Featured Mountain Mover

What is the biggest “mountain” you’ve climbed in your professional career – or what is the mountain you are currently taking on?

I seem to be drawn to mountains. I must like uphill climbs.

In the political world – signing on with presidential campaigns at their inception:

a) Joe Biden in 1987 and
b) Bill Clinton in 1991

In the business world – working to create sustainable wealth and job creation in central Appalachia:

a) development of Adena Ventures, a “New Markets Venture Capital Company,” and
b) the development of a utility scale solar project in the heart of Appalachian Ohio (current).

What advice do you have for others who are working to move their own mountain? We want to learn from you.

Lessons learned climbing these mountains

• You must have absolute perseverance. You must be willing to play the long game. You must be willing to lose. More than that, you must be willing to embarrass yourself along the way (something that’s tough for Midwesterners). You must know, in advance, that you will be knocked down, and then, also know, that you will most assuredly get up again. No one who climbs mountains fails to get dirty along the way.
• The best leaders pick up followers along the way; they know how to build coalitions of support; they know how to find supporters from unlikely places. What is a leader without followers anyway? The ability to communicate, to find common ground, to inspire…all these things matter when climbing mountains.
• Last point: the drive to persevere, to inspire must come from somewhere. It cannot come from a desire for self-promotion, or shouldn’t. Few can sustain self-promotion in the face of setbacks and long odds. It has to come from a strong personal sense of what social value we hope to create in our lives; what our sense of purpose is. If you are lucky enough to figure that out somewhere along the way, you can bounce back from defeats, you can play the long game, you can be the kind of leader that others see as admirable, and therefore worth following.