SPRING 2022
BEATA DRZAZGA Medical Entrepreneur and Philanthropist 1
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CONTENTS PROFILES
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DE ANNA GUERREIRO Leading the Way in Next-Gen Impact Initiatives By Christine Vergari
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NATASHA MULLER Next Gen Impact Investor and Mental Health Advocate By Yvonne Beri
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NICK HISSOM AND KAMERON RAMIREZ Are Redefining the Business of the Art World with Aktion Art By Yvonne Beri
INVESTING
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JOHN EVANS The Visionary Founder of DecisionCFO
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Enjoyed the Last Twelve Years? You’re Going to Hate the Next Six
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VERSEON AI- and Physics-Driven Technology with Life Changing Outcomes By Mosaka Williamson
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FEATURE
By Amy Poliakoff
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By Kristie Thompson
SIR IVAN Carrying on His Father’s Legacy by Spreading Universal Love Through his Music By Amy Poliakoff
CHRISTINE VERGARI Wealth Management Strategist
BRUCE GALLOWAY Man vs. Machinee
STORICA WINES Bringing their Story of Armenian Wines to the U.S. One Tasty Sip At a Time By Hillary Latos
By Neal Berger
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PRAIRIE STREET PRIME A Home For the Luxury Kosher Culinary Connoisseur By Amy Poliakoff
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By Hillary Latos
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BEATA DRZAZGA 40 The Admirable Leadership of Medical Entrepreneur and Philanthropist By Hillary Latos
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38 STYLE & FASHION
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THE POWERFUL LANGUAGE OF SCENT Elizabeth Hagopian-Gaynes’s strangelove is a game changer in the luxury perfume market By Mosaka Williamson
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MIAMI BOLD By Charles L. Barnes
THOUGHT LEADERSHIP
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The Art of Mentoring the Next Gen and Succession Planning By Jason Ma
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THE NEW COLD WAR 60 Geopolitical Macroeconomic Impact of the Ukrainian Crisis By Michael Calvo Elhauge
EVENTS Group Travel Awards 64 American Shine Brightly in South Beach By Angela Trostle
PHILANTHROPY 13th Annual David Ortiz 66 The Celebrity Golf Classic Raises $1.44 Million By Hillary Latos
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THE PRINCESS GRACE FOUNDATION Elevating Extraordinary Artists By Lindsey Champagne
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EDITOR’S NOTE
The Trailblazers, Disruptors, and Game Changers! With the world in a constant flurry of change, we were inspired to highlight the lesser known but significant trailblazers, game changers and disruptors who are challenging the status quo for the betterment of humanity. They are the risk takers, inventors and entrepreneurs who questioned antiquated ways of doing things and found opportunity in creating better solutions to existing problems. With technology and information moving at such a fast rate with AI testing new solutions, probabilities, and outcomes, we are at the precipice of greatness. For this issue we highlighted some extraordinary individuals who transformed their lofty goals into a reality to create a better world. Poised to become larger than all of the big pharma companies put together, is Verseon that uses AI to create breakthrough game changing technologies to create life changing medicines in its pipeline. Founder and CEO Adityo Prakash has hand picked a strategic core team of experts in tech and pharma with proprietary technology that will forever change the course of modern medicine and put them on the trajectory for major alpha returns. If the market volatility and inflation indicators have you nervous about investing in the public markets, you can never be too prepared. Be sure to read Neal Berger’s feature, “Enjoyed the Last Twelve Years? You’re Going to Hate the Next Six…” which discusses the fake and unnatural market environment that’s manipulated by central banks that is poised for a long and devastating crash. At 17, Next Gen philanthropist and heiress Natasha Muller inherited her family’s textile empire when her father tragically died by suicide. With great wealth at a young age comes great responsibility which has motivated Natasha to create a path of radical impact with mental health services and reform at the top of her priorities. Here she shares her intimate story and journey of her a mission to create a better world for all. Beata Drzazga is a true rags to riches story who came from humble beginnings as a nurse and recognized that there was a lack of empathy towards patients in hospitals. She wanted to make a change in the industry in her own way to provide the utmost comfort to patients. Thus BetaMed company was born, though she started off small, today it is one of the largest medical corporations in Poland which also includes a successful aesthetic medicine subsidiary. As Beata has always had a keen eye for fashion, she recently opened a string of high end fashion boutiques around the world to continue living her mantra of transforming her passions into reality. Beata’s sage words of advice summate the theme of this issue, “You have to believe in yourself, and your work must be fueled by passion, because without it there are no true achievements.”
Hillary Latos Editor in Chief hillary@impactwealthmagazine.com
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Creating Wealth. Creating Impact. SPRING 2022
Hillary Latos EDITOR IN CHIEF
Candice Beaumont MANAGING EDITOR
Emil Pavlov ART DIRECTOR
Charles Barnes CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHERS
Neal Berger, Yvonne Beri, Michael Calvo Elhauge, Jason Ma, Amy Poliakoff, Christine Vergari, Mosaka Williamson CONTRIBUTING WRITERS
Kerrie Lynn Irish COPY EDITOR
Angela Gorman, Adam Weiss PUBLISHERS
Martin Weiss ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER
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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INVESTING
JOHN EVANS
The Visionary Founder of DecisionCFO Established in 2008, DecisionCFO provides interim CFO and Controller services for public and privately held companies, venture and private equity funds, and family offices. DecisionCFO’s track record includes over $2 billion in transactions completed, 280 client engagements and direct investments in over 60 companies and VC funds since their inception. Leveraging extensive experience working with management teams, DecisionCFO is a valuable asset for companies looking to optimize, scale and exit their businesses through the implementation of financial technology and expertise. Impact Wealth speaks to John Evans, the visionary Founder and CEO of DecisionCFO, on his strategies for achieving Alpha returns on his investments and what he feels is the next big area poised for growth. By Hillary Latos
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What was missing from the marketplace that inspired you to launch Decision CFO? JE: Timing is everything. We saw the opportunity back in 2008, when the peak of the financial crisis was taking place with changes that were driving the beginnings of the technology and finance industries here in New York City. What stage do companies reap the greatest rewards from working with you and where do you see the greatest advantages that you can offer? JE: We work with companies that have either raised some level of money or have sales of $1- million up to $100 million in top line revenue. Do you also get involved with the fundraising aspect or take a position in many of the companies? JE: We get involved in helping the companies with their fundraising strategy, their investor presentation and their financial model to ensure that they are properly aligned from the perspective of what is the pitch telling me and what can I glean from the numbers that will substantiate what I'm seeing here in the pitch. The second part is that we do make investments in the companies, though we're much more selective these days. I also run the family office for the investments that I'm making as well, where our focus is on becoming limited partners with up and coming venture capitalists. When we contribute money as an LP, we can assist with financial due diligence, as well as provide operating support to their portfolio companies. This is a method for us to generate alpha returns by combining the expertise of both businesses. Our metric for success is what we would call relationship return on invested capital. How do you drive returns to that investment? JE: You drive it in a couple different ways. There are the obvious ones, which are the returns that you get from being a partner in a VC fund, but there are also the ancillary returns on engagements for providing due diligence for the companies and the returns from servicing the portfolio companies. When you add that on top of the financial returns, you
essentially have Alpha performance. Currently, we have worked with 5 funds and are looking to do our sixth LP investment this year. Where do you see the biggest growth right now? JE: We focus on the technology and healthcare industries, and some of the subsets of those industries include FinTech and crypto. But it’s all about the business performance itself. We think the crypto area holds a lot of promise particularly on the B2B infrastructure side of the Blockchain. Do you think that that the risk has been mitigated in crypto? JE: We're having the same moment with crypto that we had in 1995 with Netscape and it was completely revolutionary. This is the
latest stage in a technological evolution that has been taking place since the 90s where all of a sudden people had access to a very broad market that was followed up by a mobile revolution that took place in the 2000s. Now what you're seeing is the same thing that's taking place in FinTech and crypto and I separate that from the blockchain, because I think one has more of a speculative component to it. What do you think are the advantages of companies working with you? JE: During the early stages of a company's growth, many companies don't have the resources to bring on full time talent, even though they desperately need that expertise. These companies benefit at the early levels of their business just by understanding how they're spending their cash. By implementing a couple of basic processes, we can deliver
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We focus on the technology and healthcare industries, and some of the subsets of those industries include FinTech and crypto. But it’s all about the business performance itself. We think the crypto area holds a lot of promise particularly on the B2B infrastructure side of the Blockchain.
What are some of the biggest success stories that you you've had that you could share? JE: We worked with CitiBike, which is one of the largest public private partnership in the United States, if not the world, for local ride sharing. We were involved in both the launch operations of CitiBike along with their subsequent sale to a private equity owner and then ultimately to Lyft. We were also involved in helping out with the sale of Tumblr to Yahoo. Recently we were involved with a company that ultimately exited to Facebook for over a billion dollars. We also have a lot of companies that are still at the private level, where they've received significant markups to their rounds. How do you protect your companies to maximize their returns with VC funding? immediate value to a company in that very important area. Oftentimes, you have founders who don't have capital markets experience and we can bring that to the table in a cost efficient way. For example, to hire an experienced CFO who has raised money, you could be paying anywhere between $150,000 to $400,000, a year, plus some level of equity between 0.5 and 1.5%. By bringing on a
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fractional CFO, only as you need it, a company benefits from the CFO skills without the full time cost. . Once a company has reached a certain level of maturity, they are in a better position to go out and bring on someone full time. We've also helped companies exit by ensuring their books are properly organized according to U.S. GAAP, and are ready to present to prospective buyers.
JE: We sign our engagements with the company not with the venture funds and our relationship is going to be strictly arm's length with a particular VC. We go into the VC fund as an investor expecting outsized returns on that limited partnership, and we evaluate all our VC relationships on two criteria. The first, is what I just described in terms of return. Second, is the ability for them to be a strong
partner for DecisionCFO. Our e advantage of working with a VC fund is that it gives us credibility and it gives us a warm intro into a particular business, either in terms of the opportunity to bid on an existing piece of business or through due diligence that we perform on that company on behalf of the Venture Fund. Where do you see the growth of Decision CFO in the next 5-10 years? JE: By that time, we will probably be a family office and a collection of investments that we have versus being a servicing and operating business. We would expect that there will continue to be opportunities for us to work on companies. I’ve been doing this now for 14 years and I love what I'm doing, every day is fun, because you're meeting with
really super smart, ambitious and interesting people who are looking to change the world. I felt so fortunate and blessed that I had a ringside seat to witness this explosion take place over the last 14 or 15 years. Is there a certain kind of criteria that you go through to evaluate whether or not to invest in a client? take on a client? JE: We generally don't like to do underfunded pre revenue companies, that's too much speculative risk, and a company has to have a certain level of resources to be able to afford what we do. We always talk to folks, and if we can't be of service to them directly, we try to point them in a direction where they might be able to identify talent to help them solve that problem.
What kind of commonalities have you seen for companies to be successful? JE: The best teams are the ones where the founders clearly understand their roles and have a level of emotional intelligence about what their businesses and limitations are and possess the capability to deliver on what they say they're going to do. It's super important for companies, who take institutional money in to be able to deliver on their projections and promises about what they're going to do. Performance at the end of the day is something that always counts. I think the best teams are the ones not necessarily with the best idea, but we're able to execute the best.
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Global equities, bonds, cryptocurrencies, NFTs, and other asset classes have existed in a fake and unnatural market environment for so many years that investors have become lulled into believing the environment is actually normal. Global markets have been engineered by the invisible hand of global central banks in the form of an unprecedented $25 Trillion of liquidity infusion into markets over the past dozen years. $9 Trillion of this infusion coming since the start of COVID just two years ago. To emphasize, this is unprecedented in the history of markets. These actions cannot be undertaken without collateral effect. Given the fact that central bankers cannot predict the impact of their actions, I refer to this as the “grand experiment”. Central bankers waded into this unchartered territory for reasons no less noble than to rescue the global financial system stemming from the events of 2008. Central banks have managed not only to keep the patient alive, they’ve kept him dancing. Even during a bad bout of COVID, the central banks came to the rescue to keep the party going. We are now at the early stage of paying the piper. THE EVIDENCE OF EXCESS
Enjoyed the Last Twelve Years? You’re Going to
HATE THE NEXT SIX By Neal Berger FOUNDER/CIO EAGLE’S VIEW CAPITAL MANAGEMENT, LLC
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Anyone interested in paying a government to hold your money? Well, at a point, $18 Trillion of sovereign debt was trading at negative nominal yields. This means you pay for the privilege of lending your money out. Don’t worry, in Germany it only cost you 71 bps at one point to give them your money. German 10-year Bunds traded as low as -0.71%. Fortunately, if an investor wasn’t satisfied paying 71 bps, there was the option of earning 0.11% on US 2-year notes. If one didn’t want to mess with bonds these past years (because bonds are really boring, aren’t they), an investor could buy Health Equity, The Greenbrier Companies, Chewy or Tesla with P/E ratios of 6,759, 4,565, 3,273 and 1,401 respectively. Tesla looks really cheap when compared to the others! For investors who are into companies that don’t have any revenues at all, there was a rare chance to buy Nikola at a $24 Billion valuation nearly the same as 118-year old Ford Motor Company. Of course, there were many other choices to deploy the massive amount of liquidity if one simply needed to “get rid of it”. One of my personal favorites would have been to acquire the NFT done by the artist Beeple for $69 Million.
These examples are all different stripes of the same Zebra. The Zebra being the ocean of liquidity in the system. Pick your favorite stripe as each is a similarly bad deal. These examples are not the product of a freely traded market. They are the product of a market that has been heavily influenced by an 800 pound gorilla that has wildly distorted free market pricing. COLLATERAL EFFECTS The grand experiment was bound to have unintended consequences and collateral effects, and it has. The initial collateral effect of the massive liquidity injections was material asset price inflation with some examples cited above. One may argue that this was actually an intended consequence and not an unintended consequence. A second collateral effect of this grand experiment has recently awoken after 40 years of dormancy. Of course, I am referring to consumer price inflation. If you live on this planet, you can feel the impact of consumer price inflation. Prices are up for labor, food, energy, used cars, and nearly everything else. Within the US, the Bureau of Labor Statistics is indicating that consumer price inflation is running at just under 8% per annum which is a level not seen since the 1970s and very early 1980s. Consumer price inflation is unloved by all. It is certainly an unintended consequence and a collateral effect that must be dealt with before it continues to spiral out of control.
WHAT WILL CENTRAL BANKS DO NOW? In response to consumer price inflation, central bankers must reverse the root cause of the inflation which is too much liquidity in the system. Central bankers will cease their bond buying activity (otherwise known as Quantitative Easing), possibly engage in Quantitative Tightening whereby they sell bonds to the market, and, certainly raise interest rates materially. Currently, the US has market interest rates that are yielding roughly -6% in real terms. There is no question yields will rise, and materially so. In short, central banks must make a 180 degree turn in an effort to stem the swell of inflation and inflationary expectations. They must move from a posture of adding liquidity to extracting liquidity from the markets. This effort will surely have a major impact upon asset prices. WHAT DO WE THINK WILL HAPPEN? We believe that asset prices have just begun a multi-year process of re-rating downward due to this global central bank regime change toward a more restrictive liquidity environment. There will be an inevitable, sustained, and material negative impact upon security prices for the foreseeable horizon as this abrupt monetary policy adjustment commences and starts to take hold. Bonds, stocks, and other asset prices that have enjoyed a massive runup as a result of the liquidity injections will now decline substantially as
liquidity is drained from the market. Although ultimately we will see a mirror image of what we’ve experienced over the past dozen years or so, we believe the move down will be faster than the move up. There is an adage that states, the market takes the stairs up and the elevator down. The price action of markets thus far in early 2022, supports this view with both bonds and stocks falling. Bonds have had their worst quarterly performance in decades. We are simply at the beginning of this inevitably painful adjustment. Investors should prepare for years and not weeks or months of market declines as the world rebalances to a more normalized liquidity posture stemming insidious inflationary pressures. WHAT ARE WE DOING ABOUT IT? Eagle’s View has created a unique and muchneeded solution that is expected to hedge bond and stock market beta exposure by providing material returns during market downturns while seeking to avoid substantial losses during more robust market environments. The Firm will seek to take advantage of our belief that asset prices will begin a multi-year process of re-rating downward due to a regime change by global central banks toward a more restrictive liquidity environment. The solution is not a tail hedge strategy that bleeds theta decay daily, and, it is not an outright short selling strategy of individual equities. Interested parties should feel free to reach out to discuss further.
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VERSEON
AI- and Physics-Driven Technology with Life Changing Outcomes The average American born in 1900 had a life expectancy of 47.3 years. Thanks to modern medicine, life expectancy in the US in 2022 is 79 years. But that upward trend, as it turns out, is just the beginning. According to a 2009 article published in the premier British medical journal The Lancet, about half of all children born in the US in the year 2007 are expected to live to 104*. By Mosaka Williamson
The biggest innovations of the 21st century will be at the intersection of biology and technology. Steve Jobs
Today, the frontiers of medicine and biology are moving from extending lifespan to improving healthspan. The goal is to slow the advance of adverse aspects of aging to a point where our healthy years can extend far beyond what is possible today. Science has indicated that there are things we can do immediately to slow the aging process. However, most people and their doctors don’t have the time, energy or wherewithal to examine the entire body of scientific evidence to figure out what actually works and what doesn’t. And many of the recently launched high-profile antiaging efforts are “moonshot” projects like Calico and Altos Labs that will take decades to bear fruit. The same is true for development of new medicines to treat diseases we can’t yet treat today. From the first news of hope reported in a major newspaper to an actual drug in the market, if it even materializes, takes decades.
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Enter Verseon, a company that has spent twenty years developing the fundamental scientific advancements necessary for systematic discovery of new medicines. Along the way they have garnered investment and support from the heads of R&D at Pfizer and Abbott, among others. Verseon is now rolling out a unique suite of products that have the potential to transform how we delay, prevent, and treat disease. First, let’s describe the healthspan side of the business. No one wants to suffer the long list of damages caused by aging. The latest scientific evidence shows that with currently studied active ingredients, it is possible to dramatically slow the process of aging. However, the specific combination of these ingredients needs to be customized for each person
and regularly updated as health status changes. No such offering exists today, and the traditional nutraceutical company is ill equipped to provide one. The collection and analysis of all available scientific data and the continual monitoring, updating and classification of outcomes and recommendations is a formidable technological challenge. Using technology Verseon has built for its own drug clinical trials, the company is rolling out a unique offering of consumer healthspan products that are individually personalized by a purpose-built AI system. Verseon is an unusual company to enter the consumer healthspan nutraceuticals space. Companies in the field generally do not possess hardcore pharmaceutical drug development expertise. And because of its bleeding-edge computational prowess, Verseon also brings to bear capabilities well beyond those of tra-
ditional pharmaceutical companies. Verseon’s healthspan products will be formulated with the same level of sophistication and rigor expected of prescription pharmaceuticals to ensure that the ingredients get absorbed through the gut and last in the body for the time necessary to provide a benefit. The specific combination and dosage of ingredients will be personalized for each individual to maximize positive impact on all nine core hallmarks of aging, from genomic instability to mitochondrial dysfunction. Subscribers to Verseon’s healthspan service will get packets containing custom nutraceutical combinations for morning and evening. They will have the option to be tested every six months to measure various biological markers of aging and metabolism. By analyzing outcome patterns gleaned from its entire user base, Verseon’s AI system will continually update the dosage and ingredient regimens for each subscriber. This process eliminates the uncertainty from determining what each subscriber needs and whether it is actually working. This healthspan service allows Verseon to engage a very large user community over time, the target demographic being every adult in the developed world. Seventy-seven percent of adults in the US and forty to sixty percent of adults in other developed countries currently use some form of nutraceuticals on a regular basis. The company also plans to use the outcomes data from its subscriber base to better understand how to segment populations based on common biological response patterns and use that data for better design of clinical trials for its pharmaceutical drugs. “An AI-driven healthspan support service like Verseon’s will generate a goldmine of outcomes data whose value goes well beyond the delay of the aging process to better and more streamlined design of clinical trials for a new generation of pharmaceutical treatments,” says Verseon CSO David Kita. That brings us to the other aspect of Verseon’s business: developing a steady stream of new pharmaceutical drugs that cannot be found by any other current method. Though making over $1 trillion dollars per year in patent-protected revenue, the pharmaceutical industry has been suffering from a productivity bottleneck for a long time. Despite
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increased spending on R&D, development and approval of truly novel medicines have stalled. Changing this failure-prone trial-and-error paradigm, Verseon creates new drugs atom by atom using a proprietary technology platform that goes far beyond just the application of AI. Nowadays, the world has been turning to AI for everything from movie recommendations to self-driving cars. In recent times, a slew of new companies has started promoting primarily AI-driven solutions to the problem of drug discovery. However, for AI to work it needs a lot of relevant prior data for training. Yet when it sees unfamiliar situations, AI doesn’t know what to do. We show images of stop signs and pedestrians to teach self-driving cars to stop at appropriate times. In a wellreported incident, when a self-driving AI saw a road worker holding a stop sign, it had no idea what to do. The human driver had to take over to avoid a terrible accident. Similarly, all these proposed AI-driven systems for drug discovery can only train on data from existing drugs and past experiments. This training data does not equip the AI systems to come up with completely new drugs to treat as yet untreatable diseases—drugs that don’t resemble what has already been found through decades of trial and error. These AI systems may find variations of existing chemical compounds or perhaps repurpose existing drugs, but they cannot design the entirely new chemical structures needed to treat various diseases we currently cannot treat or can only treat poorly.
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Verseon, on the other hand, correctly recognized almost two decades ago that the only way to systematically design completely new drugs would require building a system that can use molecular physics to accurately predict how a new chemical structure will bind to a disease-causing protein. When designing new drugs, Verseon explores billions of new chemical structures far outside the current pharmaceutical data set to identify new drug candidates that have never before been synthesized or tested. The result: drug candidates with highly desirable treatment profiles for the diseases they address. As industry experts have noted, in every program, Verseon has been systematically developing multiple new clinical candidates, a feat unheard of in the pharmaceutical industry.
Verseon’s platform is a bit like a self-driving car equipped with additional sensors like lidar, radar, and so on to handle previously unseen situations like a person holding a stop sign— and once successfully handled, add to the AI’s data set for the future. However, in Verseon’s case, the additional sensors are not off-theshelf tools, but fundamental advances built in-house over twenty years. The company recently added Sangtae Kim, distinguished professor and chair of Purdue’s chemical engineering division who is also a member of the National Academy of Engineering to its executive ranks as CTO. Kim says, “Verseon’s platform is comprised of significant new advances within multiple distinct branches of science. Each of these advances would be enthusiastically welcomed by the leading
practitioners in their respective domains—but the collection of these advances is virtually unattainable by any other organization. It is by far the most advanced ab initio drug design methodology currently in existence.” Verseon has an impressive team indeed. With over 200 patents to their credit, the company’s interdisciplinary team are no strangers to making fundamental breakthroughs that transform entire industries. Two of the founders, Adityo Prakash and Eniko Fodor, are responsible for technologies at the heart of all video streaming today, from Amazon Prime to Zoom. Intel is the current owner of that technology and makes significant profits from it each year. The third founder, David Kita, developed one of the first bioinformatics platforms that catalyzed the genomics revolution. Other team members have developed multiple drug programs not only at Verseon but also at companies such as Johnson & Johnson and Ontogen. And now Sangtae Kim, the former CEO of Morgridge Institute and a former VP at Eli Lilly, drives initiatives to further enhance the company’s already powerful AI. An equally impressive roster of scientific advisors including physics Nobel laureates, the Dean of Engineering at Harvard,
and cardiology luminaries at Harvard Medical School are supporting the company’s journey. Able to use all existing pharmaceutical and biological data but not constrained by limitations of such data, Verseon’s multiphysics-augmented AI system consistently creates novel drug candidates that cannot be found by any other current method. Program after program, Verseon’s novel candidates promise to change the standard of care for every disease they address. Verseon currently has in clinical trials drugs with remarkably low bleeding risk to treat and prevent heart attacks and strokes in over 400 million patients worldwide. Uncontrolled bleeding is the biggest risk factor for currently available alternatives. UCL Professor of Cardiology John Deanfield declared, “Verseon’s platelet-sparing anticoagulants … represent an exciting ‘precision medicine’ opportunity for the treatment of a large population of cardiovascular disease patients.” The company is also developing oral drugs to treat diabetic vision loss in over 154 million patients. Today there are no oral prophylactics or treatments, and the standard of care is to
wait until the disease progresses far enough to justify the risks of monthly injections in the eye. Verseon has 3 different cancer programs under development, including chemotherapy agents that do not lose effectiveness against multidrug-resistant cancers. Its fast-growing drug pipeline currently has 16 candidates across 8 programs. In the words Pfizer’s former SVP of R&D Strategy, Robert Karr, “Verseon’s disruptive platform changes how drugs can be discovered and developed, and the company is poised to make a dramatic impact on modern medicine.” Between its regulated pharmaceuticals and consumer healthspan products, Verseon seems to be advancing toward its goal to redefine delay, prevention, and treatment of disease. As they continue to grow, their work will likely transform twenty-first century medicine and touch the lives of everyone on the planet.
* https://abcnews.go.com/Health/WellnessNews/halftodays-babies-expected-live-past-100/story?id=8724273
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CHRISTINE VERGARI Wealth Management Strategist By Amy Poliakoff
More than just a private wealth manager, Christine Vergari sees herself as a confidante and an advocate with an interest that extends far beyond wealth planning. As a banker in the Fort Lauderdale office of J.P. Morgan Private Bank, her client roster includes successful entrepreneurs, high-end business owners, executives and multi-generational families who seek trusted guidance to help transform their hard work into sustainable legacies. Her focus is on making the best use of their assets across the entirety of their financial lives. Whether families require investments, philanthropic strategies, mortgages, credit services and more, she delivers a layer of confidence that their important goals will be addressed. Her strength lies in an ability to connect like-minded individuals and share best practices and innovative ideas. Deeply passionate about supporting the needs of women—many of whom are enjoying financial independence for the first time—Christine has made it a priority to highlight their accomplishments and successes. Here Impact Wealth speaks to Christine on the importance for families to work with a trusted advisor, her thoughts on women supporting other women, and advice on her secrets for success. As a sought after speaker at conferences and universities across the country, and a contributing author for womencentric networking groups such as the Daily Drip and Elle Family Office, what advice would you give to empower the next generation of female leaders? CV: Never stop learning, be authentic and purposeful in what you do and find a job that you love doing. If you want to be successful, you’re going to live your job and if you love what you do, it’s not work. I would also tell the next generation of leaders, irrespective of gender, to surround yourself with people you look up to and share the same values and priorities as you do. The most important lessons I have learned over my career have come from my mentors. In your talks to students and other professionals, you stress the importance of identifying what makes you fearful, and find a way to conquer those fears before they can hold you back. What's your advice to people, in any profession, on how to conquer their fears?
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CV: My advice is my story. For the first 15 years of my career, I was terrified of public speaking and flying. I would literally do the work, and give the credit to someone else if it meant I didn’t have to present it. Flying was also a big fear, one that caused me to pass on opportunities that would have opened doors and furthered my career early on. It wasn’t until I turned 35 and decided it was now or never. I was going to either conquer my fears or live with them for the rest of my life; I chose the former. I set out and found a job that required me to fly around the country and give presentations to large groups of executives. It was a tough 2 years, but with time and practice, I conquered those fears. The biggest regret I have in my career is that I didn’t find that job early on and conquer those fears from day one. I tell anyone who will listen, students and young professionals alike, identify your ‘public speaking’ and find a job that requires you to do just that. I still don’t love to public speak or fly, but I am now able to do both and I am better for it. Your job is primarily around giving advice and guidance to your clients. Who are some of the clients you tend to work with and what advice do you give them? CV: That’s a great question, one I get often, and the answer is that ‘it depends’. The advice I would give one family might be very different from the advice I would give another family. Whether you are working with a multi-generational family or a business owner considering an exit strategy, the key is to know what questions to ask and to listen. To effectively advice, you need to understand the history behind journey that go them here, where they are now and what they want in the future. That may take one meeting with a client or happen over the course of multiple meetings with different family members, but the goal is the same. The goal is to first understand what is truly important to the person? What are their values? What do they want to accomplish in the future? Only when you have answers to these and many other important questions, can you start to strategize a plan. I tend to work with all types of clients from multi-generational families to business owners to individuals and couples preparing for retirement. Most clients have the benefit of
substantial wealth, but with that wealth the complexity in how they need to plan for the future. In addition to working with clients through complex planning strategies, I also strongly believe in education. I have a specific niche around working with women investors, especially those who are having to deal with financial matters for the first time. These individuals are usually going through a life changing event such as the recent passing of a spouse or are newly separated or divorced. I believe education and knowledge leads to confidence, and confidence in one’s financial future leads to freedom and peace of mind. How did you become so passionate about women supporting women? CV: I was a female professional on Wall Street and there were not many of us. Throughout my career, I have been fortunate to work under some amazing and talented women, who have been instrumental in my development, both professionally and personally. They took me under their wings and helped guide and teach me the skills, capabilities and stamina I needed to get where I am today. Now that I am in those senior positions and can repay that kindness and support I was shown all those years ago, I see it as a genuine honor and privilege to pay it forward.
ABOUT CHRISTINE VERGARI Christine’s background in finance and consulting enables her to help clients solve complex planning issues. She began at Morgan Stanley, Bear Stearns and Credit Suisse, delivering portfolio management guidance to trading desks and institutional clients. Most recently, Christine was at Bernstein Private Wealth Management following five years in academia at UNC Chapel Hill and the University of Miami and now at J.P. Morgan. Christine sits on the boards of the Boys & Girls Club of Wellington, the Community Foundation of Palm Beach and ELITE Funds Freedom. Married and the mom of two teenagers, her best days can be found playing pickleball, soccer or golf, and enjoying other fun outdoor activities with her family and friends.
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INVESTING
FINDING THE NEXT BUFFET Warren Buffett is broadly considered one of the 20th century's most successful investors. Much of Buffet’s fortune was amassed due to his unique talents in finding deep value public companies and his contrarian investment philosophy. If you had invested in Berkshire Hathaway in 1965 when Warren Buffett took the helm, your cost would have been about $14 a share. Today, 57 years later, the price of Berkshire Hathaway is $548,000 per share. You would have made 40,000 times your money or 4 million percent. A $1,000 investment in 1965 would be worth 40 million dollars today, not including dividends or distributions along the way. Warren Buffett is, without a doubt, the number one value investor of our time. He built the seventh-largest company in the world. In the last 15 years since the mortgage and the derivative meltdown of 2007/08, Warren Buffett's skill of picking the best value Investments became obsolete with the use of algorithms, derivatives, ETFs, technical traders, and day Traders who now dominate 90 to 95 % of the US market. Berkshire Hathaway would have had minimal growth if it had not been for Buffet's 16 billion dollar investment in Apple between 2014 to 2016. The value that had consistently outperformed growth now took a backseat as algorithms did the trading for humans and simply bought automatically when stocks hit new highs and sold when stocks hit new lows, even if it did not make sense. The proliferation of algorithmic derivatives made companies super over or underpriced.
BRUCE GALLOWAY Man vs. Machinee By Kristie Thompson
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MAN vs. MACHINE One former Wall St. Florida transplant with over 40 years of experience focusing on value investing figured out the key to controlling the algorithms to ride them to Buffet-style outstanding returns. Instead of being at the mercy of the bots that sell and short at companies' low, Bruce Galloway at Galloway Capital specializes in finding deep value companies where the baby has been thrown out with the bathwater. He then actively engages management in finding the catalysts needed to shock the algorithms and automated trading systems to start buying and pushing these companies' stocks back up. He developed a strategy to outperform the bots at their own game by identifying what the
bots are targeting and using this to trigger the algorithms and robots as a buying opportunity to his advantage, causing an upward secular trend. His method of finding these hidden gems destroyed by the algorithms and nurturing the significant events needed to trigger the bots to buy and keep buying has been a highly profitable winning strategy. A great admirer of Buffet, Galloway has learned from the visionary and added his modern-day secret sauce to outsmart the computer robot systems. His outstanding success at outsmarting computer algorithms has earned him returns of 395 % over the last four years. Compared to Eurekahedge, the world's largest global hedge fund database, Galloway's returns placed him number one value investor worldwide in 2020, with annual returns of 164.44% and 6th overall when stacked up against all fund managers across all asset classes in North America except crypto. In 2022 with markets significantly down for the year, Bruce is up over 10%. Galloway searches for undervalued American companies that have the potential to appreciate 5 to 10 times over the next several years. His sweet spot is overlooked value companies on the verge of becoming growth companies. Three years ago, he started buying MoneyGram, a billion-dollar-plus Money Transfer Company moving into fintech at $1.80 a share. Today the company is being taken over at $11 a share. He started buying Tenneco Inc., a 17 billion dollar automotive parts company, at $9 when It was making $1.2 billion a year - today, the company is being taken over by Apollo at $20 a share. Finding these undervalued companies is not just a job but a passion for Galloway, who never leaves the screen when the market is open. This out-of-the-box thinker has beaten the bots at their own game! The big question is, as artificial intelligence and algorithms get more and more advanced across all fields will man be able to continue to find ways to outsmart the bots? He is investing his own money and several other family offices. Michael Fuchs, a New York-based real estate billionaire, said: “ I’ve never seen anyone that has such a knack for finding so many winners in low priced out-of-favor stocks as Bruce Galloway. He’s made me several fortunes. He’s an amazing cash cow. I have invested with him for
years.” Another investor Russell Anmuth of Gotham Holding, says, “Bruce is undeniably the King of deep value stocks!” Bruce Galloway credits his superior returns to a loophole in the public markets where great companies that are solidly profitable and have good balance sheets have been pushed down by the robots and have lost coverage by Wall Street as their stocks dropped too low and just need a catalyst to be seen and to rise again. Some of Bruce's significant plays in the last 4 years have been a Media company called Robert L. Johnson Entertainment, run by media Mogul Bob Johnson, which dropped from $36 to $1. AMC networks bought the company for $6.50. Overstock was also one of his prominent positions when it fell from $125 a share to $4. The stay-at-home craze and the e-commerce craze of the pandemic drove the stock back up to $100 a share. Galloway also believes in having a very balanced portfolio of about 50 companies across all Industries. He avoids the Wall St. Herald and does all his own research, and typically holds positions for 12-36 months. “ I’ve always been obsessed with undervalued companies trading below their intrinsic value at significant discounts to their all-time trading highs. I only invest in companies
I understand with Significant growth potential and limited analyst coverage. Companies in transition or turnarounds, to me, are most exciting. I love what I do, and the thrill of finding that next company ready to fly propels me to work early every day.” With over 42 years of experience on Wall Street as a top Value Investor, his investment strategy is to identify companies below the radar and unlock value for investors. Before founding Galloway Capital Partners, he was a founder and portfolio manager of an investment fund, Strategic Turnaround Equity Partners, LP (Cayman), and its affiliates. From 1993 to 2005, He was a Managing Director of the Galloway Division at Burnham Securities. He previously served as a Senior Vice President at Oppenheimer & Co., Rauscher, Pierce & Refsnes, and Morgan Keegan & Co. Inc. Earlier in his career, he was a Vice President with L.F. Rothschild & Co. and a Research Analyst with the Prudential Insurance Company. He holds a B.A. in Economics from Hobart and William Smith College and an MBA in Finance from New York University's Stern Graduate School of Business. For more information, contact Bruce Galloway at Galloway Capital. bruce@gallowaycap.com 877-BGalloway
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PROFILE
DE ANNA GUERREIRO Boutique Firm: flexibility and innovation to find hidden treasures
De Anna Guerreiro comes from a long line of entrepreneurs, so it’s no surprise that she has an eye for innovation and ingenuity. Her ancestor’s and relatives have a vast background in being entrepreneurs. De Anna’s grandfather from her mother’s side was a farmer and owned a gold mine in Colorado called little Anna. On her dad’s side, a very long line of entrepreneurs that dates back to the 1600’s, of which was a Dutch pioneer who was a fleet ship owner and trader to politicians. De Anna's father raised her to be strong, competitive, and fiercely loyal, all traits she used to build a successful career in finance. In addition to being a force in her industry and a skilled entrepreneur, DeAnna is the mother to 5 children, a wife to an IT architect innovator and a soon to be a grandmother, don’t call her grandma call her Nanna! By Christine Vergari
In her early career, DeAnna worked with hundreds of companies through restructuring and rebuilding acquisition and development to agriculture, mining, oil and gas. She spent 20 years working with companies to foster growth, improve balance sheets and create a foundation for success. Her experience and background is what led her to create Athlon Family Office and Elle Family Office, where she identifies future success stories and gives them the platform to achieve those goals. She has the ability to see the unseen potential of a companies growth trajectory. Focusing on what the company lacks by filling those gaps with strategic key people and then partnering them with the right companies for services and production contracts. Athlon Family Office was created to provide professional athletes, collegiate athletes, sports agents and other family offices solutions to ensure future financial success to preserve their family legacy and wealth. Athlon family office is a boutique private equity firm focused on creating generational wealth through specialized investments. She has had a vast experience in most investment sectors with over 30 years working with companies from oil & gas, mining, agriculture and most technologies. De Anna and her team work with individuals and their families to create a legacy through education, mentoring and strategic investment opportunities. Unlike other organizations that work with athletes, Athlon's success comes from De Anna's holistic
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and personal approach to working with her clients and creating an atmosphere of trust and understanding the person goals of athletes. De Anna's team is comprised of industry experts and former professional athletes, who serve to mentor young and retired athletes. In addition to working with athletes and their families, Athlon is a private equity firm that identifies growth stage companies or distressed companies, as De Anna refers to them, 'hidden treasures'. Her focus in companies needing growth capital from $2 million to multimillion investments. Each company goes through a rigorous vetting process lead by De Anna and her team of industry experts. De Anna and her team don't just look at the company's fundamentals, but also the leadership within the organization. Her ability is to spot the wholes in a company and fill them with the right partnership and people. De Anna believes that the foundation for success starts with strong leadership and a core team of people to scale the company to the next level. Once selected, Athlon provides a platform for growth through its vast network of private investors, family offices, and UHNWI. She is currently working to invest and acquire shares of two w soccer clubs in Portugal and the UK. Her husband being born and raised in Portugal would share in her core values to preserving a family’s legacy and heritage. Athlon currently has 5 companies
under management with equity positions and the two soccer club investments with a capital raise of over 60 million dollars with estimated valuations between 600 to 625 million, 5 of the companies are already in post revenue and 2 are pre revenue. The companies range from a cancer AI technology radiopharmacy platform called BAMF Health, med tech start up Vera Health virtual medicine cabinet for families, a fintech banking AI Saas services merchant banking platform Infinios, MyGlobalHome a smart home AI complete integration app that syncs all communication and a sports scouting app. The second platform De Anna created, Elle Family Office Network, was born from a conversation she had with fellow women entrepreneurs at a Family Office summit. Being a woman in the financial industry, De Anna was well aware of the barriers and roadblocks women have had to overcome in their professional careers. De Anna also realized that much of her success came from the support and encouragement of her own mother and grandmother who owned their own businesses and mentors in the financial world. The idea behind Elle FO was to create a safe environment where Women had a Voice to express and be heard by other women. Her platform is where like-minded women can come together to help one another through guidance and mentorship. A platform FOR women, BY women to link ideas, co-collaborate, and to pull their resources together to form a large consortium of women investors. ELLE stands for Empowering, Leadership, Legacy, and Extraordinary women laying down their fears, barriers, insecurities, and forging a bond to impact our daughters and other female entrepreneurs in investing, globalization of innovations, and leadership. In an industry with many players, De Anna has set herself apart from the rest. If you ask De Anna's friends, clients and family they will all say her success is a combination of her deep sensitivity to the needs of each person no matter if they are an associate or client. She see’s the hidden things in a different dimension and perspective to find the unique structuring to a company’s secret sauce when partnering with the right companies in scaling up their potential. Her loyalty, smarts and her contagious energy and zest for life is what many first see about De Anna but there is much more to her dynamics then what you see on the surface. She brings that unbridled energy to every client and every deal she undertakes. Whether De Anna is working with a young athlete, assessing a company, or hosting a conference for women leaders, she brings intelligence and grace to every endeavor.
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PROFILE
NATASHA MULLER Next Gen Impact Investor and Mental Health Advocate
A radical collaborator seeking radical impact. Half-Swiss, halfColombian, raised in Japan and Hong Kong, Natasha Muller was born into a textile and manufacturing empire, she was just 17 years old when her father died by suicide, inheriting great wealth and responsiblity. Here she shares some insights on her priorities and what drives her. By Yvonne Beri
Natasha learned many of her values and her early lessons about building and scaling sustainable systems organically through her family business. But her childhood was rocked by tragedy when her father, who suffered from bipolar disorder and depression, died by suicide when Natasha was just 17. Inheriting at a young age is deeply traumatic, complex and difficult, and is an issue that tightly bonds those who have experienced it. Having had experience in her family office and by chance coming across a sustainable investment into renewable energy through family deals, Natasha has since blazed her own path, splitting her assets from her family and for the past ten years focusing fully on impact. As part of an active, frustrated ‘next generation’ community who want urgently to use their wealth to address the global societal and environmental problems that they see, Natasha is unusual in that she already has access to her capital and is using it to mould the existing systems to the priorities of a new generation. Natasha is the Founder of NM Impact and Kokoro, which runs the Future Mental Health Collective, a global peer-to-peer network for private investors and philanthropists supporting mental health. She is
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also a UNICEF NextGen Global Principal, a trustee for United for Global Mental Health and Philanthropy Impact, and is on various advisory committees and boards, including The Valuable 500, the Center for Sustainable Finance and Private Wealth at the University of Zurich, the Empower initiative with Harvard Medical School and Maanch. What are some of the areas you are invested in? While I am sector agnostic and invest across all stages and asset classes, I have a bias toward the following three UN Sustainable Goals – climate, food and health. My first major private equity investment over ten years ago was into a solar park and I have since continued to try to accelerate the energy transition however I can. A more recent investment in the energy space was an innovative company, which provides drones and end to end services to inspect the blades of wind turbines. Linked to my work on climate is a fascination with food systems and how we can improve nutrition while saving resources and emissions. It has been a great way to back foodtech entrepreneurs who are innovating in this space.
And health – well, we’re nothing without being physically and mentally healthy. A favourite investment in this space are those that provide employee mental health programmes, from wellness support through to Cognitive Behavioural Therapy and in-person treatment. Technology features strongly throughout my portfolio. I am always looking for opportunities created by AI and the digitization of systems. And lastly, I am acutely aware of the need to tackle systemic inequalities within finance and to try to right some serious wrongs. I consciously apply a gender and diversity lens to my investing, and I am constantly astounded by my own blind spots in this space, even as a Latinx woman myself. I want to challenge our collective understanding of how to fight the layers of discrimination entrenched by systems that have existed for hundreds of years. By seeing individuals for who they are, we stand to benefit from a full, incredible array of human talent – talent that others still may miss... How do you blend your investment strategy with your philanthropy and activism? I think historically, asset owners have bifurcated their capital into two worlds: traditional
investing to maximize profits and philanthropy to achieve a desired social or environmental good. But now, what’s exciting is the huge range of opportunities that are being created between these two divisions. It’s becoming a spectrum with different forms of capital deployed at different stages. We can look at what outcome we want to achieve and think, “What is the solution to the problem we’re looking at and how do we get there? Which systems are ripe for disruption? And which form of capital is best used to achieve that?” Some of my investments have used all three forms of capital. As a philanthropist, I might fund research that provides critical information to a company that I have backed. As an investor, I am helping a commercially viable idea to grow. And we’ve used activism, advocacy and human capital to get that idea on the political agenda, influencing hearts and minds. And because the company has impact baked into its DNA and business model (and isn’t just an afterthought), then scaling up the business through different forms of capital will scale both impact and financial returns… and this financial success allows me to recycle capital and invest into new ventures.
Mental health has become far more talked about during the pandemic. How has that accelerated what you are doing? Well, I’ve been crazy busy! This field is exploding because we have a global mental health crisis. Humans are feeling disconnected from themselves, from others, and even something greater than themselves. Waiting lists for public mental health services are long and getting longer, and the toll is particularly harrowing for young people. According to UNICEF’s State of the Child report in 2021, a child dies by suicide every 11 minutes. That’s shocking. So companies, health systems, insurance companies are all interested and integrating solutions to help create better mental health. And thousands of entrepreneurs are trying to bring innovation to the field. Just in the US, USD2.4bn was poured into digital health start-ups in 2020; a trend that continued last year. I’m investing too and it’s become an important part of my portfolio.
I am acutely aware of the need to tackle systemic inequalities within finance. I consciously apply a gender and diversity lens to my investing to tackle my own blind spots and to make sure that I am actively seeking out and benefiting from talent that comes from all walks of life.
In terms of the work we’re doing at Kokoro, the not-for-profit that I set up last year, we are using the heightened awareness around mental health to accelerate private funding
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PROFILE
for mental health services around the world, and critically to make the case for integrating mental health services into the work that private sector leaders do to support the Sustainable Development Goals. We do this because mental health is deeply interlinked – both as a cause and as a symptom - with other development problems around the world. In short, wherever a problem is human-made and needs a change in human behaviour as part of its solution, then mental health (and our ability to change our decision-making and behaviour) will be a factor that either supports or thwarts progress. Too often, mental health is simply not at the table, despite the impact it has on the outcomes we are seeking. However, the pandemic has helped to shift that dynamic and pilots are already up and running across various areas of development to show the impact that mental health can make. What is the Future Mental Health Collective and how does it work? The Collective is a global peer-to-peer network for private funders and philanthropists (individuals, families and corporates) that are investing in mental health services. It’s free to join and is fully independent there’s absolutely no solicitation allowed.
Rather, this is a highly trusted space that funders use to hold space for each other. I set the Collective up in main part because I personally was facing challenges as a mental health funder – it can be hard to know what will have most effect and to work in countries where you don’t already have trust with the local community. And because the global need is just so enormous, being a mental health funder can feel overwhelming. Knowing there are others facing the same challenges is reassuring. And on the practical side, we are a highly action-oriented community, sharing contacts, intelligence, data, due diligence and best practice with each other. Anything that helps us to get things done. Our mission with the Collective is to make existing mental health funding as effective as it possibly can be, and to help those who are new to funding mental health, including those who are integrating mental health into other SDG work, get up and running quickly – for example, by connecting new funders with those who are further along a similar journey. Which areas of mental health do you think are ripe for investment? Some of the main areas that are flourishing at the moment are stress reduction platforms, Telehealth services, prescription digital therapeutics, psychedelic assisted
therapy, new modalities of healing and community care, work with augmented and virtual reality and neuroscience to address dementia, schizophrenia, depression etc. I am particularly interested in those companies that bridge the gap between credible research and services that make sense in the community and in the local context. They have got to be evidence and human-rights based and informed by people with lived experience. These also tend to also be the companies that can credibly measure the impact and the value of the services they’re providing. Who do you look to for inspiration in your work? I am lucky enough to have a network of extraordinary people who inspire me because they’re brave, they’re disrupting systems, they’re elevating and fighting for voices that wouldn’t otherwise be heard. People like Kristen Eglinton from Footage Foundation who has been working on the ground in Ukraine to support the physical safety and mental health of highly vulnerable communities; Natalie Molina Niño from Known Holdings who has established a BlackIndigenous-, Asian American and Latinx-led growth platform shifting ownership towards the new majority; Raj Mariwala, who has been blazing a path for mental health in India for many, many years; and the incredible Nancy Rubin who set up the US Suicide Helpline and Didi Hirsch mental health services, providing free mental health, substance use disorder and suicide prevention services since 1942. What do you do to support your own mental health? I am careful about my routine, my sleep and my self-care. It’s hard when we are ambitious to remember that, as much as want to be, we’re really not superheroes. The vast majority of us do need a decent night’s sleep! And we’ll be more productive and strategic if we get it. And while we all have different things that help us with our wellbeing, for me, it’s exercise - from simply being out walking to weightlifting, horse-riding, anything that gets my heart pumping! Being part of a community is also something I deeply cherish, and I get great joy, for example, sharing my passion as a contemporary art collector with others in that world.
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PROFILE
Kameron Ramirez (L) and Nick Hissom with sculptures by Damien Hirst and a 7-foot Andy Warhol "Flowers” 1965 at Wynn Fine Art
NICK HISSOM AND KAMERON RAMIREZ Are Redefining the Business of the Art World with Aktion Art
Nick Hissom and Kameron Ramirez are two young entrepreneurs who have leveraged their professional experience in film production and music into a thriving full-service art agency, gallery, advisory, and artist management team that is propelling talented artists into the forefront of the art world. By Yvonne Beri
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As the new players in the art world managing Wynn Fine Art Gallery in Palm Beach, while also growing their roster of contemporary artists, they are applying innovative approaches that are shaking up the traditional art world with their style.
British sculptor Nick Hornby presents "Still and Still Moving" at Wynn Fine Art, Palm Beach, alongside works by Fernand Léger (left), Pablo Picasso (center), and Henri Matisse (right)
What is the background story of Aktion? Kameron: About three years ago, a close friend of mine with a background in fashion photography, Kevin HEES (pronounced Hayes), living in Palm Springs, asked me to take a look at some fine art paintings he was working on. I brought them to Nick, and we formed the idea to present them to a few young collectors in Palm Beach - the response was great! Within a short while, HEES was a full-time working artist, and Nick and I formed AKTION ART to manage and nurture his career. From there, we signed artist, ThankYouX (named Ryan Wilson) and were successfully able to introduce him to our network of collectors and art influencers. Given the success of HEES and ThankYouX, and our personal love of art, we founded AKTION ART, which represents and manages emerging artists, advises collectors, and also deals in secondary and established Master Works. We've since built a roster of stellar talent, and been fortunate enough to work and collaborate with some of the art world's greatest talents, established artists, galleries, collectors, and influencers. How are you different from other galleries and service art agencies?: Nick: We didn’t want Aktion Art to be a normal gallery. We wanted to curate a group of like-minded collectors who were individually dynamic, successful, passionate about art, and from many walks of life and industries. It is a wonderful experience bringing people who normally wouldn't meet one another together through art, and allows for a passionate community to gather around a particular artist. It’s really exciting sharing in our friends lives through their art collecting. It's about creating a great vibe and energy that is appropriate to the artist that you're showing. And having the artist in the room is also fantastic, letting them meet the people that are seeing and being inspired by their work. It's a great motivating factor for an artist to feel appreciated. We have been successful in sourcing great venues and working with great people to get the message out there and make an impact.
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Interesting, so your exhibits are (intellectually) unique? Nick: Yes, what is unique about what we do is the curation of the artists we are managing under the umbrella of Aktion Art. We always try to tell a story with what we're showing. We curate blue chip and emerging artists alongside famous works from larger collections, often from our personal network of dealers or collectors from around the world that we work with. Collectors especially enjoy adding emerging artists to their rosters, it shows their individuality and prowess for discovery. We also work with institutions to position newer artists alongside more recognizable names. At Wynn Fine Art, we curate just 2 special shows per Palm Beach season. Featuring master piece works from the private collection of Steve Wynn, Wynn Fine Art exhibits works that are seen in public very rarely, and guarded by highly experienced collectors. How did Covid impact your business? Kameron: COVID did impact our business. At the time, Nick’s stepfather asked us if we'd like to come to Palm Beach to manage his collection and reopen Wynn Fine Art, the gallery, at
the Esplanade on Worth Ave. Steve wanted to lend his art to the gallery and felt it would bring an uplifting energy to the otherwise Covid-stricken Holiday Season (of 2020-2021) Our first exhibit was "Master Works" by Roy Lichtenstein. Featuring 7 unique works on canvas from the 1960s, 70s, and 80s. Following that, Steve, Nick and I curated "Warhol x Basquiat" a collaborative show between Jean-Michel Basquiat and Andy Warhol. We always try to narrate our exhibits at Wynn Fine Art from a cohesive art-historical perspective. Being of two different generations, yet painting at the same time, the exhibit reflected on how Basquiat was inspired by Andy Warhol, while also celebrating their unique styles. It was an exhibit that lead the viewer through the journey of pop art. Nick: Being in Palm Beach last season, especially during COVID when everyone came down to Florida, was a great opportunity to meet and network with everyone. Having a gallery space was good too. From our shows at Wynn Fine Art, to our advisory placements in the Secondary market, to our emerging artists, we were able to carve out our own small niche in the Palm Beach market.
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PROFILE
Nick Hissom (L) and Kameron Ramirez photographed with works by AKTION ART discovery artist Connor Addison
Sounds like both of your innovative style, lifelong experience, and passion for art have benefited artists under your management and the art collectors? Kameron: I think so, Aktion Art prides itself in working with our artists to establish significant rises in their careers and valuations. Taking artists from a relatively unknown status, to now featured in high profile magazines, public events and museum exhibits, backed by a slew of world-renown collectors. We are also establishing a strong presence outside of Palm Beach as well, visiting and partaking in activations surrounding art fairs around the world such as; Art Basel, Switzerland, Art Paris, Paris, Art Monte Carlo, Monaco, AmfAR Cannes, AmfAR Palm Beach, The Hamptons Art Ranch, Art Crush Aspen, auction integrations with Sotheby’s, Christie's, Phillips, and more. It is all really exciting for us, the artists, and the collectors! Nick: I grew up very much immersed in art. Since I was maybe 15 years old, I watched and learned from many of the top dealers, auction houses, and collectors, studying how these great works of art, that I was lucky enough to grow up around, were moving in and out of our homes and in and out of the collection. Over time, you get a feel for the business behind it. You get to know how everything operates.
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What was also vital in building my network was my upbringing in London and Switzerland. I went to school with many great collecting families and have longterm relationships with them. I made many connections through the art and social scene and going out in London. It's all about experience, relationships, and developing trust with collectors. By doing you learn so much. It's a lifelong immersion.
by Aktion Art discovery ThankYouX to a prominent collector from the technology sector. Originally introduced to us via the Museum of Art and Design in New York, on Columbus Circle, in which Aktion Art are members of the Junior Board. Following and expanding on the story of ThankYouX over the past 2 years, to now major museum prominence and six-figure auctions at Phillips and Sotheby's has been an exciting ride!
What are some of the recent shows you curated outside of Wynn Fine Art?
Tell us about the exciting March 2022 exhibit at Wynn Fine Art. I think the exhibit reflects how well you work with talented emerging artists and pair them alongside master works.
Nick/ Kameron: We recently put on a show for Barcelona-based discovery Connor Addison, during Miami Basel at the Aston Martin Residences Tower. The show sold out that day, and was attended by over 300 of Basel’s most high profile young collectors and art influencers. Rarely do we see an artist so ravenously accepted as Connor has been. Also in December, Aktion Art put on a public exhibit with the City of Beverly Hills for LA artist Kevin HEES as part of their “Visions of the Future” art initiative, - which rallies retail businesses stricken by Covid closures around art. The show was an immense success impacting Beverly Hills and the wider community with HEES’ messages of Hope and positivity. We also pioneered a recent sale of a 'Phigital' (a merger of physical and digital art)
Nick: The March through June exhibit this Season at Wynn Fine Art is titled "Still and Still Moving" by artist Nick Hornby. We are hugely excited to be introducing such a prominent artist from the United Kingdom to Palm Beach for the first time! Kameron and I brought Nick Hornby to the attention of Steve, who simply fell in love with the work. One of the most accomplished sculptors in the UK with a fantastic resumé of institutional accreditations. Nick has exhibited in the Tate Britain, belongs to the Royal Society of Sculptors, and at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge. As one views his amazing works in sculpture from varying perspectives, one discovers new faces, lines, and forms from each point of view. His
I went to school with many great collecting families and have long-term relationships with them. I made many connections through the art and social scene and going out in London. It's all about experience, relationships, and developing trust with collectors By doing you learn so much. It's a lifelong immersion. Nick Hissom
multifaceted and optically illusive sculptures appear to change drastically, shrouded in shadow and silhouette. "Still and Still Moving" by Nick Hornby will also feature master works by Pablo Picasso, Fernand Léger, and Henri Matisse (all from the 1950s), that showcase Hornby's portrayal of the artistic dialogue between these artists, and the movement of cubism, abstraction, and figuratism. How does philanthropy and active Board participation play into your business and life philosophy? Nick: We are very active philanthropically. We are donors to the Norton Museum of Art, the Museum of Arts and Design, Unicef, Children’s Relief, Share the Meal, AmfAR, and many more humanitarian causes. Kameron is on the Committee for Hope For Depression spearheaded by Audrey Gruss. And for me personally, I have a lot of friends that donate to charity as part of their day-to-day life or, also as part of their faith. Many of these friends have inspired me to do the same. I donate a percentage of my income to a number of charitable causes that
Nick Hissom (L), AKTION ART artist Kevin HEES (center), and Kameron Ramirez (R) at AmfAR Gala in Palm Beach
are inspiring where I feel I can help. We look to do things that enrich people's lives like, for example, we support the children of the Dreyfus School of the Arts - we just purchased an artwork where all proceeds benefit the school. Another charity I support is called Share the Meal, which provides meals to hungry underprivileged people throughout the world. I wanted to donate a meal to someone in need every time I personally ate a meal, so I donate three meals a day, every single day. Whatever you would do for yourself, you should also do for others if you can. Another charity I'm very passionate about is Make A Wish Foundation. The work they do for terminally ill children, and following their stories and getting involved in a support network for their families and the kids themselves - it's so much more to me than a donation, it really hits home on a very emotional personal level. Kameron: Our artist Kevin HEES recently donated a work for auction at AmfAR Palm Beach in benefit of research for HIV and
AIDS. The piece raised over $80,000.00 for the cause, and was covered in Vogue, and the New York Times. Kevin HEES' donated the work in memory of his Brother, and many friends, who lost their lives to HIV and AIDS. What is your commitment to the artists you work with? Kameron: We promise the artist that we will put together a great show, a beautiful catalog, and presentation, and we'll put their work out there for the collectors to see. We give the artists the absolute best platform, and then it's really up to the market to decide if they like it, and how much they like it. We can't force anyone to buy anything. It is for us to build together with the artists and continue working collectively to grow their careers. So far, we have picked artists that have been well received. You just have to put your best foot forward, hope for the best, and that's kind of what we've done. The End…
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PROFILE
PRAIRIE STREET PRIME
A Home For the Luxury Kosher Culinary Connoisseur By Amy Poliakoff
produces original chef-led content to inspire users to get creative and build confidence in the kitchen. Leading ultra high net worth families who purchase or who have sampled the meat have the most positive feedback. Harry Winston’s grandson Gordon Winston commented that “I Love these tender juicy lamb chops, some of the best quality I’ve had. Prairie Street Prime has a great product. “There are over 45 underserved cities in the United States, including Cincinnati, Houston, Dallas, Clevaland, Phoenix, Vegas, San Francisco and more. There is almost nothing kosher that you can get there because there isn’t enough critical mass like in New York, South Florida, Chicago and LA. Only small sections at supermarkets for meat that may not even be USDA Prime beef. It’s not real meat. We are a luxury kosher experience,” said Moscowitz. Looking for educational videos, recipes, and blogs on how to cook decadent and delicious kosher meats? Wondering where to find that custom cut of perfectly marbled prime rib? Prairie Street Prime (prairiestreetprime. com) is quickly becoming the gold standard for kosher foodies, meat-lovers, and culinary connoisseurs alike. Founded by Elliot Moscowitz, Prairie Street Prime delivers kosher USDA Prime beef, veal and lamb directly to your door. Moscowitz’s mission is not only to fill the gap in the market for highly-graded Kosher meat, but to resolve the inconvenience and uncertainty that has plagued it until now. The company also emphasizes education and community, with a dedicated media arm that
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Not all meat is created equal. Prairie Street Prime, headquartered in New York, is one of the only national companies that has a USDA Prime line. They are truly a provider of luxury meat because they pass two regulatory gatekeepers — kosher supervision under the Star-K certification and a Prime rating by the United States Department of Agriculture. The combination of these elusive certifications is a rare and ultra-exclusive advantage that is naturally in high demand for connoisseurs. The Star-K kosher certification — an international leading kosher certification for over 50 years — has provided the stamp
of approval for consumers to know that products have the purest of ingredients. Products that are considered Kosher are slaughtered under a traditional regulatory clean and supervised method or rabbinical oversight. From slaughter to processing to packaging, supervision of the highest quality is required to earn that coveted certification. Similarly, unless there is a USDA label on your meat, it has not been supervised or graded by a licensed USDA professional. Only USDA inspectors can ensure the safest, highest quality and labeling of all USDA products and USDA Prime beef comprises less than five percent of the market. All Prairie Street Prime meats are processed under USDA supervision which allows for shipment throughout the U.S. Working only with boutique farms, the company’s Prime meat is superior because it has the highest amount of intramuscular marbling, allowing for rich, succulent flavor and a tender, juicy consistency. Ever entrepreneurial and growth-minded, Prairie Street Prime recently rolled out their new line of kosher USDA Prime 30-day dry aged beef. This meticulous and nuanced process produces a distinctly rich and meaty flavor, and a silky, smooth texture. It occurs by storing meat in a highly controlled setting where airflow, temperature, and humidity are carefully regulated. As the moisture is slowly drawn out over time, the areas of muscle soften while the fat grows more prominent and potent, adding robust flavor. At the same time, the outer layers dry to form an exterior crust that seals in the flavor and tenderness. If you’re really looking to serve and savor an unparalleled meal, dry-aged is your ticket. You can currently choose from over 50 cuts of beef, veal and lamb, with more on the way. Moscowitz also offers a Concierge Service that caters to seekers of custom luxury options like lamb fat, whole export ribs, and their 3-inch-thick Tomahawk steaks (all of which come directly from their state-of-theart USDA kosher facilities. They also provide unique incentives for private chefs who want superior products for their clientele’s luxury events, holidays and vacations. Beyond the kosher community, Prairie Street Prime caters to a variety of people, including the Muslim community who follows a Halal diet and who are regular buyers of kosher foods.
Prairie Street Prime is a truly entrepreneurial platform that represents the finest in mindful eating and kosher culinary experiences. Plans to expand to other avenues of salubrious products include high-end fish, chicken and wine. Moscowitz is passionate about building a global Jewish community and culinary education platform that publishes original chefdriven content every Sunday at 2 p.m. Eastern Standard Time via their YouTube channel— Prairie Street Prime Culinary Kitchen (youtube. com/prairiestreetprime). Working with over 20 professional chefs, a production team, video assistants, and creative directors, Moscowitz produces and directs new videos where his chefs demonstrate how to make exceptional kosher meals with ease. Over 40 videos that rival the Food Network have been produced and are being translated into other languages such as French, Hebrew, and Spanish. “I have things I am trying to accomplish. One is to have a media company that produces original content and that goes hand in hand with building a community for people,” said Moscowitz. Moscowitz’s ability to understand the need for a concierge program is pervasive through all aspects of his company. The chefs he works with can be hired to custom cook private kosher dinners using the company’s top selling cuts of meat, which include lamb chops and USDA Prime bone-in prime rib with gorgeous Frenched bones. Prairie Street Prime has catered dinners for private organizations like the 1640 Society and many more, where clients can enjoy the finest in kosher cooking. Everyone wants to ride the wave toward a healthy and luxurious lifestyle, and Prairie Street Prime makes it easier than ever to tap into that. Eating kosher meat for some is a perfect complement to Ketogenic dieting and can lead to a new outlook around food and healthy living. “Eating high quality red meat, other proteins, and fruits and vegetables with very little processed food has enabled me to lose serious weight over the last few years. It is all about the whole balance in a diet that matters. I love hearing people say that once they try our meat, they can never go back to anything else. The beauty of Prairie Street Prime and what we have built is that we are bringing luxury culinary experiences to the world,” said Moscowitz.
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PROFILE
STORICA WINES
Bringing their Story of Armenian Wines to the U.S. One Tasty Sip At a Time With ancient grapes first cultivated for winemaking over 6,000 years ago, Armenian wines might be historic, but they are now becoming hip as well, thanks to New York native and co-founder of Storica Wines, Zack Armen. Despite being born and raised in the US, Armen was brought up to feel closely connected to his family’s Armenian culture. That familial feeling was forged even more while attending Armenian camps as a kid, and through his father's founding of the Children of Armenia Fund (COAF) in 2001 to help children and communities in the rural regions of the country, By Hillary Latos
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hardly any history of Armenian winemaking in modern times, and what was now driving the growth in fine wine production in country.
Upon visiting his ancestral homeland over the years, Armen realized he didn’t just enjoy experiencing Armenian culture, but also tasting it. “During a trip to Armenia in 2017, I noticed that all of a sudden there was wine all over [Yerevan, Armenia's capital city], and it was really good,” explains Armen. “There was a burgeoning scene of wine bars serving Armenian wines and the government was really supporting growth in the winemaking industry. I noticed that winemakers of Armenian descent were coming into the country from around the world and that really got me intrigued.”
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During his trips, Armen forged a friendship with Vahe Keushguerian and his daughter Aimee, two of the leaders of this Armenian wine resurgence. Keushguerian had gained decades of experience creating wines in both Italy and France, including the famed Champagne region. According to this winemaking connoisseur, Armenia is the perfect mix of climate, precipitation, and elevation of vineyards, making it the newest wine wonder of the world. Armen was greatly impressed with how things were progressing and spent a lot of time with Vahe and Aimee learning the history of wine from Armenia, why there was
“Armenia was a soviet satellite county for most of 1900s, during which time there was no high quality winemaking in the country,” says Armen. “The region, which is truly experiencing a wine renaissance, has mostly been known throughout its history for high-quality brandy. Vahe, as well as other winemakers, have spent time reinvigorating old vineyards, planting new vines, and re-discovering ancient indigenous grape varieties. They've also uncovered evidence that suggests these grapes have been growing for over 6,000 years in the region. They have since brought back vines that had survived the Soviet period and now have modern tanks and barrels and processing equipment to allow for scaled, high quality winemaking to occur. We started Storica Wines to bring these beautiful wines of Armenia to the US in a smart, comprehensive, and joyous way, accounting for the unique intricacy that is the US wine & spirits industry. We've hired a team of experienced professionals from the wine industry to generate awareness of the region and to support sales, distribution, and marketing activities for our portfolio of six Armenian wine brands.” Now that they are on the scene, Storica Wines is certainly leading the movement of educating others about the unique winemaking abilities of Armenia. Storica’s owns US national rights to six brands that they currently sell to distributors (or wholesalers), who are then licensed to sell in certain states. Most of their distributors sell the products into independent wine & spirits shops and restaurants, as well as retail chains. “Our wine team is made up of a regional manager who
PROFILE
maintains a relationship with distributors. We currently have 12 distributors, soon to be 14, who sell into 20 different states around the country. Our team is spread across New York, Boston, Los Angeles and Florida. We also have an online shop on our website where people in most states can order our wines to be shipped directly to their homes.” While this past year was one of expansion, Storica is already looking towards the next steps of their successful journey. The current goal of this passionate import company is to expand their presence to more than 30 states by the end of this year. Top priority on the agenda is gearing up with Consortium, Storica's new distributor in Florida with a broad range of stores and restaurants in their network. Florida has a
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booming wine market and is the second highest consumption state in the country. “We’re hoping to have more restaurants attracted to this portfolio by the end of this year and are focused on covering all of the major metro markets around the country. The wines are doing really well in all of our current markets, so we see huge upside in being more widely available around the US. Southern California has the largest population Armenian Americans, so we definitely are focused on growing our presence out west. I just hope that people continue to embrace the wines and the story. The reaction from consumers as well as sommeliers, Masters of Wine, and other wine trademembers around country has already been incredible.”
Storica Wines is also dedicated to driving future economic development for Armenia and its wines, which is why they will be taking contingencies of key stakeholders including large hospitality groups, chains, and other large buyers to his homeland this year. “We want to bring them around to the wine regions and have them meet with the winemakers and get a firsthand look and feel of everything. This is important to our new category building efforts in the US.” In addition to the passion he has for sharing the winemaking story of his cultural background, Zack also has a background in finance. Having worked on Wall Street, he is able to merge both of these interests and has remained diligent about financial projections and managing the company’s
cash flow. This has helped what started as a passion project to become a real company with a growing business. The company’s main investors include he and his father, and investments from angel investors within Armen's network who believe strongly in the Armenian wine story and, of course, the return potential of their investment. This energetic entrepreneur and his team are also gearing up to launch a new round of financing to continue to fuel its rapid growth. The brand’s current palatable portfolio is made up of a diverse array of high-quality and affordable wines, though they also offer the rarer, more premium varieties for connoisseurs. The grapes – and potential for growth – are both ripe for Storica’s unlimited growth potential itself. They currently have six brands and 15 products with the goal of capping out at ten brands and up to 30 products over the next few years. Their strategy of the moment is to focus on building their presence and followers, and with the majority of the wines priced in the $15 to $20 price
range, they are indeed able to offer varieties which are attractive to the American palette, while also differentiating themselves. Right now the red grapes of Armenia – similar to those of a pinot noir - are all the rage – just try their fruity notes and cherry flavors and find out why. Enjoy the structure and dryness of this blend, which has much to do with the elevation of the vineyards in Armenia (between 1200 and 1800 meters above sea level). This makes for a more complex profile and big structure similar to a Cabernet Sauvignon, almost like a marriage between a Cab and Pinot Noir, both varieties which Americans know well. With a dry and complex flavor, Armenia's white wines have an aroma similar to a Chardonnay. There is even more good news for lovers of these A-list Armenian wines – additional grapes are in the process of being discovered and are ramping up their scale. Aside from historic grapes and great variety, according to Armen, perhaps the most important secret sauce of Storica’s success is
their stellar team. “It’s because of them that we can do what we do,” explains Armen. “They’re really passionate about what it takes to make it in the most competitive wine market in the world, and I just love to see how they have embraced this project and our mission to bring this into the US in a scaled manner. We recently hired Lisa Granik, one of only a few dozen Masters of Wine in the US -- an MW is basically the third degree black belt of wine experts. She’s spent so much time with our team and been digging into what we are doing, especially with our new distribution expansion in Florida. We went through all the wines and she is just so knowledgeable about this industry and is known as such a credible person in the wine industry. It’s a joy to see people like her recognize our wines for their quality. It’s a true pleasure to see our company make an impact and realize the vision we set out for every day. We have much to do but it's already been an incredible journey.” Storicawines.com
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PROFILE
SIR IVAN
Carrying on His Father’s Legacy by Spreading Universal Love Through his Music A personal story of survival of one man who rises from the ashes of the Holocaust and then reaches the pinnacle of success in America, is one that needs to be told. Siggi B. Wilzig was a man whose ascendance from the evil of the Holocaust exemplifies the ultimate American dream. Losing 59 relatives in the Holocaust, Siggi B. Wilzig survived Nazi concentration camps: Auschwitz and Mauthausen, to find hope and prosperity in America. After arriving in America, he ultimately created an oil and banking empire with more than 4 billion dollars in assets. His life story is encapsulated in the number one Amazon best-selling biography Unstoppable: Siggi B. Wilzig’s Astonishing Journey from Auschwitz Survivor and Penniless Immigrant to Wall Street Legend. By Amy Poliakoff
Siggi B. Wilzig was the only child in his Jewish school class of 1,500 students to survive the Holocaust. When he arrived to America at the age of 21 with only $240 dollars in his pocket he had no formal education and no business contacts. He earned his first dollar shoveling snow in the Bronx. Hard work was not new to Wilzig and he committed himself to whatever job he could find. From bow-tie presser in a sweatshop to various traveling salesman jobs, Siggi B. Wilzig had the desire to succeed. His exceptional and persuasive sales skills, personality, and work ethic drove him forward. After meeting Naomi Sisselman, whom he married, they had three children: Ivan, Sherry, and Alan.
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Wilzig started buying stock in Wilshire Oil Company of Texas with his sales commissions, formed an investment group and ultimately convinced the board of directors that he possessed a strong business acumen. By the age of 39, Siggi B. Wilzig was elected president and chief executive officer of the American Stock Exchange listed oil and gas producing company. Understanding that the future growth of Wilshire Oil Company depended upon cash led him to acquire a controlling interest in the Trust Company of New Jersey, a full-service commercial bank listed on NASDAQ. Wilzig grew TCNJ into one of the largest and most profitable mid-size banks in New Jersey. Having been selected as the first Holocaust survivor to lecture before cadets and officers of the United States Military at West Point, Wilzig’s mission was to teach the world the evils of antisemitism and to make sure future generations did not allow for another genocide against any culture. Unstoppable, written by Joshua M. Greene, tells the tale of Siggi B. Wilzig’s story of survival, and is an in depth look at his astonishing journey of success. A true wake up call, this book is a gripping account for those who deny the Holocaust and gives strength to those struggling to overcome adversity in life. One of the most articulate and entrepreneurial survivors, Wilzig is the ultimate David fighting Goliath. His journey in Unstoppable is a beacon of hope for all and instills the principles that perseverance and determination can overcome any obstacle of life. In 1980, Nobel Prize laureate author Elie Wiesel was appointed head of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial by President Jimmy Carter. The first person he nominated to serve as the museum’s founding council member was Siggi B. Wilzig. Spending a lifetime of combating hate through many lectures, Siggi B. Wilzig died in 2003 leaving the world with his memories and instructions to never forget how to combat injustice. His testimony was given to the Shoah foundation, founded by Steven Spielberg. “Soon there will be no one left to tell the story. Unstoppable is an inspiration to all because it tells the story that my father never gave up. He had the will to live in those concentration camps when mass murder and the death of innocent men, women, and children was all around him. Despite that, he came to America and made a life for himself to do
had been recreated as a high energy dance song. His music has reached the Top 10 in the UK’s Music Week Chart alongside Jennifer Lopez, Lady Gaga, Katy Perry, and Rhianna. His anthem, “Kiss All the Bullies Goodbye” speaks to the nation’s teen bullying epidemic and the high suicide rate among the LGBTQ community. Having worked with famed musicians like Debbie Gibson, Paul Oakenfold and Taylor Dayne, Sir Ivan’s music has touched lives. A true advocate of human rights, Sir Ivan founded the Peaceman Foundation in 2005. The Peaceman Foundation is a private organization established to battle hatred and violence against those perceived as outsiders – and to treat those suffering from PostTraumatic Stress Disorder, a serious condition caused by a reaction to hatred and violence. Sir Ivan and his foundation have donated more than 500,000 dollars to a wide range of charities. Known as Peaceman, the ultimate real-life superhero fighting for peace and love, he performs in a cape with a giant peace sign centered on his back. Spreading the message of positivity for more than 20 years, Sir Ivan is a beacon of hope for anyone with struggles. “We don’t want the 6 million Jewish people to have died in vain. We must ensure that future generations learn about prejudice, bigotry, racism and genocide. You can see all over the world that antisemitism is growing and Holocaust education is extremely relevant today. We must learn from the past to prevent future killings in the future. It is not just about Jewish genocide, it is about bullying, name calling, roughing people up, that eventually leads to violence and murder. Society must stand up for each other and stay vigilant,” said Sir Ivan.
good in the world. This book is for anyone who suffers from PTSD due to rape, violent crime, domestic abuse, tragic accident and war. It is for all traumatized soldiers no matter what branch of the military they serve. Whoever reads this book can find the hope to go on living and overcome any adversity whether it be drug addiction or finding success in life. You can see what one man did in the worst-case scenario in the world and how he made the comeback of a lifetime. It is quite a journey of success and a story to find hope,” said Sir Ivan, Siggi’s eldest son.
Today, Ivan Wilzig, professionally known as Sir Ivan, is carrying on his father’s legacy by spreading universal love and peace through his music. As a celebrity electro-pop superstar, Sir Ivan has become a top 10 Billboard charting artist. For his first single, Sir Ivan chose the iconic Beatles song “Imagine” because the lyrics reflected Sir Ivan’s mission of creating a world without hatred. His unique take on the song broke the top 40 Billboard Club Play Chart. Released on September 4, 2001, just before 9/11, Ivan’s version made music history as it was the first time the slow rock ballad
In a world where antisemitism is on the rise and society is divided by political views, the memory of the Holocaust is fading. Sir Ivan is an inspirational figure reminding contemporary society that we must never forget. He is an advocate for all in America facing PTSD or intolerance. Providing purity and the power of love through his music and charitable work, Sir Ivan continues to remind society that tolerance is not lost and above all acceptance can persevere. To buy Sir Ivan’s father’s biography go to unstoppablesiggi.com. Sir Ivan’s music is available on all online music stores.
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FEATURE
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The Admirable Leadership of Medical Entrepreneur and Philanthropist
BEATA DRZAZGA Entrepreneur Beata Drzazga is the founder and owner of BetaMed S.A. which is one the largest medical corporations in Poland. Providing care and health services to patients was a calling for the former nurse turned businesswoman that over time developed BetaMed S.A. into a multi-million-dollar company. By Hillary Latos
“It was a jump into deep water, but with conviction you will succeed. During many years of work in the hospital, I often noticed the staff's lack of empathy towards patients,” Drzazga reflects on her past. “It was something I completely disagreed with, and I started dreaming about doing it my way. I wanted patients to be treated comfortably and without issues. From the beginning, I have been striving for high quality in services. Even today, I have contact with the first patient and still employ my first employees.” It was a dream that started off small and grew into a major business. “When I founded BetaMed, I imagined that I would create a one-stop company. In the course of time, people from different provinces started to come to us, and I had a great need to help these people. That is how BetaMed started to develop throughout the country and today I have 91 branches in 11 provinces in Poland. We employ over 3,200 employees and we take care of over 6,000 patients.” She took her passion for helping others and combined it with a genuine understanding of the medical field and created her company alongside the subsidiary businesses of Drzazga Clinic, which specializes in aesthetic medicine and laser therapy. The success of her platform has established incredible success in Europe and now even stretches its scope to America with BetaMed International in Las Vegas.
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Drzazga’s business empire that is rooted from humble beginnings has escalated in such grand success that her company captured the Business of The Year Award in the 12th edition of the Businesswoman of the Year competition in Poland. Her leading entrepreneurial skills that put her on a medical field pedestal made her one of the wealthiest women in Poland and even took her so far as to branch out into other fields of business including fashion. To this day she is also known for her trendsetting and glamorous Dono da Scheggia fashion salons, which showcase the latest international collections from the top fashion capitals such as Milan, London, Paris, and Vienna. Along the way she has always been dedicated to her staff that has helped make her a successful businesswoman. “One should not forget about employees, because they largely create the company, without their competence and involvement it would not be possible to develop it.” It is a thought that is prevalent in all of her offices. “From the beginning to the end, it is all about setting a standard and not just the standard of the building, but also the standard in management and to never let go of quality. The patient always comes first, to be treated with respect and to receive the best care. Another point is the atmosphere between employees. We all treat each other like family.”
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Drzazga always has her finger on the pulse of what is the biggest way to succeed in this day and age and what it takes to make the world a better place, which is why it is no surprise to those who know her best that she also carries a heart of gold within herself. The same compassion and empathy she had for patients has also led to her become a globally recognized philanthropist.
Going on, she expressed the need for all business leaders like herself to take an active role in assisting. “The war in Ukraine will also leave an aftermath in the form of a huge economic crisis. Not only will Poland suffer, but also many countries around the world. The effects of this crisis will be felt by everyone - both companies and private people. The first signs of economic collapse are already visible."
Now she has set her sights on making an impact on the wellbeing of those deeply impacted by the recent humanitarian crisis in Ukraine. “None of us expected such a turn of events and we are shocked that a war is taking place in which children, women and civilians are being killed,” reflects Drzazga.
I am afraid that the economic effects of this war will stay with us for years. Please remember that, in the face of this humanitarian tragedy, we cannot be passive. Each one of us can help and it is worth providing that help to the best of our ability.”
The tragic and horrific turn of events with Russia has led to her companies taking multi-level approaches to assist. “We buy a large amount of goods according to the lists of needs reported by Ukraine. These include food with long shelf lives and much-needed products such as toothpaste and bath gels. We also purchased blankets, flashlights, and power banks. Since we operate in the medical industry we were able to donate large amounts of medical resources to Ukrainian hospitals as well. We have become very involved in various relief efforts.”
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Drzazga’s leadership skills will impact the world for the better. There is no stopping her now and into the future when it comes to the business of improving mankind. “I believe that the most important thing is self-discipline, commitment and hard work - it always brings results,” she says. “You have to believe in yourself, and your work must be fueled by passion, because without it there are no true achievements.”
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STYLE & FASHION
THE POWERFUL LANGUAGE OF SCENT Elizabeth Hagopian-Gaynes’s Strangelove is a game changer in the luxury perfume market
Scent is one of the most powerful ways of evoking emotions, manifesting memories, and communicating without words. For centuries, perfumes have possessed an aphrodisiac power over humans tapping into the sensorial realm of the olfactory sense. Elizabeth Hagopian-Gaynes had a unique vision when creating strangelove as she sought to create a perfume house built on transparency using ethically sourced and sustainable pure, concentrated ingredients to formulate luxury fragrances that are unlike anything else in the market. Today, strangelove is flourishing with a loyal and growing customer base, a demand that warrants a waitlist, and a product so intoxicatingly desirable it receives “love letters.” By Mosaka Williamson
In the male-dominated world of the fragrance industry, Elizabeth, the CEO, and founder, and Creative Director Helena Christensen have taken a unique approach to an archaic industry and are leading the world of bespoke luxury perfume. Besides their website, strangelove is sold at Harrods, Bergdorf Goodman, and various high-end boutiques around the world. The journey of bringing all of this to fruition is unique, inspiring, and began with a trip to Borneo to a family-owned farm of agarwood trees, whose precious oil cost can cost over $100,000 per kilogram. Impact Wealth spoke with CEO and founder Elizabeth Hagopian-Gaynes on her personal evolution and the progression, growth, and future of strangelove. When you ask Elizabeth for her thoughts on strangelove today, she says, “We're doing it
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for the love of scent and beautifully crafted products, if you maintain the integrity of the products, the business will be successful.” When asked if she always knew she would be in the perfume business, she says, “I’ve always loved perfume; it fascinated me. When I was a kid, my mother would have these little vials of pure oil. She wouldn’t mix them, she would just wear them pure.” Though she started off wearing designer fragrances like L’air du Temps by Nina Ricci and Fendi, she gradually became disillusioned as she found that the scents and quality had changed as more brands focused on celebrity spokespeople. “There's a lot of mass marketing for fragrance, and I became disillusioned with that, which is one reason why I started my own company.” This is one of the key reasons why Helena Christensen is not the “face” of the company despite being a supermodel
and celebrity. Elizabeth states, “We agreed we didn't want a “face” for the brand. We wanted the perfumes to speak for themselves.” Elizabeth admits that the industry was new to her when she founded strangelove. Before strangelove’s inception, she had been working with start up companies in the US and Europe. She moved to New York with her son in 2008 after living in Rome for several years. “A friend called me when I moved to New York and said she would love my help raising awareness for sustainable farming and assisting with new product development for her family farms in Borneo. And I thought, that's pretty amazing. Where is Borneo?” After some research, Elizabeth started working with her and her family. She reflected on those early days: “Over the course of several years, I learned a lot about the industry. On their sustainable farms, there
was a tree called agarwood that produces oud and is used in incense, perfume, traditional medicine, and Chinese medicine.” She says, “Part of the problem with agarwood in the wild is that those trees are very valuable and are part of the rainforests. Poachers would come in, chop down the trees and could get upwards of $100,000 for a tree that had oud resin in it. That's why this family decided to start sustainable farms so they could replant and not destroy the rainforest.” She learned their farms had the perfect climate for patchouli, a very tender shrub. “It only grows in Indonesia, so we started talking with the five largest fragrance houses about developing a 600 acre farm exclusively for a major fragrance house, and there was a bidding war to partner with us.” At this same time, there was a shift in the industry: clients, customers, and the public wanted to know the source of ingredients and put a larger focus on products that were fair trade, sustainable, and transparent. After securing a deal with one of the top perfume houses, she learned more about the industry. “I was going back and forth between Borneo and Geneva, meeting with the heads of the fragrance houses, and I learned a lot about the industry. I began speaking with perfumers and people in marketing, and I found it fascinating. I fell in love with the idea of quality ingredients because we were producing them ourselves.”
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“During that time, Helena and I became good friends through mutual friends as well as our sons’ close friendship. I shared a sample perfume oil we had made using oud from Borneo, and she fell in love with it and asked to be part of the company. She then became our Creative Director. She's been involved since we first founded the company. We develop samples together with our master perfumer and she also helps with branding and packaging design. She's got a great eye — I feel that she perfectly represents our brand, which embodies authentic luxury.” How do you name a new perfume that expresses an unspoken emotion? Elizabeth explains, “We create perfumes for people who want something high quality and special. We are not a commercial brand, but there is a huge market for niche perfumes, which is the fastest growing sector of the overall fragrance industry, projected to exceed $52B by 2025. We like to have scents that are distinctly different. We didn't want to create anything that reminds someone of ‘this or that.’ As people discover the ingredients in our perfumes, they find that they are daring, edgy, potent, and you have to have a certain confidence to wear them. We had such a significant response to the first oil that we did I knew we could create more scents with the same overwhelming acknowledgment. I just was so passionate about it.” Hagopian-Gaynes continued, “The pandemic put a major strain on retail, and we had to quickly pivot to our only remaining sales channel: our website. The challenge was that new customers couldn’t first test our fragrances before making a purchase. We focused more on social media and shared messages from our customers. We worked hard on our website and just relaunched it last fall. We wrote poems to go with our scents; we created a discovery set, which led to purchases of larger bottles. We wanted people to understand who we are and why we are at this price point. I source a lot of ingredients myself directly from farms around the world, including ambergris, red champaca, and orris butter — for me, it’s like a treasure hunt.” The brand also uses the finest French glass for their bottles, and their perfume caps are custom made with 24-karat gold plating. They even created custom perfume necklaces that can hold different vials of perfume oil.
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Each fragrance tells a story: “As you spray it, all of the layers come out as it develops on your skin. That's what we call the top, middle and bottom notes. We strive to have scents that are long-lasting and highly concentrated.” Since its inception, the company has seen continuous growth. “We launched in Harrods in 2014 after I sent them a sample. Oud’s scent is cherished in the Middle East, and we developed a following with royal families who told their friends about it. We didn't advertise; our budget was focused on keeping up with production and expanding our collection.” Elizabeth continued, “I love maintaining connections with our customers; some people tell us they met their future partner while they were wearing deadofnight. Nothing is more
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rewarding than seeing the ripple effects of our work…I sent a TikTok creator a bottle. We knew nothing about what he would say but he just fell in love with our scents, and we started getting a mad influx of orders. We sold out of some products immediately and then had another 1,000 people on our waitlist.” We asked Elizabeth if she had advice for female entrepreneurs who want to launch a company. She said, “It's definitely challenging. You need to believe in what you're doing. I've been told, just follow your passion. But it's not that easy — you also have to be prepared. There are going to be sacrifices, and you just really can't give up. I believe so much in the quality of our product and the wonderful reactions we were getting that I knew it would catch on. There will be people who don't love
it, which doesn’t bother me at all. The ones who love it tell their friends and are loyal, repeat customers. I also think you need to surround yourself with good people and not try to micromanage everything. As a founder, you must know every single part of the business and bring in good people that you trust. You need to have honesty and integrity. Don't be afraid to be vulnerable and ask for help.” As for the future, Elizabeth says, “We survived the pandemic, which was a tremendous feat. A lot of stores have reached out to us in the past few months as they have customers requesting strangelove. We recently launched a body oil, which we plan to expand to all five scents, and we're developing a line of candles. We also plan to launch a completely new collection in the near future. I foresee an enormous increase in our revenues between now and next year, we are excited for the new adventures ahead. Strangelovenyc.com
STYLE & FASHION
P H OTO G R A P H E R : C ha r le s L. Bar nes - @char les.l.bar nes PRODUCER: M e l issa R o dwell - @breedf ix MODEL: Polina Is a dora - @ poli na.isado re w ith Fo rd M iami - @fo rdmo dels Ana iis S c he e re s - @ a naaa_miaaa w ith Fo rd M iami - @fo rdmo dels WA R D R O B E S T Y L I S T & M UA : S im iso la L aw al - @simiso la_mua WA R D R O B E A S S I S TA N T: Tawana Tho mas - @jus_taw ana WA R D R O B E A S S I S TA N T: J avo n Wilso n - @javo ngo gh HAIR: Albe r to Tov ar - @my wo r k passio n R E TO U C H E R : B e t ha ny S e w ald - b ethanygse w ald.weebly.co m
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Red Ruffle Dress: So Eden by Eido Swim Wear
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ALEXIS Long Dress Naomie
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Chartreuse pleated wide-leg jumpsuit: Leena for Mac Duggal
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Golden by Indie True
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V-Neck Long Dress: Rococo Sand
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Evergreen by OYEMWEN 56
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THOUGHT LEADERSHIP
In UHNW families and family offices, priorities certainly include wealth preservation and enhancement by growing their businesses and investing in asset classes of interest—all the while mitigating risks. Over the next 2 to 3 decades, around $65 trillion of assets will be transferred from the Leading Gens, who are mostly Boomers, to the Next Gens. Some Leading Gens are even skipping Gen Xers and going straight to younger Millennials and Gen Zs. Yet, are younger Next Gens fully aligned in values/principles with their parents or partners? To what extent are Next Gens prepared psychologically, and in soft and hard skills, to manage enormous new wealth and weighty responsibilities? Success with well-being is often about 80% psychology, 20% mechanics/structures—not the other way around. While family patriarchs/matriarchs are captains of their industries, many (quietly) want to improve the quality of relationships with their Next Gens at home and at work. Families want not only next-level tangible outcomes, but also sound relationships and peace of mind.
The Art of
MENTORING THE NEXT GEN and Succession Planning By Jason Ma CEO and Chief Mentor of ThreeEQ
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For the past 14 years, I feel privileged to have inspired and guided 1-on-1 hundreds of select Next Gens—from Gen Z high schoolers to Gen X CEOs—to achieve powerfully integrated, next-level outcomes as their Ivy League/ elite college admissions, leadership, career, executive, and/or life coach. Recognized as the inspiring Chief Mentor of Next-Gen Leaders and a sought-after Speaker in influential Family Office and CEO circles and magazines worldwide, I actively listen and incisively provide short stories, insights, and, most importantly, guidance on these types of subjects. Let me highlight some of the key ingredients in the art of next-gen mentoring and succession planning: START EARLY. This will help you reduce stress/anxiety and achieve greater outcomes, relationships, and peace of mind. It’s somewhat like compound interest over time. I often see families in pain from (major) opportunity losses because they didn’t invest in trusted, high-quality, third-party help early on.
BUILD FAMILY CULTURE. In my own family (playfully coined the “MAfia”), I value unconditional love, humor, and high standards in what matters. Truly empowering family values/principles matter. I bring up any limiting beliefs and try to shepherd my family, including myself, to improve. Honest, heartful communication is key. This is one of the critical soft skills that I help strengthen in my family and students. An empowering culture is like glue. It is vital to cultivate and live it. INVEST IN HUMAN CAPITAL, INCLUDING CORE SKILLS. Intangible assets are just as important as tangible wealth. We are all imperfect, flawed souls. Wise Leading Gens and Next Gens are constantly learning, improving, connecting, growing, and contributing— without big egos. Great leaders know how to attract and develop the best talents and apply their core strengths. You may enjoy my related Impact Wealth article, “Succession Planning Lesson from President George Washington,” in which I discussed why:
• A top leader is visionary, missionary, and strategic • An impactful leader prioritizes building an effective team and culture, pivoting as needed, and executing for real results • A real leader mitigates risks and makes sound decisions • An exceptional leader’s wisdom includes quality succession planning early on and swift execution RAISE NEXT GENS RIGHT. DON’T OVERSPOIL. Overly spoiled 50-to-60-year-old “children” exist in some very wealthy families. If kids don’t have to meaningfully work, they gain no useful, positive skills and mindsets. It goes downhill quickly. I actively hone into my own family and students increasingly strong “3EQ” and “4S” (see my definitions below). Better family relationships, communication, joy, and peace often result as a powerful, by-product benefit. Given this article’s word limit, go to www.ThreeEQ.com to gain more actionable insights and tips.
WELCOME VULNERABILITY.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
As a patriarch and mentor, if I learn that I have made a mistake, I swiftly and humbly communicate it and any lesson learned. I reflect and take advantage of the learning opportunity for my own growth. So, it is both practical and outcome-focused to show that we leaders are mere humans in our teams, including families, companies, and family offices.
Jason Ma is Founder, CEO, and Chief Mentor at ThreeEQ, an award-winning family business, and is CBO at a patented tech platform company with hyper-growth potential. Jason is a member of the B20, the official G20 dialogue forum with the global business community, serving on the Future of Work and Education Taskforce. Jason was a Forbes Global CEO Conference delegate for 8 years before Forbes Media was acquired.
Underlying all these tips is the importance of cultivating one’s pragmatic emotional, social, and leadership intelligence (“3EQ”) and visionary story, state of mind, soft skills, strategies, and execution (“4S”)—my own mentorship framework—for GREATER lifecycle impact, relationships, and peace of mind in family, education, business, and community in our turbulent, ever-changing world. I was recently invited as a featured speaker to both the Family Office Conference hosted virtually by Family Office Magazine and the ELITE Global Leaders Conference in New Orleans organized by JABOY Productions. I moderated a panel and gave a speech, respectively, on the very topic, “The Art of Mentoring the Next Gen and Succession Planning.” You may gain further insight by watching the Family Office Conference’s recording of my panel on bit.ly/3ildRzo. My 3 panelists were top executives at 2 billionaire families’ single family offices and a Silicon Valley veteran.
Jason is the acclaimed author of Young Leaders 3.0: Stories, Insights, and Tips for Next-Generation Achievers (book), an Impact Wealth contributor, and former Forbes contributor on Mentoring Young Leaders for Ivy League/elite college admissions, education, leadership, and entrepreneurship success (1.7M+ views). As a philanthropist, Jason is a St. Jude Advisory Council member. Jason and his wife are joyful parents of two happy, compassionate Gen Z young adult daughters and rising leaders. Jason earned a degree in Industrial Engineering & Operations Research from UC Berkeley College of Engineering.
In sum, fellow Leading Gens and aspiring Next Gens: Start early, reduce stress, and achieve greater tangible outcomes, relationships, and peace of mind.
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THOUGHT LEADERSHIP
THE NEW COLD WAR Geopolitical Macroeconomic Impact of the Ukrainian Crisis Interview with Dr. Willem Hendrik Buiter, CBE By Michael Calvo Elhauge
Dr. Willem Hendrik Buiter, CBE is an Adjunct Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations,Adjunct Professor at Columbia University, and Member at the Advisory Scientific Committee of the European System Risk Board (ESRB). Dr. Buiter has served as the Global Chief Economist and Special Economic advisor at Citigroup, Chief Economist and Special Counsel to the President of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, and as an original Member of the Monetary Policy Committee of the Bank of England. In academia Dr. Buiter has held professorships for over 30 years including; Princeton University, Yale University, London School of Economics, and Cambridge University. He has also served as a consultant to the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the International Development Bank, the Asian Development Bank and the European Commission, as well as to many central banks and finance ministries.
Michael Calvo Elhauge is the Founder & CEO of PACTUM PARTNERS, an organization founded on the understanding that sophisticated family offices, aligned through shared missions, visions, and values, would benefit from a partner dedicated to fostering co-investment and peer collaboration. An international multilingual family office advisor, Michael has directly counseled over 200 single family offices globally.
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I had the privilege to interview Dr. Buiter, CBE on the Geopolitical macroeconomic impact of the Ukrainian crisis. The following article summarizes key insights gleaned from the conversation. Dr. Buiter expects to see a global bifurcation of economic spheres, the regionalization of trade, investments, and limitations on interregional personal mobility. MACROECONOMIC PERSPECTIVE: There will be a gradual bifurcation between the financial systems of the two economic blocks, on one side we have Russia and China and on the other side the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, and the European Union – the “Western block”. Dr.Buiter stated that we could, “Call it the new cold war, although the China-Russia block is unlikely to become as economically self-sufficient as the former Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact…which had very little by way of international connections.” We will see increased self-imposed official regulatory, legal, and tax obstacles on investments between the two spheres and a significant reduction in cross-regional asset allocation between these two blocks. We should expect to see significant reallocations on behalf of family offices, private wealth managers, and global investment vehicles.
Dr. Buiter highlights that, “we have seen the peak of globalization…we will now see the rise of regionalization.” China should not expect to have sanctions imposed on it, although a larger confrontation between the United States and China should be expected in the instance that China were to provide Russia with direct military support. This would have profound economic consequences for the globe, resulting in a massive global recession and negative growth. China will remain the dominant partner in the China-Russia block, as China accounts for 18.7% of global GDP versus Russia’s 1.8%. As the world rebalances China could benefit from lower prices for oil and gas imports.. China is not expected to overtake the United States (at 24% of global GDP) by the end of the decade, we should expect to see parity between the powers. The U.S. Dollar will remain the dominant global currency. The Federal Reserve will pursue the digitalization of the currency, with both a wholesale and retail dimension. The political situation in the United States has resulted in a deeply divided Congress; as a result sensible economic measures will be hard to get through. Despite this we should see the digitalization of the currency in the short term.
Europe will be uniquely affected by the Ukraine crisis resulting in a short-term disruption damaging economic growth for a couple of years, although it will be manageable. This will particularly disrupt non-ferrous metals, grains, gas and oil. It will take time for a reallocation or redirection to address supply issues but alternative sources can be found for all critical commodities.. With regards to the refugee crisis we will similarly see a short-term disruption but over the long-run the addition to the labor supply will boost economic growth, as Ukranians are highly skilled and educated. The disruption of supply chains resulting from their vulnerability to geopolitical and pandemic risks will result in a substitution of resources. We will see supply chains becoming diversified, shortened and more robust; greater resilience requires redundancy, which is costly. This diversification of sources of key imports represents a shift away from the traditional, “just in time” to “just in case” solutions - a focus on hazard mitigation. The new emerging political domains or blocks will shape future supply chains. There will be a decrease in demand for key sources of supply from non-value aligned blocks. Countries will pursue insurance of supply chains, in the form of a diversification of multiple suppliers across regions, the shortening of
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THOUGHT LEADERSHIP
the supply chains, the avoidance of logistical risks, and the reshoring of production capabilities. There will be a lack of willingness to be dependent on key final products from regions that have become geopolitical rivals. Industries that will have long-term growth as a result of the crisis; defense, cyber warfare, cyber security, crypto industries (proof of stake), technology, biomedical, logistics, shipping, warehousing, storage, and alternative energy. We should see a short-term growth in non-Russian fossil fuels. With the emphasis on reduced dependence we see a higher tolerance for their use and production. For example we should expect the United States to boost their shale based oil and natural gas production. The same holds true for coal, but to a lesser degree. We should see a short-term decrease in the hospitality, tourism, and luxury industries. FAMILY OFFICES AND UHNW: PURSUING ANONYMITY Family Offices and UHNW individuals will have increased incentives to pursue tax havens that hide the identities of their UBO’s. However there will be less tolerance for that behavior, and government crackdowns will be more rigorous, in the OECD countries and indeed the G20.. It will remain possible to escape fisca—financial scrutiny, although benefits will be more limited, risks will be higher, and it will ultimately be more difficult. As pressure increases these UBO’s will increasingly be at the mercy of their tax havens. There will be more stringent limits to the degree upon which wealth can be anonymously and safely allocated. With regards to investors in the China Russian block, we will see the reallocation of foreign assets owned by entities in the Western block to Western block countries, and to South-East Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America, where countries will be open to foreign investment and most importantly providing foreign domiciles. Cryptocurrency assets could be used as a vehicle for achieving anonymity by UHNW individuals in attempts to hide from foreign or domestic authorities; we have seen them used quite a bit in Russia recently.. The durability of anonymity will be fragile: although the owner of the digital wallet is
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anonymous, the transactions are all observable, permitting the authorities and other third parties to figure out the likely owner or nation to which they belong. Crypto assets will remain as an attractive vehicle for anonymity in the short-term but will not last.
supplement the in-house capacity with outside experts. This is particularly important for families with operating businesses. Great sources for accurate data and/or advisory services include; The Council of Foreign Relations, Chatham House, and Avonhurst.
FAMILY OFFICE AND UHNW: GEOPOLITICAL CRISIS MANAGEMENT
In these times of unprecedented uncertainty and change, it has never been more important for highly sophisticated family offices to develop crisis committees capable of tracking all possible strategic eventualities, and prepopulated with global experts. This will enable the family offices to rapidly address the crisis management process in order to transition to opportunity management. Identify the crisis early, with retained experts who understand your situation, and can advise you on how best to implement well-prepared contingency plans to rapidly address the situation.
Family Offices and UHNW individuals have to be aware of key geopolitical and economic developments. It is important to have at least one person who follows these developments closely. Do so by cultivating a culture of constant education, by receiving regular updates of accurate data and by rigorously analyzing these data.. A one or two person team following the news cannot expect to glean all the necessary insights Therefore,
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Drink responsibly.
EVENTS
AMERICAN GROUP TRAVEL AWARDS Shine Brightly in South Beach By Angela Trostle
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Hotelplanner Celebrates the American Group Travel Awards with Impact Wealth’s Cover Star John Isner, at the Nobu Hotel South Beach to benefit St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital raising a record fundraising total for the charity. This year’s theme “Reimagining Group Travel” recognized the increased complexity for group travel planners and how the industry continues to adapt and evolve to the ever-changing post-pandemic environment. The star-studded black tie affair was attended by more than 200 people, including HotelPlanner senior executives and their pending non-employee Board of Director nominees, Reservations.com Co-Founders Yatin Patel and Mahesh Chaddash, and a diverse group of hospitality industry executives, and VIPs and celebrities as follows: AGTA Host Dylan Ratigan, HotelPlanner Co-Founder & CEO Tim Hentschel, HotelPlanner brand ambassador, tennis star and World Hospitality Award winner John Isner, HotelPlanner brand ambassador and WBO Cruiserweight Champion of the World Lawrence Okolie, former Florida Senator George LeMieux, DJ and producer Paul Oakenfold, restauranteur Todd English, dermatologist and entrepreneur Dr. Nicholas Perricone, financier Todd Ruppert, LL Cool J’s producer E-Love, the father of digital art Laurence Gartel, former Miss Ohio and U.S. Congressional candidate Madison Gesiotto Gilbert and her husband, former Arizona Cardinals football player Marcus Gilbert, as well as news media personalities Rita Cosby, Rob Schmitt, Eboni Williams, and Gianno Caldwell, and many others. Entertainment was provided by performer SWXM and DJ Dalton Loughlin. Pro tennis star John Isner was honored as HotelPlanner’s World Hospitality Award winner and eight category winners were announced for the best of group travel. Hotelplanner.com 65
PHILANTHROPY
The 13th Annual
DAVID ORTIZ CELEBRITY GOLF CLASSIC Raises $1.44 Million By Hillary Latos
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More than 375 friends and supporters traveled to the JW Marriott Marco Island Beach Resort in Florida to attend the 13th annual “David Ortiz Celebrity Golf Classic.” Hosted by the ten-time All-Star and three-time World Series champion, the three-day destination golf event raised a remarkable $1.44M for David Ortiz Children’s Fund whose mission is to provide lifesaving heart surgeries and care to children in Big Papi’s native Dominican Republic and New England. To-date, the Fund has saved the lives of over 1,000 children and has helped an additional 10,000 more. In between hearing the touching stories of some families the Fund has assisted, the star-studded event had plenty of fun and surprises. Amongst the celebrity guests who
attended were MLB legends and players Barry Larkin, Gary Sheffield, Thurman Thomas, Tim Wakefield, Jose Bautista, Jim Rice, Bobby Abreu, Bret Boone, Michael Tucker, Carl Everett, Joe Logan and Mychal Givens; NFL stars Neil Smith, Andre Rison, Lonie Paxton, Clinton Portis, Dorsey Levens, Willis McGahee, Joe Andruzzi, Pepper Johnson and Stephen Tulloch; reality stars from “The Bachelorette” fame Blake Hortsmann and Jason Tartick; former PGA pros Jon Curran and Kelly Sheehan; and former Boston Bruins goalie Tuukka Rask. Additionally, former MLB pitcher Sean Casey hosted Friday evening’s golf draft where one-time Bruin enforcer and current Florida Panther’s Chief Commercial Officer Shawn Thornton took the top-bid captain spot. On
Saturday night, comedian-actor Lenny Clarke hosted the awards dinner where the three top-performing golf foursomes were honored with celebrity captain Pepper Johnson leading his team to first place while the team led by Nomad Custom’s founder Roly Padron took second and Clinton Portis’ team landing in third. Also at the awards ceremony, former Baltimore Oriole outfielder Adam Jones videoed in live from Japan, where he is in playoffs, to pledge $10,000 following Papi’s personal pledge of $25,000 which will allow the nonprofit the ability to fund lifesaving heart surgeries for many more children. The 14th Annual Celebrity Golf Classic will be held on Dec 2-4, 2022 at the stunning JW Marriott Marco Island Beach Resort. 67
PHILANTHROPY
THE PRINCESS GRACE FOUNDATION Elevating Extraordinary Artists
Known throughout the world for her talent, beauty, and timeless elegance, Princess Grace of Monaco (née Grace Kelly) had a secret passion—during Her lifetime, she quietly helped fund emerging artists so they too, could pursue their artistic dreams. During Her reign, Princess Grace brought arts and culture to Monaco while also quietly supporting countless American performers and film artists. This is the legacy that continues to inspire the Princess Grace Foundation’s mission. By Lindsey Champagne
advancing grants and throughout its nearly 40-year history, the Foundation has partnered with prestigious luxury brands including Van Cleef & Arpels, Dior, Cartier, Montblanc and more as part of its strategic goal to celebrate and support the arts.
Photo by GETTY
Since its inception, dedicated patrons to the arts have donated millions of dollars to sustain the Awards administered by the Foundation and more than 800 recipients have been granted funding throughout their artistic careers. As part of that support, many patrons have created Legacy Grants which offer Named Awards to artists. LIFE THROUGH HER LENS
Established in 1982 by Prince Rainier III of Monaco and close friends including Frank Sinatra, Cary Grant and Mrs. Lynn Wyatt, the Foundation was created to honor His wife's legacy, Princess Grace of Monaco, an independent American woman, Oscar-winning Hollywood icon, and the globally beloved Princess of Monaco. The Princess Grace Foundation has been elevating extraordinary emerging artists in theater, dance, and film through career-
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In 2020, the Foundation launched a relevance campaign called Grace Influential. Grace Influential is the prism through which the light of Grace Kelly, Princess of Monaco is refracted. Created to uphold the legacy of Princess Grace and celebrate modern Monaco, Grace Influential is the only platform of its kind in the world: a chic assemblage of insider stories, insights, events and conver-
sations lovingly overseen by the Princely Family of Monaco. “I’m mindful of my Mother’s extraordinary impact on me, my sisters, and the Principality. She instilled in us a determination to have a positive impact on the world. It is my wish and hope that these efforts will help to ensure that Her remarkable legacy endures, so future generations can be as inspired as we were by Her life, style, and philanthropy.” – H.S.H. Prince Albert II Through Grace Influential’s captivating world of unique experiences, dynamic partnerships, special events and engaging media platforms, global communities are now invited to play a vital part in Princess Grace’s iconic legacy, passions, and purpose. “As 20th-century icons go, Princess Grace has proved remarkably relevant,” said Brisa Carleton, CEO, Princess Grace Foundation. “Many current hot-button issues—women’s empowerment, child welfare, racial equity—were causes she supported. She was on the front lines, but discreet about it.”
LUXURY FOR GOOD When the Princess Grace Foundation began the process of reevaluating their non-profit business model in 2019, there was a clear opportunity to enhance the Awards Program and capitalize on the generational inflection point to introduce younger generations to Princess Grace.
Photo by Gaetan Luci, Prince’s Palace
Photo by Studio Loic Bisoli
Launched in July 2021 and overseen by His Serene Highness, Prince Albert II of Monaco, luxury brand Grace de Monaco was founded with a humanitarian purpose. A brand that Grace Herself would have loved. “The world of Grace de Monaco defines exquisite elegance and craftsmanship while at the same time recognizing that each purchase is ensuring a young artist can take another step toward their creative dreams. With 100% of the proceeds going back toward the Foundation’s charitable grants program, Grace de Monaco is a living tribute to modern Monaco’s culture of philanthropy and is setting the standard of luxury for good. “– Brisa Carleton, CEO Princess Grace Foundation-USA Promenade Sur Le Rocher is the premiere fragrance collection for the brand and was conceived as an elegant white floral developed by an expert team including, fragrance and beauty advisor Veronique Gabai, awardwinning Master Perfumer Olivier Cresp from Firmenich, with packaging designed by Jérôme Faillant-Dumas. The perfume has the highest rating of sustainability based on current technology and ingredients according to the EcoScent Compass™ developed by Firmenich. The fragrance retails online at gdmonaco.com and on Neiman Marcus. “It is my hope that you will support this project and serve as its ambassadors around the world,” shared H.S.H. Prince Albert II at the brand launch. “Please help us to ensure this endeavor thrives so that tomorrow’s extraordinary artists can achieve their dreams.”
Learn more about the Princess Grace Foundation at pgfusa.org and Grace de Monaco at gdmonaco.com. 69
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