong moral compass and ethics in them. Whether they succeed in life or in their chosen professions I know they are good kind people.

Embrace a growth-oriented mind-set, embrace positivity, and find time for reflection. Along the way I think that you do need to go through the pain to realize your capabilities as a human being.

The younger generation seems to be losing their ideals and their perspectives are being distorted by the digitization of all things, the information overload and the chosen continuous distraction. The innovation is transforming each and every aspect of our lives in both negative and positive ways. www.inventivecap.com

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PROFILE

ANTHEM BLANCHARD From Setting the Gold Standard to Betting Big on Bitcoin

Anthem Blanchard was raised by legendary goldbug and precious metals pioneer, James U. Blanchard III, who helped restore Americans’ right to own gold and also founded rare coin and bullion company, Blanchard & Company – once, the world’s largest. His family instilled in him a strong work ethic and philanthropic values that he now shares with his wife Cynthia who shares his passion for helping others philanthropically both personally and via the family foundation. Anthem leveraged his family expertise in the gold industry, working previously for European based GoldMoney taking the company from $1 million in 2002 to $368 million of total assets in 2008, which has increased to over $2 billion today. Anthem is the CEO and co-founder of cryptocurrency blockchain company AnthemGold Inc. (AnthemGold.com) and co-founder of precious metals dealer Anthem Vault Inc. (brands: AnthemVault.com, AmagiMetals.com) and the CEO of ransomware-proofing enterprise software company, Hera software development.

By Hillary Latos 26

IW: What is the focus of your family office foundation’s philosophy on philanthropy?

AB: Our family wants to make everyone in the world wealthy universally, and the way that we want to achieve that is through trusted commerce. We think that it’s the only way that everyone in the world can achieve wealth for themselves and for their families. This is our goal and it’s something that our family has been doing for generations. My mom and dad, Jim and Jackie Blanchard were famous for helping to push for the legalization of the ownership of physical gold bullion for United States citizens which was achieved in 1975. My parents ended up building what became the world’s largest retail world bullion company, which was eponymous with my dad’s name, James U. Blanchard.

They sold the business about 30 years ago to a G capital subsidiary and effectively, my dad helped to pioneer a number of different ventures such as a mutual fund company with Louis Rukeyser and Anthony Scaramucci. The concept of freedom is intrinsic with gold which was the symbol of wealth and freedom, and really more accurately I think it’s the base of record keeping of commerce and trade. It’s important to do extraordinary things and to go against the social norms But we have transitioned to a data based world and I would argue that ultimately data is wealth and wealth is still freedom. Now the issue we have in our current commercial world is that we have the have and have nots. We have various distortions in terms of wealth across the world and all sorts of different countries making it an impossibility to make everyone wealthy in the current sets of commerce and commercial systems that we have today. What Bitcoin invented about 12 years ago was the ability to have trusted communications with trusted record keeping for the first time ever.

There are little bits of information about two megabytes worth about every 15 minutes that can be saved without ever being able to change it or delete it. And so it’s the world’s first trusted record keeping. My family is now focused on on how can we commercialize Bitcoin as the world’s most trusted record keeping currency.

IW: How did the valuation of Bitcoin evolve to its current value?

AB: The key is to always remember that there is a finite number of the software keys that access the Bitcoin public protocol software.

That’s really what’s going on there. It’s kind of like referring to a low bar of gold versus a grain of gold. They’re both weight measurements. It’s just that one is much more divisible than the other two.

If someone basically bids enough of these keys relative to others to compete for this little bit of space that they can save and it’s impossible to leap which makes it so valuable. So what really drives the speculation of the keys of Bitcoin is the promise of Bitcoin’s commercialization else. So you have this natural scarcity built in and you have billions of dollars worth of these keys trading everyday.

Now Bitcoin is double the valuation of companies like IBM or triple, quadruple, that of SAP software, and Bitcoin is yet to commercialize. So I think the speculation you have to respect is price and we have to respect markets. I think what the market’s telling us is that Bitcoin will be the new chassis and the foundation for all commerce and all record-keeping. We’ll have entries directly or indirectly in the Bitcoin public protocol as the world’s strongest record, keeping the world’s strongest ledger or notary Republic, if you will.

I anticipate a 10 time run up in value over the next 18 months and I expect what happened three years ago and six years ago roughly to happen again over the next 12 to 18 months.

IW: How do you think PayPal’s access for the masses will affect Bitcoin trading?

AB: It’s tremendous. I think it’s a wonderful signal catalyst for the next big bull market and US dollar in terms of the value of the software keys of Bitcoin. I anticipate a 10 time run up in value over the next 18 months and I expect what happened three years ago and six years ago roughly to happen again over the next 12 to 18 months.

IW: How is your family involved with this?

AB: In multiple ways. We have a lot of different interactions through our companies by serving enterprise software. We think the biggest play ransomware is a phenomenon that has been exponential over the last five years which has arisen because of the value of these Bitcoin keys and other protocols that allow bad actors to take over ransom denial of service systems and demand bounty. These keys are impossible for central banks and their clearing banks to stop.

Our company has migrated from building inventory logs for our own gold products and we ended up realizing that this inventory log that we built, we can anchor into Bitcoin and completely run on public protocol software, which has zero central points of failure and happens to be ransomware proof. We’ve contracted with a major sovereign government licensed software that we anticipate will launch fairly soon. We’re very excited about this because we think it’s the first time that someone actually has a perfect inventory log.

IW: What do you see as some of the biggest threats to bitcoin?

AB: I think the regulatory environment is the biggest threat to commercialization of money licensing. There are a lot of various regulatory regimes and jurisdictions which create barriers of entry toward commercialization of the software. But regulation is probably the biggest detriment and biggest benefit. It’s a paradox because with more definition, it’s much easier for businesses to prepare. The public protocol is deemed to be a money equivalent from a regulatory standpoint and this type of software development ends up getting classified as a money service business typically, or a financial services business. These types of businesses have the highest regulatory regime of virtually any industry, it’s very onerous. So that’s why you have that kind of double edge sword, with the regulation being very, very costly and very beneficial in terms of clarity.

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IW: What are your business goals for the next 10 years?

Bitcoin gave us the first known ability to have trusted communication. Only through communication is trust actualized. So the hope is that we will eliminate prisoner’s dilemma game theory as the prevailing theory, motivation and incentive for our own personal behavior to interact with each other.

IW: How did your family business transition from gold to Bitcoin?

AB: This idea of trust is really what is synonymous with gold and Bitcoin. My parents were historians, and high school history teachers in New Orleans before they started their newsletter, their gold business, and their conferences and investment business. They have a deep appreciation for what’s come before and a deep respect of people, which is really the most important.

IW: Are you still involved in gold?

AB: We do have retail brands, but we’re phasing away from the retail portions of the business to focus exclusively on the enterprise side. It’s just the market respects that the capital expenditure so much more in the software. We now have eleven and a half years of experience in Bitcoin creating public protocol. The passion gets bigger effectively as the market availability gets bigger. Its a combination of our experience and knowledge with market timing and needs and ransomware economic costs are estimated at $6 trillion. Publicly traded company or politicians are heavily exposed.

IW: What are some of the threats your company can effectively avert?

AB: Digital takedowns and denial of service attacks is what I would call them. It’s basically like a digital filibuster where you don’t allow someone else to communicate and you just keep talking. So what happens is in today’s internet, because it’s free to access the internet as long as there’s a terminal to access the internet, is that bad actors take over computers, tied to the internet and then use those computers to initiate a tax on networks. And they’ll disable those networks from literally being able to serve any kind of service or good. So that is the biggest threat. Our company now serves government clients whereby cybersecurity is of the utmost importance. The Internet’s construct is centralized and anything centralized has single points of failure. It’s vulnerable.

Bitcoin is distributed as are other public protocols. And we see public protocols distribution as the future of the internet, and internet is the core of commerce because data is really the new trust, the new gold.

AB: Our business goals is to see our organization be at the forefront of serving commercially distributed cloud software, which is trusted. And I hope that as a result of that, we will be at the forefront of ushering in peaceful commerce, and this is going to usher in an era of world peace, because we’re going to eliminate the prisoner’s dilemma game theory as a society of kill or be killed. And we’re going to stop lying, cheating, stealing, and killing each other in groups or attempting to out collude each other, because we’ve always been driven by the fear of the unknown, and trust is binary as a zero or a one. So if we can’t be trusted, it’s a zero. It always rounds down. Bitcoin gave us the first known ability to have trusted communication. Only through communication is trust actualized. So the hope is that we will eliminate prisoner’s dilemma game theory as the prevailing theory, motivation and incentive for our own personal behavior to interact with each other.

These are all public protocols. We basically recognize Bitcoin as like a wild stallion and that in order to tame the stallion and to harness the energy, we need to put up a yoke or a chassis in order to channel that energy utilize the horse’s energy and horse power. So we figured out a similar thing to tout the world’s strongest processor along with the strongest public and private storage to put these layers metaphorically on Bitcoin that offers volatility of costs and how many keys you need to use.

We’re just trying to share this knowledge with the world and help as many people on the planet. The reality is that human beings are weak points because as long as we have uncertainty, whether we’re going to be lied, cheated, or stolen from, then people will have a tendency to do that to us. And so people that have the most wealth get stolen from the most and lied to. I think it’s important to minimize the number of people that you actually need to deal with. You just have to be so selective about the person and the placement and the levels of trust that you give them. And the realities are that our centralized ways of doing business are not secure. It’s the cognitive dissonance in reality. This is really going to help push in this commercialization of Bitcoin because its ransomware proof because you have to have these keys to access the network. That’s the big difference so the network can’t get abused.

Lead with love and go with the flow and we’re entering a world of access and leaving a world of ownership. Try to just keep positive, optimistic, and incremental and just focus on optionality and leverage and in our purpose and passion, which is really world peace, you know, through trusted commerce. And we think that that is all anchored and driven through Bitcoin and that’s really our mantra.

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COVER

Photos by Brittainy Newman 30

TIM DRAPER

The Visionary Venture Capitalist In many ways, Tim Draper personifies the stereotype of a Silicon Valley venture capitalist who became an overnight billionaire through some lucky bets in tech that made it big. But beneath the surface he is anything but typical. What sets Draper apart from some of his other Silicon Valley peers is his vision to anticipate the next big thing 15 years from now coupled with an ability to think outside of the box with a childlike optimism to identify untapped potential vs looking for potential failure while embracing mistakes made along the way. Here Tim Draper speaks to Impact Wealth Magazine about his thoughts on the pandemic and current investment landscape, what he is investing in, and how he is helping to create the next generation of entrepreneurs.

By Hillary Latos

IW: What are your thoughts on this “scam demic” lockdown?

TD: Here are my thoughts. The pandemic will probably end up killing almost a million people around the world. And the UN has come out with this report saying that 135 million people will die from starvation because of a lockdown. So our policy decision to lockdown is 135 times as bad as the pandemic itself, which doesn’t even include the additional domestic violence that is going on, the depression that’s happening and the increase in murder rates. The lockdown has caused interruptions in the supply chain as people aren’t doing business across borders anymore.

Through the internet we have a great working free market ecosystem with 8 billion people who are all working to serve somebody to make all our lives better. It’s very clear that capitalism makes sense and works for everybody to be part of this complex interconnected group of economic systems. When you have government control, it limits capitalism. And when we have a trade war or a border wall, we’re hurting a lot of people. Before we were tribal and now we are global. The pandemic was a way for the old dying lions to give their last roar. The dying lions are still trying to get back to being tribal.

So when you refer to a ‘scamdemic’, you could argue that it was a little odd that all of a sudden the CDC made this a big problem.

IW: With all of the free money being printed out of thin air, what are you doing to hedge against this massive inflation that’s about to hit?

TD: Now we have $13 trillion that has been printed and there was only $86 trillion in currency around the world which has led

to a 20%+ immediate devaluation of the dollar, whether it’s recognized in the marketplace or not. As they keep printing money it will cause more inflation. Some monetary experts would say that it will improve business, but we’re in a major recession. So those dollars are going to be worth even less because of that.

So where do you park your money? In the olden days you would put it into gold, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen anybody pay for Starbucks coffee with gold. You can move it to Bitcoin where you know there will only be 21 million of them made. Bitcoin is not subject to these whims of political forces, it’s global, open, transparent and frictionless.

You can use it to buy your Starbucks coffee or buy houses and tangible goods. If you and your money were stuck in a bad country like Syria, you could arrive in Greece and use your Bitcoin to start your life again.

There are many applications of Bitcoin that can’t be done with fiat currencies so it’s incredibly valuable. Not only do I think that Bitcoin itself will become more valuable over time, but I also think that with the dollar falling over time that Bitcoin is going to go much, much higher.

A lot of people will put cash into the stock market which just took off.

There was a lot of demand with very little supply in a short period of time which created incredible wealth for a lot of people. I would hope that it would all stay that way, but I don’t think it will if we go into a recession or a depression. And if you add inflation to that, it’s another bad sign. I think it may stay high flying with high valuations for another year or two. But after that, I think it’s going to have a pull back.

I don’t think I’d be putting more money into the stock market today, but I do like Coinbase, Carta or SpaceX.

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COVER

IW: Do you think there are risks with Bitcoin that you wouldn’t have with Fiat currencies?

TD: The regulatory issues are interesting because if countries clamped down on Bitcoin, the way China did, they’ll have a brain drain. So they do it at their own risk. The best entrepreneurs in the world will follow the best regulatory environments. A lot of people left China to go to Japan because Japan made Bitcoin a national currency. When Singapore became heavy handed with their regulatory laws they moved out of Singapore and went to Switzerland, Malta, Gibraltar, Wyoming, and Texas. The US is doing their best to keep technology while still protecting the small investor by regulating with a light touch thus allowing for more entrepreneurship and innovation.

Because bitcoin is watched over by a hundred thousand miners and anytime anything happens, the blockchain is watched over and verified, it’s actually safer than your dollars in the bank that are easily subjected to hackers.

IW: As a venture capitalist, how do you choose which companies to invest in?

TD: I’ve made many huge investment mistakes. But, but when I lose on those, I only lose my money one time, whereas I have had some big winners like Robinhood, which went up a thousand times. I invested when it had an $11 million valuation and it’s now $11 billion. I’ll invest my fund in 50 companies and I fully expect 20 of them to go out of business.

The question I ask is what if it works, how great will it be? And if the answer is not that great, then I don’t care. But if the answer is, this could be transformative and could really change things, then I’m interested. If it works, then that’s when I make my investment. A lot of other venture capitalists just focus on all the things that could go wrong, but they never really predict the one that goes right. But I think the true venture capitalists are always looking at what could go right. And if it goes right, how great will that be for the world or Mars and the moon. And I think that that is probably my best criteria.

The other criteria is to see the end. And this is one where you just have to be in a room with somebody and see how much this matters to them. What’s their passion and their enthusiasm level. How well have they researched it? How great will it be, how much have they thought about it? There are a bunch of companies where just one thing or another kind of change their business model and they became big successes. I never know quite when that’s going to happen and how it’s going to work.

But that’s what is part of the fun of being a venture investor.

IW: How does Draper University foster new talent?

TD: At Draper Associates we look at deal flow and we get thousands of pitches a year. And whenever anybody says something can’t be done, I always think, well how would you do that? That’s why I put together Draper University to train ordinary people with some passion or another to become entrepreneurs. They start with a

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problem then they move to find their solution and discover how to productize it. How do you make money with that product?

How do you grow? And how do you spread the word without product? How do you make your customers into your salesforce?

All of those things add up to where we can actually take them from the very beginning and grow with them. Draper University is also unique in the way we train people. We have to get them to unlearn the things they’ve learned in school. In school they learn, you get an A if you don’t make any mistakes but you’re in a cocoon and protected but also trapped. And we do the opposite, we say I will fail and fail again until I succeed. Our first line of the pledge is I will promote freedom at all costs. We teach people to focus on building this business and take some chances to do it.

I also think risk taking is something that is not taught in school. If it is, it’s taught very poorly. Entrepreneurs have to be as creative as they were when they were two years old. Otherwise they need Draper University to train them to be doing something extraordinary again.

At the end we take them through a big hackathon. We have some amazing speakers. We had Elon Musk at one point and also the founders of Airbnb. We also take them through survival training with Navy seals and special forces. Then we do business planning and they put together a two minute pitch for a panel of venture capitalists. And that’s a six week program. And with COVID, we had to shut that part down, but we created a two week zoom based equivalent of Draper University for $500, which has been very successful and well received.

My daughter is also involved as a venture capitalist who backs only women teams, and she’s done very well at making people money. She’s also proving that women can be great entrepreneurs. And she’s backing some extraordinary women.

W: Who are some of your most successful alumni?

TD: We’re only eight years old about, but we trained the three guys who created Quantum, which is a top 25 token company worth $7 billion now. We also had a woman, Surbhi Sarna who created a fiber line that runs up the fallopian tube and can detect if there’s cancer in there without damaging the fallopian tube that just got FDA approval, and she was bought up for $275 million. Only about a third of the people who go through actually go and build their business. The other two thirds either go back to school where their grades either go way up because they are more interested in something, or they go way down because they’re starting a business at the same time.

If they join a company they get promoted faster than anybody else because they are willing to fail and fail again or willing to stick their neck out and try stuff. When I worked at HP, it was a big corporation and nobody stuck their neck out. They were all afraid of losing their jobs. It’s very different from the entrepreneurial way, which is like, go, go, go… keep trying and keep failing and eventually get there. So I think it’s had a really positive effect on most, almost all of the people who’ve gone through it.

IW: What are you most passionate about in your investment portfolio right now?

TD: Well if I were to pick a company right now I’m particularly intrigued right now with something called unstoppable domains as no one can take those down. Big tech social media companies are taking away our free speech for a multitude of arbitrary reasons such as not liking what you said, or deeming it accurate and pulling it off.

With this company, you can put anything you want up there and no one can take it down. And I think that it will change free speech around the world and that’s going to be incredibly powerful.

I’ve made many huge investment mistakes.

But, but when I lose on those, I only lose my money one time, whereas I have had some big winners like Robinhood, which went up a thousand times. I invested when it had an $11 million valuation and it’s now $11 billion. I’ll invest my fund in 50 companies and I fully expect 20 of them to go out of business.

We put money into things that I think are going to happen sometime between now and 15 years from now. If I’m thinking about something that’s going to happen tomorrow, I’m too late. So I pay less attention to the media and the news, and a lot more attention to entrepreneurs who are futurists.

They are also allowing people to create their own crypto wallets, it’s pretty amazing. I’ve been all over FinTech for a long time. I’ll continue to do that. I’m also interested in how Bitcoin, the blockchain smart contracts, artificial intelligence and surveillance can change everything from banking, finance, commerce, to insurance and real estate and government, and all the big industries of the world.

I’m also interested in how data is transforming both diagnosis and therapeutics in the healthcare world, where the data compiled from the AI cloud medics outperform the average doctor in diagnosing people, and when combined the doctor did even better. This was only with medical records. You could add their genetic history, Fitbit results and the food they’ve eaten and if you put all that together you get a much better diagnosis. For therapeutics you’ve got computational biochemistry becoming the lab. So people don’t have to test every single chemical, they can compute and combine a drug with a particular disease and see which one catches and kills the disease. And one of our companies, Verge Genomics identified a drug that is 26 times as effective as Remdesivir which is going through FDA approval now.

The drugs you take will be based on different genetics, and all of that computation is going to be get better and better over time. I think that’s going to be a really valuable place to put some money.

These new technologies around AI and Bitcoin and smart contracts and surveillance can change the biggest industries in the world. And you could set up an insurance company that’s just a smart contract for all the premiums. When there’s a claim, you use surveillance and you can easily verify the claims. This can change the whole nature of insurance and 80% of what government does is insurance. I think gov tech will also be a really interesting field to go after.

This is where we invest. We put money into things that I think are going to happen sometime between now and 15 years from now.

If I’m thinking about something that’s going to happen tomorrow, I’m too late. So I pay less attention to the media and the news, and a lot more attention to entrepreneurs who are futurists.

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STYLE & FASHION

Shot on location at 66 Ninth Avenue, Residence 6, NY NY Offered at $26,500,000 www.66ninthave6thfloor.com/residence-six Exclusive Listing Agent: Jessica C. Campbell 917 621 7815 Courtesy of Nest Seekers International Art by Slim Aarons, Getty Images

TEAM CREDITS Photographer: Jaime Pavon @pavonphoto Fashion stylist: Sophie Davila @sophiesclosetst Model: Agnes Artych @agnesartych from State Management @statemgmt Hair: F.Wayne @HairByF.Wayne using Oribe for The Salon at Bergdorf Goodman Makeup: Makeup by: Ida Roseman @idamakeup for Trinny London Lighting Assistant: Diego Narvaez @diegolx10 Stylist Assistant: Camila Davila Retouching: Karla Cevallos @lolaretouch Location: 66 Ninth Avenue 34

Blazer: Nazarene Boots: Liz Clairbone Jewelry: lza by Silvia D’Avila Leather visor: Lack of Color

Blazer: Salisa Shoes: Altura

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Coat: Theory Trousers: Theory Hat: Nine West Shoes: Liz Clairbone

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Blazer: Moon River Jewelry: lza by Silvia D’Avila

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Hat: Adidas Sweater: Philosophy Trousers: Theory Shoes: Zara

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Sweater: Philosophy Trousers: Theory Shoes: Zara Earrings: Made in Ecuador 39

Blouse: Helmut Lang Trousers: Salisa Ring: lza by Silvia D’ Avila Shoes: Altura

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Blazer: Salisa Shoes: Altura

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REAL ESTATE

ASTON MARTIN RESIDENCES MIAMI

Captures The Art of Living

By Caroline Singer

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British icon of the automotive world embarks on its first real estate venture with an, expansion into luxury residential design

After more than a century of defining timeless elegance and British handcrafted luxury within the automotive world, Aston Martin is translating its precision engineering and design innovation for the company’s first ever foray into luxury residential development in downtown Miami at 300 Biscayne Boulevard Way. Applying the refined aesthetic of understated luxury to residential design, Aston Martin Residences Miami will be a 66 story tower to be completed in 2022 by global property developer, G&G Business Developments, founded

by CEO, German Coto and designed by Revuelta Architecture and Bodas Miani Anger Architects, globally renowned for their exceptional landmark properties. The 391 residences will feature spectacular panoramic vistas of Biscayne Bay and the Atlantic Ocean. The development will include seven penthouses and one superlative Triplex Penthouse–all featuring private pools and spacious terraces–complemented by a range of expansive one to five-bedroom residences and duplexes starting at $970,000 to $50 Million +.

Aston Martin’s design team, led by EVP and Chief Creative Officer, Marek Reichman, will design the interior and amenity spaces throughout the property to reflect Aston Martin’s timeless beauty.

Residents will be able to relax and unwind within 42,275 square feet of outstanding Sky Amenities spanning four levels, connected by a monumental glass staircase between the

building’s 52nd and 55th floors. World-class amenities will include a two-level fitness centre overlooking Biscayne Bay, spinning studio, boxing gym, virtual golf room, art gallery, chef’s kitchen, private dining room and catering kitchen, business centre, kids room, two cinemas, as well as a full-service spa, beauty salon and barber station. These exquisite spaces will be encased in a bold and unique sail-shaped, nautical-themed building to reflect the marina setting while offering superb views of the city and the ocean. Shared areas will include a beautiful infinity pool, Sky Bar and Lounge, pool deck and cabanas located on the 55th floor.

Residents will also enjoy direct access to Biscayne Bay via an exclusive superyacht marina located adjacent to the property, as the only deep-water marina in downtown Miami.

Every aspect of the Aston Martin Residences has been carefully considered to meet the needs of today’s modern cosmopolitan lifestyles, including a butler service that will encapsulate elite living at its very finest, on-call 24/7. The exclusive butler service will take the stress out of home management and offer luxury travel support and a host of other services to homeowners.

Completing the Aston Martin Residences sales centre, located adjacent to the development in downtown Miami, is a white Aston Martin Vulcan, one of only 24 examples of the brand’s multi million dollar 820bhp, all-carbon fibre supercar that delivers extreme performance. The owner of the Triplex Penthouse will receive the iconic piece of automotive art, engineered for track driving only.

Owners of the Signature residences will choose to receive either the special Miami Riverwalk Limited Edition DB11 or the Miami Riverwalk Limited Edition DBX – the first SUV launched by Aston Martin in 2020.

Custom elements such as crafted interiors, luxe materials and finishes. Each model is limited to just 47 vehicles, and those privileged to own one will possess a rare piece of history. The project is almost 60% sold, with construction scheduled for completion in 2022. For further information, visit www.astonmartinresidences.com or call (305) 456 7376t.

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REAL ESTATE

PRIVATE ISLANDS

Offer the Ultimate in Safety, Seclusion and Peace of Mind Amid Changing Times A Private Island Oasis. Located 147 miles southwest of Nassau in The Exumas, Blue Island is the largest private island currently on the market in The Bahamas offering 700 acres of pristine developable land and panoramic ocean views.

By Candice Beaumont

However, none of these islands have their own private jet runway so families have the inconvenience of having to transfer off their plane to a boat or small turboprop plane in order to land on their islands. An island with its own private jet runway that can accommodate large planes is a rarity. Even large islands with 10,000 residents and large hotels with significant tourism such as St. Barts lack their own private jet runway and have small airports that can only accommodate a small turboprop plane. Thus, Blue Island has one of the most unique assets in island ownership as it is the only island that has a full jet runway that can accommodate large planes such as Gulfstreams and Boeing jets to land directly on the island airport. Customs can be cleared on Blue Island, and there is no need for transfers which is an ultimate luxury.

The U.S.-based family who owns the island was concerned with security and felt that having a full jet runway that you can fly direct into from Europe, or elsewhere, provides a level of security that other places lack due to the fact that a large plane can come and go without stopovers. This provided the family a unique hedge against social unrest or political issues in other countries and a true off-thegrid getaway safe from virus pandemics or social and civil unrest.

Numerous billionaire families have chosen island ownership including Sir Richard Branson who lives full time at Necker Island in the British Virgin Islands, as well as other families whose islands are vacation getaways including Larry Page who owns Eutasia Island in the British Virgin Islands, Oracle Corp. CEO Larry Ellison who owns Lanai in Hawaii, philanthropist John Mallone who owns Little Sampson Cay in Exuma, The Bahamas, and actor Leonardo Di Caprio who owns Blackadore Caye Island in Belize.

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The airstrip is even more valuable as The Bahamian government will not issue any new licenses for private airstrips and has not issued any in the past 50 years. This is the only island in The Bahamas with a long private airstrip built for large planes that is 5,700-ft. long versus other islands whose airstrips are not more than 2,000 feet, limiting the size of aircraft that can land there.

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REAL ESTATE

Blue island is unique due to the large size of the island. To put it in perspective, Blue Island is bigger than the city of Monaco and the Vatican combined, making it one of the best billionaire island getaways.

The Bahamas has no income tax, capital gains tax, or estate tax so it is an ideal jurisdiction for ultra-high net worth individuals. The Bahamas is also politically stable, is a U.S. dollar-based economy, runs on British law and offers warm 80-degree year-round breezy beach weather with some of the most beautiful beaches in the world. The Bahamas is only a one-hour flight from Miami and a 3-hour flight from New York making it convenient for business tycoons whose time is valuable and one of the most ideal locations for island ownership.

Blue Island is a 700-acre island located in the Exuma Cays about 147 miles southwest of Nassau, offering safety and seclusion for those looking to trade congested urban environments for wideopen spaces, tropical mango and banana trees, fresh air, and miles of powdery white sand beaches and privacy with a white six-bedroom residence on the hilltop 90 feet above sea level.

“While private islands have always been a significant symbol of wealth and a bucket list item among high-net-worth individuals, they are even more in demand these days with all that is going on in the world,” said Steve Donovan, of Damianos Sotheby’s International Realty, who is the exclusive listing agent currently marketing Blue Island. “These locations offer the ultimate in social distancing, safety and seclusion.”

Travel to Blue Island is easy and discrete from the U.S or Europe via a private jet, and with customs and immigration available on the island, the entry process is seamless.

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Acquisitions of private islands are typically for leisure rather than investment purposes so the easier the island is to access the more appealing it is. While making a return on their investment is not top of mind for those who purchase private islands, buyers hope to at least recover their original investment. On average, monthly maintenance costs for private Islands depend on the amount and type of use-whether utilized as a private family sanctuary or as a rental property, for instance. The trend for many billionaire families including Sir Richard Branson and other island owners is to rent the island to others for additional income or to host retreats, parties and other events there during the year. The cost to maintain the island typically starts at about $200,000 and up depending on whether somebody is living there nine months out of the year versus only visiting occasionally.

Purchasers of private islands are also eligible for Permanent Residency status in The Bahamas, making the purchase of these properties even more appealing for those who can work or learn remotely. Permanent residency allows the holder to pass freely through immigration and there are no limits on the length of stay. People with this status are for all intents and purposes treated like Bahamians, except for the right to vote. Thus, the appeal of the Bahamas for celebrities including country music stars Faith Hill and Tim McGraw, who purchased 17-acre Goat Cay in 2006; director, actor and screenwriter Tyler Perry, who bought 20-acre White Bay Cay in 2009, business magnate Prince Aga Khan IV, who purchased Bell Island, as well as Johnny Depp, David Copperfield, Bernard Arnault who all own islands in The Bahamas.

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TRAVEL

Post-Pandemic Travel Planning:

PLANES, TRAINS & AUTOMOBILES

It would be an understatement to say that the coronavirus pandemic has throttled the travel industry, but the luxury sector is resilient and coming back strong! As you plan safety-minded meanderings into and throughout the New Year, here are a few great options for perennial favorite modes of jet set travel.

By Merilee Kern, MBA

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TRAVEL TO THE BOTTOM OF THE EARTH Premium private jet company Magellan Jets is working to keep its guests as safe as they are satisfied. The company has compiled a toolkit to help travelers stay healthy while navigating flu season and the continuing coronavirus crisis. Magellan Jets’ curated collection of guides and expert tips outlines best practices and safety measures people should remember before taking their next flight.

The healthy travel toolkit covers topics such as what travelers can do to prevent contracting the coronavirus, steps professional pilots take to ensure they don’t get sick while flying, as well as other helpful resources. Additionally, readers can learn how booking private jet travel for leisure or business can significantly decrease the risk of exposure to the coronavirus and other illnesses.

Should this inspire you to get out of Dodge, consider a trip to the bottom of the Earth!

Magellan Jets is now working in partnership with the industry-leading International Yacht Company (IYC) and White Desert to offer guests the trip of a lifetime to the South Pole, by way of Antarctica, to see the Emperor Penguins. This luxury 8-night adventure takes 12 guests at a time into the heart of Antarctica before venturing off to the South Pole.

IYC and Magellan Jets are working diligently to ensure the safest, most purely private way to travel. Magellan Jets will fly guests to Cape Town, where they will spend the night at One & Only prior to departing for Antarctica with White Desert on a plane equipped with the latest avionics and ski-equipped for landing on snow.

In Antarctica, guests will stay in state-of-theart sleeping pods at Whichaway Camp where their experienced team of chefs, hosts and guides will take care of every detail, allowing you to relax and enjoy your surroundings. At the beginning of the adventure, guests fly 2 hours along the coast to an emperor penguin colony of over 14,000 breeding pairs and their newly hatched chicks. Tourists only rarely visit this colony and, as a consequence, witnessing these birds in their natural habitat is one of the most surreal experiences on earth.

As you fly from Antarctica to the South Pole, you will experience a true sense of remote-

ness, for as far as the eye can see, the white horizon meets the pure blue sky. The South Pole, the bottom of the earth and the holy grail of early explorers. At the designated marker there is no more east, south or west on the planet, only north, and you will be able to walk around the world in just a few paces!

Then you will fly back to their wilderness camp at 83ºS to overnight and join the select few who have ever spent a night in the beauty of the high polar plateau. You will be well looked after as you experience camping in one of the wildest places on earth.

After a night spent as a true explorer, you will fly back to the main camp and celebrate your momentous journey. With up to only 12 clients on each adventure and professional polar explorers as your guides, the day’s itineraries are tailored to each individual. Make your choice from gentle treks and picnics overlooking the ice waves, to more adrenaline-fueled activities.

After the trials and confinement of Covid-19, there is perhaps be no better place than Antarctica to escape, reflect and reignite your passion to explore. With limited group size, strict bio-security measures and the naturally inert landscape, Antarctica is one of the safest places to visit in 2020 and beyond.see, the white horizon meets the pure blue sky. The South Pole, the bottom of the earth and the holy grail of early

explorers. At the designated marker there is no more east, south or west on the planet, only north, and you will be able to walk around the world in just a few paces!

Then you will fly back to their wilderness camp at 83ºS to overnight and join the select few who have ever spent a night in the beauty of the high polar plateau. You will be well looked after as you experience camping in one of the wildest places on earth.

After a night spent as a true explorer, you will fly back to the main camp and celebrate your momentous journey. With up to only 12 clients on each adventure and professional polar explorers as your guides, the day’s itineraries are tailored to each individual. Make your choice from gentle treks and picnics overlooking the ice waves, to more adrenaline-fueled activities.

After the trials and confinement of Covid-19, there is perhaps be no better place than Antarctica to escape, reflect and reignite your passion to explore. With limited group size, strict bio-security measures and the naturally inert landscape, Antarctica is one of the safest places to visit in 2020 and beyond.

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LUXURY LIVING

TRAVEL BACK IN TIME

GIFT AN EXTRAORDINARY CUSTOM CAR

For those road warriors who revere the open highway with the wind in their hair, there’s a much better way to bestow a vehicle on your beloved this season. Don’t just buy a car and put a bow on it, let your loved one build their dream car from start to finish and drive away with a truly customized vehicle down to the smallest detail!

Oenophiles rejoice! Despite the pandemic and recent wildfires, Napa Valley is open and welcome visitors. While in this revered region, do yourself a favor and book a ride on the Napa Valley Wine Train. This isn’t so much a mode of transportation but rather a time machine transporting passengers back to an era when the journey was as scintillating as the destination, itself. Particularly wellsuited for couples seeking quality together time, this excursion offers an elegant sojourn through the heart of Napa Valley in a refined, history-rich atmosphere befitting the lush countryside through which it passes.

Duly complementing the drop-dead gorgeous vistas are gourmet victuals and varietals-a-plenty. The train itself is a wonder to behold. The expertly restored and maintained antique Pullman cars gleam with brass and Honduran mahogany while etched original glass and swanky armchairs evoke the early 20th century spirit of luxury travel.

One of the few active historic passenger railroads remaining in the United States,

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the Napa Valley Wine Train offers a tempting variety of tours, events and packages, including gourmet dining experiences for both lunch and dinner. As goes without saying, the wine offerings on the Napa Valley Wine Train are ample, and impressive given the space restraints. Or, passengers can bring their own bottle on board.

The Napa Valley Wine Train isn’t just a train ride—it’s an institution that echoes the glory days of train travel, with fine dining service, multiple course meals cooked to order, Napa Valley scenery and ultimate relaxation aboard an exquisitely restored vintage rail car.

Of course, as a result of the newly released travel restrictions, the closure of its winery partners and in the interest of the health of its passengers and staff, Napa Valley Wine Train journeys were temporarily canceled but will be back on track as pandemic conditions improve—and poised to show you a spectacular time.

E.C.D. Automotive Design (E.C.D.), the country’s leading specialist for custom restored Defenders and classic Land Rovers, has released a limited number of exclusive Ultimate Platinum Cards for the upcoming holiday season. These black stainless-steel cards are valued at $200,000, so you can gift the opportunity to build a vehicle that is one-of-one, meaning no one else in the world will have a car like the one your lucky recipient designs.

LUXE CHAUFFEUR SERVICE EVERYWHERE YOU JET SET

Boutique Resort Hotel on Seneca Lake Wine Trail in Beautiful Geneva, N.Y. One of the world’s most beautiful inns.

Bride’s Luxury, convenience and safety-minded travelers are loving Blacklane’s global chauffeur service, which brings travelers peace of mind across 50 countries. The crew’s health, safety, reliability, and technology gives guests door-to-door stress-free travel.

Blacklane chauffeurs clean vehicles and disinfect all points of contact before and after rides. They offer guests hand sanitizer, wear masks, and provide masks to guests who need them. Their chauffeurs also check their temperature daily and air out vehicles between rides.

Blacklane travelers receive fair, fixed and allinclusive rates and all rides are carbon-neutral.

Plus, all Blacklane chauffeurs are commercially licensed and insured. Airport pickups include flight tracking, meet-and-greet service, and up to one hour of free chauffeur waiting time.

The food is extraordinarily good!

Bon Appetit

Intercity rides give guests a private doorto-door alternative to short-haul flights and trains. Upgrade your travels at Blacklane.com or on the free Blacklane app.

WINTER GETAWAY PACKAGES 315.789.7190 www.genevaonthelake.com

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LUXURY LIVING

MIAMI’S

Winter Season Heats Up Though most of the world is experiencing a second wave of lockdowns, Miami is heading towards its busy winter season with the snowbirds from the Northeast heading south.

By Hillary Latos

One of the hotspots to grace the South Beach culinary scene is Mila. Overlooking Lincoln Road, this 13,000 square foot indoor and outdoor rooftop lounge, restaurant and mixology bar offers a haute “Mediterasian” menu and cocktail program that blends the flavors of the Mediterranean and Japan. The chic space transports you to the Cycladic Islands of Greece which was designed by Olya Volkova who infused Japan’s Wabi Sabi philosophy of embracing the beauty of nature. Natural unfinished wood with sculptural elements with a neutral palette create a sanctuary that brings nature indoors.

Executive Chef Nicholas Mazier created a delicious Asian centric menu that uses traditional Japanese ingredients and techniques with an infusion of Mediterranean spices. Land and sea specialties of the house include loup de mer with fleur de sel nigiri sushi, lobster atop butter lettuce and candied walnut salad, shwarma spiced wagyu dumplings with butter ponzu, robata seared wagyu, and diver scallops topped with foie gras and squid ink tuile.

Offering an extensive cocktail program, MILA tapped Diageo World Class award winning mixologists Jennifer Le Nechet and Mido Yahi who created beverages that pay homage to the past and evoke the spirit of Euadaimonia- the Greek word that describes the happy state and peace of mind when traveling. To create these exotic elixirs, this dynamic duo uses unique ingredients including beeswax, smoked honey syrup, black walnut bitter, floral sake, sesame orgeat syrup, basil syrup, a signature Bloody Mary spice blend, and butterfly pea tea infused vodka. To engage in a full mixology experience, grab a seat at the V by Mila bar on the terrace for a front row view into the world of bespoke cocktailing. Using the bar as a stage, mixologists concoct eight different theatrical cocktails using liquid nitrogen, foams, gels, dry ice, no ice and fire for an unforgettable show. www.milarestaurant.com

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Traymore by Michael Schwartz in the COMO Metropolitan Miami Beach is the latest outpost by the beloved South Florida restaurateur. At the helm of Traymore is Executive Chef Jorge Negron who was raised in Puerto Rico and has a penchant for South Florida ingredients that are harmonized with Southeast Asian flavors that reflect the COMO Hotel group’s heritage. Specialties of the Thai inspired menu include royal red shrimp marinated in coconut milk and lime, beef carpaccio with heart of palm and wok-charred wild salmon with four-sprout salad and the Hot and Sour Cauliflower. Choose to dine alfresco along the South Beach boardwalk or inside the casually chic Art Deco inspired dining room.

Enjoy one of the best Happy Hours on the Beach (with 50% off signature cocktails and mixed drinks) from 4- 8 pm at the perennially hip Sling Bar that draws its flavors from Malay, Indian, Chinese, and Indonesian influences. As an avid experimenter, Mixologist Travell Miller has created unique signature cocktails that combine savory and sweet with flavors of the East. Some of his refreshing concoctions include a curry colada with passionfruit, Singapore Sour with chrysanthemum infused Bombay Sapphire and lemongrass bitters, and the SB Sling.

For a little pampering and glam reset before a night out on the town stop by the Sean Donaldson Beauty Salon, which offers a full range of professional services from haircuts and color to makeup applications and signature facials with oxygen. As one of Miami’s best kept secrets, Sean Donaldson has been styling some of the biggest celebrities in Miami and Richard Branson’s Necker Island, with locals and visitors dropping in to get their beauty fix. Enjoy services in a chic and airy minimalist setting with two convenient locations on Lincoln Road in South Beach or in Downtown Brickell. seandonaldsonhair.com

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LUXURY LIVING

The Post Pandemic Future for the

WINE AND SPIRITS INDUSTRY

By Lazarus Kaufman

When it comes to sourcing and importing premium wines and spirits from around the world, Vinterra Associates is leading the way.

Based in Miami, FL, Vinterra is a boutique wine and spirits consulting, brokerage and import/ wholesale services company, and a joint venture between Lazarus Wines and Spirits LLC and Milcham Trading LLC with access to the entire U.S. and international markets, cruise lines and Duty-free. LWS and MT are licensed in the US for the importation and sales of alcoholic beverages with wholesale permits in the states of Florida, Texas and Nevada. Â

*<PM@IO .@MMD@M *< !PQÂ&#x2018;@ MPO ,4 &'12-07 For over two centuries, the house style of Laurent-Perrier has been one of freshness, elegance and purity. In the 1950s, Laurent-Perrier became one of the first Champagne houses to use only stainless steel fermentation tanks, which maximize these qualities in our Champagnes.

2&# *#," 55% Chardonnay, 35% Pinot Noir, 10% Meunier The blend is made from a select percentage of the first and finest pressing of �uice. �ith appro�imately 100 individual crus, or villages, La CuvÊe has a rating of 94% on the Êchelle des crus. About 30% of the blend is comprised of reserve wine in order to ensure consistency of flavor and style.

4','$'! 2'-, ," %',% After blending, La CuvĂŠe NV ages in our cellars for a minimum of four years. Magnums age for at least five years. A light dosage of 9 g/L of sugar is added to La CuvĂŠe after disgorging, resulting in a fresh and crisp cuvĂŠe.

2 12',% ,-2#1 AppeArAnce: A pale gold in color. �ine bubbles feed a persistent mousse.

AromA: A delicate nose with hints of fresh citrus and white flowers.

TAsTe: �he wine�s comple�ity is e�pressed in successive notes such as vine peach and white fruit notes. A perfect balance between freshness and delicacy with persistent fruit flavors on the finish.

1#04',% ," . '0',% Serve between 46°F and 50°F �his fresh and pure Champagne is perfect for an apÊritif. �ts citrus and white fruit notes and its remar�able balance, supported by a subtle effervescence, ma�e it an ideal accompaniment to poultry and the finest fish.

ChampagneLaurentPerrier

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LaurentPerrierUS

ChampagneLPUSA

VAâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s scope of services cover hospitality, retailers, wholesalers and duty-free markets.  These services include regulatory compliance, logistics, national importing, distribution, and more. The Advisory Services include but are not limited to business structure, routeto-market planning, import/export supply chain, sales forecasting, organizational effectiveness, strategic partnerships, joint ventures, and negotiation support.   The traditional pre-pandemic sales model has been forced to change as illustrated by the dire consequences the entire hospitality industry is suffering. However, the pandemic is showing the way forward with explosive online and direct-to-consumer sales. Multiple companies across multiple platforms are experiencing incredible growth -- The latestâ&#x20AC;ŻNielsenâ&#x20AC;Żdata shows alcohol e-commerce has more than doubled compared to this time one year ago. Wine has enjoyed the largest success, making up nearly 70% of total online retail sales tracked in the report.  VA focuses on new online platforms to engage with the market and launch new brands as well as increase sales and distribution for existing portfolios. With that mission and vision, VA has formed two important partnerships.  The first with Wine Genius (http://www. thewinegenius.com), a premium wine customization company which sells post-retail added-value services for highend personalized labels, etched bottles, and gift packaging directly to consumers and non-alcohol-licensed businesses.Â

The second partnership is with Choco, an appdriven ordering software built for restaurants as well as licensed wine and spirits retailers (http://www.choco.com). The Berlin-based startup is funded by such high-end investors as Coatue Management, Bessemer Venture Partners, Atlantic Labs, and others. With Choco, the VA portfolio will be available to a greater number of licensed retailers and restaurants while simplifying the ordering process.   By utilizing new platforms, VA can have a greater presence in the trade and offer brand growth without the expensive overhead of traditional distribution models. We further distinguish ourselves by using the expertise of our management team to hand-select products that can thrive in these new sales and marketing environment. VA will offer a top-quality bespoke portfolio, outstanding customer service and the efficiencies of online ordering.Â

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55

THOUGHT LEADERSHIP

EXECUTIVES IMPART ‘What it Takes’ to Lead in Today’s Business Landscape

It’s fairly indisputable that a prospering company or organization wouldn’t be enjoying any notable measure of success without highly effective leadership. Potent leadership is, in fact, often a primary driver of business innovation, development and growth overall.

By Merilee Kern, MBA

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Commanding a team, department or company at-large isn’t (or shouldn’t be) about the prestige, accolades, lofty titles or that sweet corner suite. Rather, genuine leaders are able to establish and sustain a mindset that profoundly resonates with the masses—one that galvanizes committees, groups, companies, and organizations in a common mission. Of course, there’s isn’t a one-size-fits-all leadership style that every CEO “must” adopt. In fact, much is learned by trial-and-error throughout a leader’s oft jagged trajectory to the top.

Successful leaders certainly can—and should—play to their innate strengths and abilities. However, those that go overand-above to recognize and parlay those of key stakeholders, recognizing (and being willing to admit) their own abilities aren’t enough, often exceed achievement expectations. To do this effectively, a leader must maintain an uber-awareness of the human resource assets at hand.

Towards this end, it’s imperative for leaders to identify their superstar players across all departments while also staying in-tune with the proverbial “pulse” of their workforce overall. But this is easier said than done amid a widening gap among the c-suite and “everyone else” that’s sure to make doing so a bit more complex. A recent Forbes online article cited that “an important challenge facing US leaders in 2020 is the growing generation gap in attitudes and capabilities between themselves and workers soon to be entering the labor market,” as asserted by Rob Anthony—a professor of management at the Boston campus of Hult International Business School. This Forbes article also offered results of a study conducted by organizational advisory firm Korn Ferry, which put “the average age for CEOs at 58, chief HR officers at 55 and CFOs at 53. At the other end of the spectrum, the post-millennial Generation Z will start to turn 23 and soon command the largest share of the US labor force.”

Relative to mindsets, this widening age gap will also surely breed emotional rifts that can further alienate an inflexible or stubborn c-suite. Another Forbes online article underscored the importance of leaders ensuring every employee understands their organization’s purpose. This Forbes report noted that, “in the past, most employees focused on their paychecks and job titles. Times have changed.

Purpose matters more than ever before.

Organizations who are ready for this change, who are organized enough to respond to these changes and who can operate as a tight cohesive unit will not only better survive seismic shifts in the market, but also actually thrive in the face of such profound competition and other evolution.

Ken Thompson, AlignOrg Individuals who have a clear sense of purpose are more likely to stick around and love their jobs.” This particular article also cited a study (registration required) finding that “nine out of ten workers were willing to make less money to do more meaningful work.” So, a leader with his or her ear to the ground, with a keen understanding of what will motivate a team, can be a make or break differential.

With the modern business landscape changing so profoundly, I connected with a few business leaders who are known for being particularly progressive for some perspective. Below they share some philosophies on “what it takes” to lead in this competitive and transformative new decade.

Nimble, Organized and Ready Leadership requires influencing others to accomplish the company’s mission, and a key is to provide employees with adequate tools to be flexible, organized and purposedriven. This is according to Ken Thompson of AlignOrg, who believes that experienced leaders curate great and well-equipped teams through strategic planning, organizational design and change management.

“Organizations today don’t have the luxury of stability since they’re an ever-increasing change in markets, customers, and technology,” Thompson notes. “Organizations who are ready for this change, who are organized enough to respond to these changes and who can operate as a tight cohesive unit will not only better survive seismic shifts in the market, but also actually thrive in the face of such profound competition and other evolution.

Leaders are Activists In our brave new world of rapid change and complexity, there is no single person who can really direct an intricate business.

A lone individual can only encourage those involved to think differently, which is a key argument as to why leaders can be considered activists. This is particularly true for those who promote change and coordinate the efforts of others to help them achieve goals without actually “controlling” them.

Chris Stewart, CEO of brightbeam, is a deeprooted leader, activist and 20-year supporter of charitable and education-related causes.

As a parent himself, Chris leads brightbeam’s network of education activists under a single mission: to demand better education and a brighter future for every child.

When asked how he gained such a powerful voice fighting for the educational opportunities of all children, Stewart remarked, “It’s because 29 years ago, when I had my first child, I became a parent with a problem. I didn’t have a great education myself and I didn’t have many resources. But, I had a kid that I loved and I was determined to give him a better life than what I had.”

Today, Stewart fights to provide millions of families with the tools, knowledge, skills and confidence to fight for their own children’s ability to receive a quality education. As far as Stewart is concerned, the future of education in this country shouldn’t be grounded in empowering parents, but rather by putting them in power.

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THOUGHT LEADERSHIP

If leadership provides direction, it should come from many where the collective wisdom prevails, rather than just one dictatorial voice.

Chris Stewart.

CEO, brightbeam

Stewart upholds that same premise when it comes to leading his organization, which he does through a distributive leadership model. “If leadership provides direction, it should come from many where the collective wisdom prevails, rather than just one dictatorial voice,” Stewart says. This mindset led Stewart to establish a chief leadership team at brightbeam. “Operationally, of course, it was important to have a group of smart, influential individuals leading the work of the organization, but it was also important for external stakeholders to recognize the power of a strong bench,” Stewart notes. “I am attempting to change the world. That’s a big mission and I can only achieve it by building relationships with top-notch people.”

To lead today, in a world where there is an abundance of passionate, talented people who want to make a difference, Stewart knows he doesn’t have to be the smartest person in the room just because he holds the title of CEO. A Winning Leaders Key to Success Andrew Wyatt, head coach at Andrew Wyatt Leadership, LLC, acknowledges that the modern business landscape has clearly shifted but also notes that, as the saying goes, “the more things change, the more they remain the same.” That is why he feels it’s vital for a leader to avoid focusing on trends or on sentiment that are ever-changing and instead focus on principles, which largely remain constant. This, he asserts, is the foundation of winning leadership.

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According to Wyatt, winning leadership requires a ruthless application of one key leadership principle in particular: that effective leaders guide from the inside-out.

Meaning, before any leader can successfully lead others, one must lead them self. Wyatt offers these three ways to accomplish this: 1) establish your credibility, 2) build your following and 3) lead with impact. And, the order of execution is apparently vital.

Customer Speed Hari Abburi is a transformative thinker and leader who believes in centering leadership “at the speed of the customer.” This is a nonego-driven approach that directly concentrates on what a customer is thinking and experiencing in the present. “When leaders stay focused on anticipating customer needs and keeping their teams’ customer-centric, a better product or service is produced,” he says.

Here’s Wyatt’s advice: Like building a skyscraper, leadership first requires excavation before elevation. This is how one establishes credibility. It starts with an inward look. The leader must know the truth before taking the next step to build a following. People follow truth, and most have a natural ability to discern it.

Building a following requires the leader to look outward to draw followers inward.

This is the principle of servant leadership through which a leader must “engage” their followers in order to build a genuine and certainly impassioned following in return.

Finally, to lead with impact, the leader will need to be not only engaged but also current and relevant, able to adapt to the changing landscape without compromising the truth.. Winning leadership understands and employs this cyclical process.

In this chase to understand how customers transfer their experiences from an unrelated situation on to a company, Abburi views leadership narrowing down to a few critical elements: curiosity, visual thinking, ability to articulate a clear purpose, using design as a key principle for everything done does and simplicity of execution.

“I have worked and lived in several countries and with responsibilities for over 50 countries and have seen patterns emerge, notes Abburi. “Curiosity and imagination are two universal key elements shared by leaders across cultures, ethnicities and industries.

Curiosity is the best attribute a leader can have, as it drives the kind of imagination that solves problems and spurs innovation.”

Pursuing New Markets Great leaders throughout history are known for not shying away from new processes, technologies and, most importantly, new markets.

Instead, they have an inherent ability to “see” emerging trends that others do not. Not only that, they take action to collaborate with key creative partners to realize early-stage success in these newly emerging sectors.

Orna Azulay did just that. As founder and president of Abington Speech Pathology Services, Inc. and the RemoteSpeech.com teletherapy platform, she significantly expanded the reach of her company—now a global powerhouse—by approaching an existing therapy protocol in a new and more effective way.

An experienced business development professional, when Orna opened the business 20 years ago, she saw a business opportunity in a big HMO provider who was looking to have relationships with satellite clinics. Although speech teletherapy was still a new idea in the market compared to traditional therapy, Azulay knew the potential and convinced more clients to share her vision and come on board.

Filling in gaps is how great leaders realize great businesses. Thinking outside the box, trying new things even amid naysayers and trying to fulfill that empty niche in sustainable and scalable ways can catapult one’s company to incredible heights.

It’s a Marathon, Not a Sprint Great leadership is an art that requires a combination of several skills and qualities to be successful. Castle Negotiations CEO Ruth Shlossman urges the importance of thinking long-term as a leader. “Developing a ten-year plan to withstand any expected or unexpected circumstances is how great leaders stay afloat,” Shlossman says. “Keeping the bigger picture in mind will help create a culture that believes, plans and aptly executes.”

Now that we are entrenched in a fresh new decade, it’s a great time to recalibrate your leadership approach to be one that’s more aware, sensitive and adaptive to those inevitable threats, weaknesses, trials, and tribulations.

Being an agile, opportunistic, customer-centric and activist-oriented leader with planning prowess makes the difference between realizing success versus true greatness.

Impact Wealth Features Editor and Forbes Business Council Member Merilee Kern, MBA is an internationally-regarded brand analyst, strategist and futurist who reports on noteworthy industry change makers, movers, shakers and innovators across all categories, both B2C and B2B. This includes field experts and thought leaders, brands, products, services, destinations and events. Merilee is Founder, Executive Editor and Producer of “The Luxe List” as well as Host of the nationally-syndicated “Savvy Living” TV show. As a prolific consumer and business trends, lifestyle and leisure industry voice of authority and tastemaker, she keeps her finger on the pulse of the marketplace in search of new and innovative must-haves and exemplary experiences at all price points, from the affordable to the extreme. Her work reaches multi-millions worldwide via broadcast TV (her own shows and copious others on which she appears) as well as a myriad of print and online publications. Connect with her at www.

TheLuxeList.com and www.SavvyLiving.tv / Instagram www.Instagram.com/LuxeListReports / Twitter www.Twitter. com/LuxeListReports / Facebook www.Facebook.com/LuxeListReports / LinkedIN www.LinkedIn.com/in/MerileeKern.

Merilee Kern

***Some or all of the accommodations(s), experience(s), item(s) and/or service(s) detailed above may have been provided or arranged at no cost to accommodate if this is review editorial, but all opinions expressed are entirely those of Merilee Kern and have not been influenced in any way.***

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Family Office Association and Impact Wealth Magazine Host an

INVESTMENT WORKSHOP IN MIAMI Family Office Association hosted an Investment Workshop in Miami on December 3rd 2020 in coordination with Impact Wealth Magazine at Aston Martin Residences in Miami.

The workshop began with a discussion on investments with asymmetrical risk profiles and focused on bitcoin. Many global family offices have become more active investing in bitcoin as an asset class. Zachery Harding, of Delta Capital Partners who had flown in from Jamaica then spoke on The Right Now Renaissance - Authentic ESG Impact in The Caribbean. Art collector and investor Libbie Mugrabi spoke about art as an investment class and how she trusts her Picasso and Warhol collection to maintain value more than any other asset class.

Leading family office CIO and investor Candice Beaumont concluded the session by giving an The evening concluded with a cocktail overview of how coronavirus has affected asset party generously sponsored with libaallocation and global investment portfolios. tions, imported wine and champagne

by Vinterra Associates along with our lodging partner Hotelplanner.com The Family Office Association is an exclusive community among the world’s most prosperous families. Here successful families connect and share within a community that is as extraordinary as they are. Here you will be able to turn to peers for the specialized expertise and resources specific to wealthy families and single family offices. It is these connections, together with proprietary research, practical tools and methodologies, and access to top experts and thought leaders, that have made the Family Office Association so valued by its members.

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www.familyofficeassociation.com/ angelo@familyofficeassociation.com Direct Line: 203-570-2898

THOUGHT LEADERSHIP

NEXT GEN LEADERSHIP in Turbulent Times

By Jason Ma Parallel to what I can envision up ahead today, we envisioned then major economic recovery in the years ahead. Worldwide growth opportunities are abundant for real leaders and entrepreneurs. As what I do includes profoundly mentoring, guiding, and developing next-generation leaders, I would like to highlight some of what I learned.

Leadership, and developing leaders who are humble team players who are groomed to lead the family business, while making valuable contributions to the company and the world are the focus of most parents. In an ever changing world whereby the next generation kids education has been disrupted, schools have closed and gone online with limited physical contact to teachers, mentors and friends due to the global pandemic leadership is at the top of corporate leaders and parents minds alike.

“Full Sail Ahead” was the theme of one of the eight annual Forbes Global CEO Conferences to which I was privileged to be invited and attended before Forbes Media was acquired. This one was a decade ago but left an indelible impression on key leadership lessons that are timeless.

The unique gathering focused on the determination of billionaires, tycoons, and other global business leaders, including those who own or run family enterprises and family offices, to go “full sail ahead” in search of new growth opportunities in volatile times. The panels examined the ways in which CEOs are thriving on adversity and identifying opportunities. The sessions also featured in-depth discussions on human capital, social responsibility and philanthropy, and leadership.

The Forbes event team wrote: “When the sea is calm, anyone can hold the helm. In volatile times, world business leaders take on the role of master mariners. They know how to set a course through the aftermath of the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, outwit the forces of nature, keep their ship on an even keel, and head towards safer ports that promise more growth. The journey of the master mariners is riddled with aftershocks from the crisis, but glory awaits those who surmount them with determination and help create a better future.”

Leadership starts with a strong value system.

Paul Tagliabue, then Chairman of the Board at Georgetown University (now my elder Gen Z daughter’s alma mater) and former Commissioner of the National Football League (NFL) in the United States, advised: “What matters are value systems, skills, supply and demand, rewards. Service to others is core.

Passion is a must.” Rich Karlgaard, Publisher of Forbes magazine, quoted a very successful CEO in Silicon Valley: “I optimized for values before I optimized for business.” Amen.

“Smart people aren’t leaders. Smart and wise people are. Focus on the wisdom part,” comments Shaukat Aziz, former Prime

Minister of Pakistan, reflecting on his years of vacationless challenges leading a country in turmoil. Leaders show character, communicate well, demonstrate compassion, dislike overly political “yes people,” listen well, and get the best collaborative effort. A leader finds and works with the right people. Leadership today is about influence, not titles. A leader is passionate about the whys and vision of an idea and knows how to get there.

Leadership can start as early as a teen stu dent. Thirteen years ago, as a loving father, observant globetrotter, and education technology CEO, I saw that most young people (including my own two daughters) felt angsty or lost.

High achievers were often stressed out or anxiety-ridden, and almost all students hadn’t unleashed their full potential. Wasted or “undertapped” potential, I thought. What if I help them really shine, win, grow, and be happier— with greater impact and long-term gains?

I also noticed a dearth of truly high-quality, next-generation leaders around the world.

Thus, I decided to dedicate my second career to transforming young achievers, preparing them for admission to great universities, mentoring them to develop powerful mindsets and soft skills, and guiding them to enter and thrive in high-end careers as rising, impactful leaders.

Looking back, I profoundly added education and mentoring in addition to “rainmaking” and speaking as my own skill sets in my now 36 years in the technology, education, real estate, and other industries around the world.

Privileged to be known these days as the Chief Mentor of Next-Gen Leaders in family office and high-level circles, I often ponder. Part of what’s important to me is to hone into my students high-quality, pragmatic “3EQ”” (emotional, social, and leadership intelligence), soft skill sets, strategies (in global business, school, and personal success), and execution. My students range from high-achieving Gen Z to Millennials to Gen X C-suite leaders, while I often “partner” with Gen X, Boomer, and even elder matriarchs and patriarchs for their collective success.

I love it when my students meaningfully learn, contribute, achieve, grow, connect, and succeed, given their life-stages and key goals and milestones most important to them.” Work, give, forgive, learn, connect, play, and live with passion. These actions will carry you toward your next-level success with well-being.

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THOUGHT LEADERSHIP

BUILDING THE CARIBBEAN of the Future

By Janelle Brown

To understand the formation of Delta Capital Partners, a Jamaican based private equity company, you would first have to understand the problem that they are responding to: How do we build the Caribbean of the future?

For decades Caribbean finance has focused on standard raises for traditional investments. Jamaican business leader Zachary Harding, however, feels confident that much more can be done within the investment sector, to truly be the catalyst that evolves Caribbean economies. In June of 2020 he co-founded Delta Capital partners along with Hugh Croskery (founder of the near 50 year old Stocks & Securities Limited Jamaica) in order to create an ecosystem of value and innovation that is meant to accelerate the progress and profitability of the region.

Delta Capital Partners (DeltaCap) looks at deals differently. Drawing on world-class expertise and hands-on experience their offerings are tailored to the needs of modern Caribbean nations. “What other people call ‘deals’ we call ‘solutions’.” says Harding, “Investment is about value and that doesn’t just mean money. We curate solutions that will change industries, systems, and of course our everyday lives. At DeltaCap we are always looking at how our investment solutions better the lives of people in our island network, not just today but forever.”

In response to the changing needs of Caribbean the company focuses on offering a customized suite of alternative financing arrangements in high impact arenas. DeltaCap is built to focus exclusively on bespoke 62

You want to be the pebble in the pond that creates the ripple for change.

Tim Cook private equity opportunities which deepen wealth-driven relationships across the region. The firm has verticals which include (among others) innovations in agri-business that would resuscitate the unsustainable sugar industry, Telemedicine solutions which disrupt severe deficits in access to healthcare, and innovations in Fintech which will bring the vast majority of Caribbean citizens in to the age of digital finance for the first time.

“Our real passion is to make a difference to the lives of our people. As a Jamaican who has lived and worked at the highest level across the Caribbean, I can say we have an excess of talent and I would go as far as to say, a glut of genius.” Harding shares “The true poverty of the Caribbean stems from a lack of opportunity. DeltaCap aims to curate investments that will provide the Caribbean with an authentic, structured platform for continuously meaningful opportunities.”

Delta Capital Partners is represented by a high-caliber and experienced cadre of Caribbean experts with deep linkages backed by

world-class capabilities. The teams board boasts power brokers and influencers. This includes government advisors, legal powerhouses, international economists, and regional financial veterans. These strengths provide the firm with significant competitive advantages. “Our efforts far exceed trading, speculation, and arbitrage.

We understand that the success of future generations is at stake, so we go above and beyond to carry our solutions over the finish line.

Our research is extensive, and we are hands on.

The beauty of the Caribbean is that everyone is close knit, and we have the access to go in and meet the people who run it, observe operations, and really go deep on the numbers. We cut through red tape and bureaucracy, using the full weight of our network and skills to execute an investment from start to finish.”

Harding notes that in developing nations money must have meaning in order to truly be useful “The Caribbean has had wealth for centuries, from pirates to hotel moguls this isn’t a new concept. But what is most important is what money represents to economies that are just on the verge of breaking through. For us we have the raw materials, the human resources, and most importantly the will and ability to execute.

Money merely unlocks the possibilities and opens the door for true economic evolution.” www.deltacapcaribbean.com

FEMALE ENTREPRENEURSHIP

By Didi Wong

Didi Wong

Successful Entrepreneurship is about successful leadership. Successful leadership requires strong self-confidence. Having strong self-confidence leads to making efficient and accurate decisions. When I was one of the resident speakers on the Think and Grow Rich World Legacy Tour in 2019, I had the opportunity to pick which Success Principle I wanted to present on, out of Napolean Hill’s thirteen that he wrote about in his book.

sorts of businesses like female gaming for women empowerment, personality test for finding your strengths, television which inspires billions a day, movies to trigger thoughts and discussions, Ivy-league online courses to help the younger generation to become young entrepreneurs and more. Alternative investments are fun, and they don’t just make financial impact but social impact for generations to come.

My pick was Success Principle number seven: Decision.

Female Entrepreneurship is really about buying and selling which is what women do best. It is also about relationships and converting conversations into a transfer of funds. Women are great communicators. We use our emotional intelligence, otherwise known as EQ (Emotional quotient) to pave the way and know what the next move in any given situation should be. Business is more than just being booksmart, it is about being people smart. To have the ability to understand, use and manage our own emotions in positive ways to relieve stress, communicate effectively, empathize with others, overcome challenges, and defuse conflict is to conduct business in a more compassionate way, erasing the egotistical dogmatism that many of our counterparts use to display leadership.

She has funded, executive produced and worked alongside the likes of Larry King, Robert Kiyosaki of “Rich Dad, Poor Dad” and John Stevenson of Kung Fu Panda, Shrek and Madagascar success. She is the managing partner of “SpeakUP TV”, highlighting speakers, now in its 3rd Season, on Amazon Prime Video. She was a judge on the #1 Digital business show “Elevator Pitch” as well as being the lead in a feature documentary on her journey as a speaker called “Impact” that has won multiple major film festivals for “Best inspirational film”.

Staggering statistics show that women make most of the decisions in life for themselves, for their partners and for their families. According to Yankelovich Monitor & Greenfield Online, women account for 85% of all consumer purchases. 91% in new homes, 66% in PCs, 92% in Vacations, 80% in Healthcare, 65% in New Cars, 89% in Bank Accounts, 93% in Food, and 93% in OTC Pharmaceuticals.

Women control over $20 Trillion in worldwide spending. More and more women are taking on the role of the breadwinner of the family and 40% have already surpassed their husbands. But I am not writing this from the perspective of competition. I am not a feminist. I want to touch on these numbers because I want to make the point about how female entrepreneurship is on the rise, how women are innately exceptional leaders and how if we make the effort to step up to the plate, we would see a better future for our children. It is time that we step out and voice our ideas and opinions and that we put ourselves more in a position where we can direct the world and lead.

In 2021, she will be knighted as “Lady Didi” where she will join the Royal Order of Constantine the Great and St. Helen of Spain to further the Royal initiatives both domestically and internationally.

But how do we put ourselves in the position to direct and lead? I have personally done it by investing. Investing in all

Born in Hong Kong, raised in England and now residing in Los Angeles, Didi Wong is an AwardWinning International Keynote Speaker, Hollywood Film & TV Producer & Financier, Serial Entrepreneur, Business Mentor, Best-Selling Author, and Angel Investor.

She was given the highest level award of “Women of the Decade for Entrepreneurship and Venture Capital” from the Women Economic Forum as well as an award of Achievements, Recognition and Excellence by the National Council of Women from the Egyptian Government. She has also been honored to speak at the Global Entrepreneurship Initiative at the United Nations and she was the resident speaker on the Think and Grow Rich Legacy World Tour 2019.

As a minority Asian woman in the upper echelon of female entrepreneurship, I want to gather fellow women who find themselves to have the will to enhance the world and make a difference and use their influence as well as their God given blessings to make those decisions to lead, to invest and to help manage the world, thus resulting in a deep satisfaction of their purposes. “Girl power” is not just two words or a slogan, “Girl Power” is a movement, put into effect by us. Let’s do this together!

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THOUGHT LEADERSHIP

Unlock Your

HIGHEST POTENTIAL A Journey of Subconscious Introspection through Genius Key

By Amilya Antonetti

Have you ever wondered how you developed your relationship with money and how this relationship has similar patterns to other relationships you value. Our relationships of any nature, stem from our beliefs and in turn behaviors that directly influence the outcome of those relationships. Outcomes like feeling aligned, connected, valued and appreciated, and fulfilling your purpose with the confidence that comes from showing up as the best version of yourself.

There are numerous pieces of scientific evidence behind the idea that your beliefs about money influence the patterns that also impact other relationships. These can include relationships with others, including yourself, and things like time and energy.

Understanding these subconscious behavior patterns helps us make stronger conscious choices about what patterns are not serving us to live as our highest and best self.

As a human behaviorist, I have spent a good part of my career helping resolve conflict and crisis that gets trapped within people and/or organizations. Stepping in to decode these patterns, determining where the beliefs are rooted, helps to unlock the pain trapped in these behaviors.

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One common behavior pattern around money is the attachment pattern that forms around our beliefs around scarcity and/ or abundance. This pattern unintentionally attaches throughout our relationship with time, effort (energy) and money.

Researchers James Heyman and Dan Ariely did an experiment that measured how a person’s beliefs influenced the outcome of how they completed a task around their relationship with money. This pattern also attaches across time and effort (energy) forming the behavior pattern.

By decoding what your underlying relationship influences are and the patterns that are created by them, it becomes easier to see how these patterns show up in your financial decisions, time management and personal relationship choices. Decoding these beliefs and patterns can be traced to influences such as culture, family dynamics, ethnicity, gender, and socioeconomic status.

These all play their role in what we think, believe and unintentionally choose for the outcome. Understanding these influences is important in companies as leaders aim to build healthier relationships throughout their communities and ultimately in the way it serves their customers and the world.

Everyone within a team, family or company brings their own individual patterns into the mix. These all have an impact on the overall objectives and outcomes.

These can include forming a sustainable mission, succession planning, workflow management, team impact and alignment, all the way down to the day to day happiness of the people you care about.

In order to have people be their highest and best selves and make the most of their relationships, you need to understand these underlying factors across your relationships and where these patterns attach. It’s nearly impossible to change a behavior without first understanding where it is rooted, any why it was formed to begin with.

Ever wonder what is rooted in: • Impulse buying • Deal junkies • Keeping Up with the Joneses • Competitive tendencies.

Things to Consider: • Your finances may suffer from irrational behaviors you may not realize.

• By not aligning your purpose to the right mission and/or projects can leave you feeling empty, unseen, unappreciated.

• By understanding and recognizing your patterns and decoding where they are rooted, you can make better decisions based on your desire to show up as the best version of yourself • We all have the ability to change behaviors that are no longer serving us, if we choose to become aware, be willing to do some things differently, and to practice new actions that move you closer to your overarching vision The more you can understand your subconscious behavior patterns and identify the reason for that behavior, the more successful you will be to change the behavior you have outgrown, or is no longer serving you. If you want to change a behavior you need to start by changing the “why” that behavior is rooted in.

When people understand this knowledge, they can then incorporate new resources and tools to create new behaviors that will move them closer to their desired goals.

To gain a better understanding of your behavior patterns and how these patterns impact your decisions, we invite you to experience www.GeniusKey.com.

About Amilya Antonetti: Amilya Antonetti is one of the most sought after Human Behavior experts and Strategic Advisors. Her proprietary Genius Key system emboldens companies by removing biases, like gender, race, religion and other factors that impact building a healthy, prosperous and sustainable community, within the business and its “people.”

Amilya’s national popularity began in the early 1990’s after discovering the life-threatening effects cleaning products had on her infant son. She successfully founded Soapworks(™), which quickly became one of the fastest growing, privately owned all natural household product companies in North America. She sold the company (now renamed Green Works) and today it is a wholly owned division of Clorox. In 2019 Amilya was awarded the “Woman of the Decade” award from Women’s Economic Forum. Her client list includes business moguls and celebrities such as Warren Buffett, Oprah Winfrey, Steve Harvey and more.

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THOUGHT LEADERSHIP

The two key determinants of business transition success are leaving enough time to plan and having an adequate plan in place. While that may seem obvious, 58% of family business owners say they have some kind of business succession plans, however most are informal.

The best strategy is to plan long before the target date of a sale. If you’re planning on selling to a third party buyer, starting the process at least three to five years early usually allows for enough time to prepare the business for sale and allow for a series of negotiations. If you’re selling to an employee or passing along to your family, it also allows for time for training and any transition processes that need to occur.

Whether you’re contemplating transferring your business interest to family members, liquidating assets or selling your share to current management or an outside party, review these important steps.

Determine What You Want for Your Business

How to Prepare to

EXIT YOUR BUSINESS

How you transition your business depends a lot on your situation. Where do you want to be in three, five or 10 years? Do you want to remain involved with your company? Maybe you’re ready to redirect your entrepreneurial energies toward philanthropy or just enjoying a wellearned retirement. In the words of that great financial sage, Yogi Berra, “If you don’t know where you’re going, you may not get there.”

You’ll also need to consider your employees, key customers and suppliers. If you have been integrally involved in your business and the relationships you have formed with the stakeholders are the foundation of your business, it is important to appropriately present and time the communication of your planned transition.

Assemble Your Advisory Team

For many small to medium sized business owners, the eventual sale of their business is an integral part of their retirement planning.

By Alex Gorman, CFP First Vice President and Financial Advisor with Morgan Stanley Alexander.Gorman@ms.com

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Regardless of the size and complexity of your eventual transaction, you may want to engage legal counsel, an accountant, an investment banker or business broker and your Financial Advisor. If you are considering transferring your business ownership and interests from your estate to your family, you will likely not need an investment banker or business broker—but an outside business appraiser would still be suggested.

Choose an attorney well-versed in the intricacies of purchase and sale agreements and wealth transfer. You likely already have an attorney you work with on contracts, litigation and other legal issues, but it’s a good idea to find an attorney who specializes in business succession.

Your accountant should have extensive experience in minimizing the tax impact of monetizing or transferring a business. An investment banker, business broker and/or third-party business appraiser will analyze your business and the competitive environment to arrive at a realistic valuation.

These professionals can also provide valuable input in structuring your transaction.

Your financial advisor is there for the big picture. He/she will understand your succession in the context of your overall financial picture and can help protect the connections between your personal objectives and business ambitions.

What Is Your Business Worth?

This is often one of the most difficult aspects for any business owner. Because of the time and dedication put into the business, sometimes a true and accurate valuation is difficult to gauge.

Begin by commissioning your investment banker or business broker to conduct an analysis of the market environment. You’re looking for the pool of potential buyers and what they’re looking for in an acquisition target.

Your investment banker or business broker should also develop alternate strategies for you to consider—beyond simply selling your business to a potential buyer. Many business owners have made their successful exit through a sale to an employee stock ownership plan (ESOP) or a private equity group, and others have unlocked liquidity through a recapitalization of the business.

By exploring multiple options, each of which has its own pros and cons, you can sometimes expand your pool of potential buyers or investors and realize greater value from your transaction.

Update Financial and Estate Plans Don’t wait until eventual negotiations to realize that you should have updated your financial plan. Take the time now to consult with your CPA, attorney and Financial Advisor about how much you will need to achieve your retirement goals or pursue whatever it is you plan to do once you’ve made your exit.

You should also take this opportunity to review estate planning issues beyond your will with your estate attorney. Update the way your personal and/or business assets are titled, if necessary—and remember that it may take significant time to implement the complex strategies used to transfer assets and minimize your tax liability.

Keep Growing Your Company Finally, keep focusing on growing the company to increase its valuation and create a cash flow machine that buyers can envision taking over with minimal changes. If you are transferring your business, this is the time to complete any gifting strategies that you and your advisory team have formulated.

Identify your growth levers and push them full speed ahead. To maximize the attractiveness of your business, identify what drives growth and focus your attention accordingly. If you have partners who are not on board, consider a strategy in which you or the business would buy out their equity stake. Uncommitted owners can be challenging to a successful sale.

No matter what your time horizon to transition your business, the time to start planning is now.

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Will the Future of Transportation be

FUELED BY HYDROGEN? PowerTap’s Raghu Kilambi Bets Big on the Future of Energy

By Caroline Singer

Kilambi is currently overseeing one of the most ambitious projects devised by a single company: Building out the infrastructure of a new type of energy source across 500-1,000 fueling stations nationwide. PowerTap is working in collaboration with gas stations, truck stop operators, and numerous state and federal actors to usher in a clean energy revolution.

Impact Wealth recently caught up with the entrepreneur to discuss investing in United States roadway projects and going head-tohead with Tesla over the future of energy.

What is PowerTap and how is it changing the green energy space?

Raghu: PowerTap is focused on hydrogen fueling stations. Hydrogen is an alternative fuel that can be used for many things, but has really come to the forefront in cars; there are hydrogen cars in the market and more are coming. More importantly, long-haul trucks like eighteen-wheeler trucks and all the big truck and car manufacturers have announced long-haul hydrogen trucks. In terms of cost of per-mile and driving range, hydrogen long-haul vehicles are actually better than diesel and battery electric vehicles, like Tesla. The Tesla battery electric vehicle works well for cars and for smaller trucks, but for massive trucks, the battery size that’s needed for a battery-electric vehicle is just too large, so they’re not in that space.

What are some of the challenges with bringing hydrogen vehicles to the market?

The meteoric rise of Tesla’s stock price during the coronavirus pandemic has indicated that electric car batteries are the most efficient form of energy. But some entrepreneurs are questioning this narrative, and betting big on a new fuel source: Hydrogen.

After an accomplished career in the financial sector, which included raising over $1 billion for private and publicly traded companies, Raghu Kilambi was tapped to lead PowerTap Hydrogen Fueling Corp, a subsidiary of the

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publicly traded Clean Power Capital (CSE: MOVE)(OTC:MOTNF). Although droves of Tesla fueling stations are cropping up on highways across North America, Kilambi recognizes their limitation in servicing larger transportation vehicles forming the backbone of the American economy. To Kilambi, hydrogen is a better alternative to fossil fuels and electric energy; cars running on hydrogen batteries take much shorter times to refuel than Tesla vehicles and conserve more energy.

Raghu: The lack of fueling infrastructure in the United States. There are under 100 hydrogen fueling stations in the United States, versus 25,000+ battery electric vehicle stations and over a hundred thousand gas and truck stop stations. So there’s this massive void.

PowerTap is a technology that has been developed over the last fifteen plus years with US government money and private sector money. What’s unique about our technology is we can make hydrogen on-site that’s also cost-effective. Most of the stations that are out there right now are simply dispensing units at the station level and storage tanks.

Those stations are buying hydrogen from large industrial chemical companies like liquid air products and shipping it in trucks over to

the individual stations. What we’re launching is a new paradigm in making hydrogen on the spot as needed and it costs us much less than it does anyone else in the marketplace.

How do you plan on doing this?

Our plan is to launch initially in California it is the leader of the green movement in the United States. We have tremendous carbon credit and other government incentives within the state that allow us to generate revenue quickly. Carbon credits are fines that the polluters like oil companies pay if they exceed emission limits that are allowed by either individual states or the federal government. And they either pay the fine or they buy these credits off other companies that are clean companies. For example, Tesla this year made over a billion dollars of revenue just by reselling carbon credits to other oil companies within the industry.

Our plan is to build out a footprint in North America starting in California, that will include 500-1,000 stations over the next 3-5 years. The Department of Energy has said in their own internal forecast there’s a need for thousands of stations. Companies like Amazon and UPS do currently use hydrogen within their own manufacturing and logistics infrastructure.

Are you planning on using carbon credits to expand PowerTap’s revenue?

That’s our strategy too, because it allows us to kick-start revenue and we get carbon credits just for building hydrogen stations, even if no one buys hydrogen from us initially. That’s what a key part of our model. We’re going to build the stations and we expect the trucks and the cars to come in the next couple of years, but even if they don’t, we’re generating revenue every day because we get carbon credits that are monetizable simply for having the hydrogen infrastructure available

How do you feel about the market currently?

How does the environment benefits from hydrogen fuel?

The truck market is about economics, and so it is cheaper and hydrogen has a clear advantage. There are also about 20,000 cars out on the market, such as the Toyota And every time I go to pump gas for about an hour, I schedule an hour because there’s not a lot of stations right now and usually a line. However, I don’t bet on the auto market because automobiles are dependent on consumer tastes. We believe the bigger opportunity is in the long-haul trucking market. Our initial plan is a joint venture with existing gas stations and truckstop owners and to put our hydrogen fueling refilling stations there. We would do a revenue share with them, so that way we don’t have to invest in real estate or the zoning process. It keeps us as a technology player rather than a real estate one.

We make hydrogen using renewable natural gas which is biogas, which is clean energy, and we have a carbon capture system. We believe we are the most cost-effective and the greenest way to make hydrogen within North America. And this has to do with the fact that you can also make hydrogen using electricity to split water. But in North America, electricity costs are very expensive especially here in California and not as clean as it is in other parts of the world. Most electricity in the US is still a fossil fuel or coal base, so it’s not green.

The beautiful thing is when hydrogen is used, the exhaust is water so there are no emissions. We know that this trucking market and transportation market and industrial market is massive. Our competitor in the space is Electrolysis that uses electricity based hydrogen production which is too expensive.

How is hydrogen fuel superior to the other clean energy options?

For cars, the main advantage is that it refuels very quickly. If you are using your batteryelectric car frequently and you’re driving long distances, to refuel a Tesla takes between forty-five minutes to an hour. It takes five minutes to refuel a hydrogen car and we believe in the long run there’s cost of fuel advantages. As an example, when you buy a Toyota Mirai brand new, Toyota will give you a fifteen thousand dollar fueling car card allowing for free fuel for the first four or five years.

And on the truck side, battery electric vehicles simply don’t exist, it would take about four or five hours to refuel. In terms of diesel, our cost of fuel hydrogen is significantly less than diesel currently. And that’s independent from government incentives. Nikola Motors and Toyota are making hydrogen haul trucks.

What are the benefits of building out hydrogen stations across the United States in particular?

We believe the US is the biggest market and the government incentives at both the federal and state level are very appealing. We have access to friendly government loans to build infrastructure. We have an established technology with fifty million dollars of invested capital, a lot of IP, and so we believe will be a powerful player within the North American market. It has the most growth potential because it is the largest economic market in the Western world and the least hydrogen infrastructure right now.

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PHILANTHROPY

A BETTER WORLD Through Dignity

Global Dignity’s vision is a world where “compassion, understanding and love triumph over intolerance, injustice and inequality.” This New York City-based nonprofit—founded over 10 years ago by three Young Global Leaders at the World Economic Forum, including Crown Prince Haakon of Norway—works with leaders from 80 countries around the world.

By Candice Beaumont

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Wouldn’t it be great if everyone woke up and said, from now on I’m treating people with dignity and respect. There would be so many problems in the world that would go away.

Tim Cook, Apple CEO

Through its growing leadership network, Global Dignity has engaged over 3.4 million children and young people through their “Teaching Dignity” curriculum and Dignity Workshops. These Workshops take place in schools and classrooms, as well as with community-based youth groups and in refugee camps, where too often there are no teachers and no schools.

Global Dignity’s work is a response to Nelson Mandela’s belief that: “No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.”

The organization’s Teaching Dignity curriculum, developed in partnership with the long-time and first Director of Education for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, focuses on helping every child and young person first find their own sense of worth, dignity and purpose. Once a young person embraces their own self-worth, they can understand that everyone — no matter how different — is born with equal dignity and deserves to be treated respectfully.

Global Dignity has also recently expanded its focus to include workplaces. There is a growing field of study that points to the benefits of treating employees with dignity, fostering trust, more powerful teamwork, commitment and ultimately positively impacting an organization’s bottom line.

More business leaders are joining the conversation, including the Business Roundtable and the World Economic Forum which have championed dignity as central to achieving a more sustainable, equitable world. In a recent interview with Marc Benioff at Salesforce, Apple CEO Tim Cook reflected: “Wouldn’t it be great if everyone woke up and said, from now on I’m treating people with dignity and respect. There would be so many problems in the world that would go away.”

HIGHLIGHTS FROM GLOBAL DIGNITY’S WORK AROUND THE WORLD BANGLADESH: 500,000 REACHED AMIDST A HUMANITARIAN CRISIS In partnership with internationally-recognized NGO Friendship, Global Dignity Bangladesh has trained its entire staff in the dignity principles and made dignity the cornerstone of all services provided to tens of thousands of Rohingya refugees living in Bangladeshi camps. Prior to COVID-19, the Teaching Dignity curriculum was used with young people attending Friendship’s rural schools. Now, with 10 million secondary students in Bangladesh out of school because of the pandemic, video classes are broadcast on television. Every video includes a lesson on dignity.

NIGER: TRAINING THE NEXT GENERATION OF DIGNITY-CENTERED LEADERS Niger faces deep economic and social challenges. Considered the second worst place in the world to be a child, young potential leaders have historically left Niger for educational opportunities elsewhere. Global Dignity’s Niger Chair, Kader Kaneye, was born and raised in Niger and educated at Harvard where he received the Harvard Kennedy School 2019 Emerging Leader Award. He founded the African Development University to educate the next generation of leaders committed to staying in Niger and becoming leaders across all sectors. The University not only incorporates the dignity principles into its courses, but has also created a university-wide culture based on spreading the dignity values in society.

PORTUGAL: TAKING DIGNITY NATIONWIDE Global Dignity Portugal is leading discussions with the Ministry of Education to integrate the dignity principles into Portugal’s vision for K-12 education. At the same time, Global Dignity Portugal is reaching at-risk young people through 100 youth centers in every major city and town throughout the country. Last year, more than 5,000 young people were engaged, including immigrants from Africa and the Middle East, and youth living in high-poverty neighborhoods.

To learn more and support Global Dignity, visit globaldignity.org.

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