Personal and Background Information

Home and work location

Back Bay, Boston, Massachusetts

Description of Physical Appearance

I’m 5’10″ tall, blue eyes, brown hair, fairly short brown hair, no facial hair.

Children

I have one dog, Cassie, whom I’m very close to. Objectively speaking, she is the cutest dog in the world. I have no human children.

Tell me about Cassie

Cassie (her proper name is Cassandra) is a white Samoyed. Samoyeds are Northern dogs with more fur than you can imagine. The colder it is, the happier she is — when it is 20 degrees below with the wind chill factor, she’s outside, happy as a clam. Samoyeds are supposedly working dogs, but Cassie has a different view of her role in the world. She believes it is more appropriate for her to be riding in the sled, rather than pulling it. She has me wrapped around her paw and she knows it and I know it.

Religion

I’m Protestant. I don’t care what religion you are, as long as it is not an “extreme” religion that you take seriously (e.g., Orthadox Jew, Mormom).

What is your Ethnic background?

English and Scottish. I’m not certain when my ancestors came to the U.S., but I think it was in the early 1800s.

Where did you grow up?

I grew up in Los Angeles, in Hancock Park (basically, the Wilshire Country Club area). I’m fifth generation Los Angelino, which almost makes me aristocracy out there.

So how do you like Boston as compared with Los Angeles?

The weather in Boston is lousy and the people are not as friendly. On the other hand, Boston is a very livable city and it is arguably the intellectual center of the world.

Tell us about your family

I have one sister, Karen, who married her college sweetheart. She and her husband moved to Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina in 2003, after living in New York for their entire marriage. Karen has two kids: Spencer and Allegra. Allegra is literally the cutest little girl in the world. I have one cousin who lives in Costa Rica. All of my other relatives live in Southern California. My mother passed away in May, 2002, as did my father in June, 2005.

Education

This one is a bit complicated. After high school, I studied economics and political philosophy at the Claremont Colleges. I left to start a company, which I ran and then sold. Harvard admitted me to the Graduate School of Arts & Sciences without a B.A.. At Harvard, I studied defense policy and arms control. At Harvard, I did research at the
Belfor Center for Science and International Affairs and the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs. After Harvard, I studied classical music for a year. Harvard Business School (“HBS”) offered me a research fellowship without a PhD, where I did research in computer science and information systems. At HBS I realized I did not want to be a specialist, that I need to have my fingers in dozens of intellectual pies. (Fortunately, the LBO business lets me do this.) I also studied at MIT and Wharton for a semester.

Claremont was good because an economics professor took me under his wing and taught me how to think like an economist. Harvard was good in some ways — I was in a research group consisting of some exceptionally bright people and the students (particularly the undergraduates) were some of the most interesting people I’ve ever met. (Many of the administrators, however, were arrogant, and some were even unethical. I also saw several instances where Harvard treated students unfairly.) The school that I loved most was my prep school. The teachers were great, the academics were outstanding, and the headmaster was a true leader and educator.