“Sudan is this beautiful pristine coast, no developments, nothing, but you walk the shoreline and there’s literally plastic everywhere. That’s the case in the most remote corners of the world. That’s why I think this Kick Plastic movement (ed. A Costa del mar initiative) is a really important thing. We’re doing it in the Bahamas, trying to get rid of single use plastic in our programs."
Why trade in the dream, man? White says, “man” a lot, like you’d expect any ski-bum or river guide to. There’s a familiar ease to the way he conducts himself. You can imagine him, working at Ackman’s hedge fund, toes so used to the sand and mud of the flats now stuck in socks and sensible black lace-ups, pitching an idea to a room of Harvard grads. When a boardroom nay-sayer pipes up, White’s rebuttal would open with, “Man, I respect where you’re coming from, but …” He says, “People definitely didn’t take me seriously, but I didn’t take myself seriously either. I knew I wasn’t supposed to be there. I literally walked around with a legal pad and wrote down things I didn’t understand. I’d stay up all night and teach myself high level finance. It took a while and was really hard. It’s not like being thrown in the deep end and learning how to swim. It’s like being taken in a boat, taken off shore, thrown off the boat and told ‘good luck’.” White spent two years there, a time he describes as one of the more formidable experiences of his life. He brought enough value in that time for Ackman to offer to put him through Harvard Business School, to
‘finish’ his education as it were, but as he was going through the application process White realised that as much as he appreciated the opportunity, it wasn’t what he wanted to do. “I’m a military brat from rural North Carolina, the idea of going to an Ivy League business school was crazy. In the application process there’s a whole lot of essay questions which really force you to articulate what your goals and ambitions are and why business school is relevant for you. It was the first time since I’d been in New York that I could get out of the trenches and look at the bigger picture. I didn’t want to wake up and be 50 or 60 and be wealthy, but be this one-dimensional person who is now retired, trying to figure out my identity and who I was. Bill is one of the more remarkable people on the planet so he just said, ‘All right. So, what do you want to do?’ Off the cuff I told him that I missed being outside and I missed the adventure. If I can figure out a way to get back to that and not just be a fishing guide, to have a real financial future and the ability to make a living – that would be the dream. He said, ‘You know how to value companies, you know what they are worth. Go find an investment, take the money you made working here and I will make up the difference.’ That’s how I left New York and moved to the Bahamas to start the lodge programme.”
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