A hands-on operator and seasoned entrepreneur, Steve is a creative and critical thinker with over 25 years of experience as a C-Suite executive, venture capitalist, portfolio manager, and investment banker.
During his career in the capital markets, Steve helped build and run 3 asset management firms, developed 4 research businesses on 3 different continents, and restructured and turned around a multibillion-dollar division of a major bank after a major scandal. He has sourced, analyzed, structured, and successfully exited or placed more than $10B in transactions in all sectors and stages of companies, most asset classes, and over 60 countries. As a venture investor, Steve has invested in several unicorns and had 4 portfolio companies IPO.
As an on-demand / interim executive, Steve has worked with dozens of nonprofits, high-growth social entrepreneurs, and large companies — helping them to solve their most vexing problems around finance, operations, and strategy.
Steve started his finance career in Moscow during the early days of the Russian capital markets, and has done significant work in international development finance — leading high-profile projects around enabling entrepreneurial ecosystems, launching venture funds, building capital markets infrastructure, establishing public financial management platforms, and attracting private sector capital. He has structured many significant — and several benchmark — innovative financial transactions, and launched several initiatives to solve complex social problems. His clients have included multinational companies, government agencies, development finance institutions, foundations, nonprofits, and NGOs.
He began his professional career as a journalist, working as a staffer at Forbes and the Associated Press. His writing and commentary on economics, finance, entrepreneurship, and, uh, hockey, has appeared in many publications, including The Economist, The New York Times, Bloomberg, The Wall Street Journal, Stanford Social Innovation Review, and The Hockey Digest.
Steve is an Adjunct Professor at Georgetown University’s Walsh Graduate School of Foreign Service, where he teaches Financing Social Impact. He previously taught Social Entrepreneurship and Impact Investing at the University of Virginia’s Batten School of Leadership.
He holds a master’s degree in international finance and business from Columbia University’s School of International Affairs — where he was an International Fellow and Dean’s Scholar — and a BA with High Honors from New York University, where he was a Founder’s Day Award Winner and University Scholar.
