Life Change Leads to a Career Change for Class of 1992 Alumnus

Dan currently works for the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, which is the largest private foundation in the world and was created by the founder of Intel and his wife.

“I manage the Bay Area Conservation Portfolio and lead the Foundation’s conservation program-related investment efforts,” explained Dan. “I was focused internationally for the first half of my time at the Foundation, so I did a lot of work in South America and Southeast Asia. We have a big Andes-Amazon Initiative to protect the rainforest by funding projects led by non-profits, government agencies, and businesses that can make positive environmental impacts in the region.” 

Dan is a big proponent of impact investing, where foundations make investments in nonprofits and businesses with a financial return rather than just providing grants, and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation takes an outcomes-driven approach that leads to real impact.

“It isn’t just about the financial bottom line. It’s also about making a positive impact,” explained Dan. “Conservation investing is a newer field that I've been active in and trying to promote to get investors to consider using their money to have a positive environmental impact and make a financial return. For example, we’ve invested in a native seed and plant nursery to help ecological restoration work on degraded landscapes in California. It’s hard for restoration organizations to find the right native seeds, so this business is producing them to help these areas become healthy ecosystems again.”

Dan’s road to working at the Foundation had a few twists and turns — and a lot of “agonizing deliberation” — that helped him come to the conclusion that he wanted to do something with his days that was more personally meaningful.

“I graduated from Harvard University with a joint concentration in economics and psychology, interned at a few investment banks, and worked at the strategic consulting firm McKinsey & Company,” recalled Dan. “McKinsey was a great place to start your career with a fantastic business education track, but you’re serving clients across the country and working all the time.”

McKinsey offered to put Dan through grad school. In exchange, they required him to commit to working there for another two years after business school.

“Before taking that deal, I negotiated with McKinsey to let me do something else before business school,” said Dan. “My dad was a public school teacher, and the education field always interested me, so I went to work for Teach for America (TFA) in New York City, which was not the traditional path for a McKinsey analyst. Even though I wasn’t teaching, the work  was meaningful to me personally. TFA is an amazing organization. I helped manage the business side of the organization, and it was a terrific learning experience.”

Dan moved to California to earn his MBA at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business during the ups and downs of the late 1990s and early 2000s.

“It was an absolutely insane time out here in the Bay Area during the Internet boom, at the height of Silicon Valley,” explained Dan. “We experienced the boom and then the crash. It was like two different worlds. When I finished business school, I returned to McKinsey in Boston, and I was glad to have a job at that point.”

Dan was also working with a number of startups in the Bay Area and Boston, and he was really getting into investing.

“Investing has always been a throughline for me,” reflected Dan. “It was a personal interest that became a profession. I actually started a brokerage account when I was still at Hamden Hall, back in 10th grade. It became more and more part of my life starting in Stanford. I was helping friends write strategic plans, doing some investing, and worked for eBay during their early years.”

Dan said he enjoyed his time at McKinsey, but was ready for a life change. 

“It’s a great place, and I was making a good living, but I was hung up on working all the time and focused on making money,” said Dan. “I was in a long-distance relationship, and I couldn't progress with my life. I was always traveling. The good news was that some of my investments had done well, and I had gotten to a point where I could choose what I really wanted to do without worrying about financial pressure.”

Dan made some big life and big career changes in his mid-30s.

“It was a real reflection point for me, and it was time to move on with my life. I quit my job at McKinsey, moved back to California, and got married to my long-term girlfriend, now wife. Two years later, we started a family,” said Dan.

Dan met his wife, Julie, at Harvard. She manages the alternative investments portfolio for an institutional investor. The couple has two children: Elena, who is going into 11th grade, and Dewey, who is going into ninth grade, in the fall.

For his next step, Dan said he took some time to think about what he really cared about, what he really wanted to do, and where his skills matched up.

 

“Starting at Hamden Hall, I’ve been lucky to have fantastic teachers and mentors in my life,” maintained Dan. “I can still picture my high school teachers and coaches, and I remember the conversations we had – not just about the subject at hand, but bigger life discussions that helped broaden my perspective. I lost that for a while following my traditional notion of success.”

After some soul searching, Dan got off the consulting road and began working at the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation back in 2007.

“It all came together,” said Dan. “I’ve been fortunate to have had success investing, I’ve always loved nature and being outside, and I believe environmental conservation is an incredibly important issue. So investing within the conservation field felt like the right path for me, and I was lucky enough to connect with the Foundation.”

Dan said he loves helping to make a positive impact on the environment, and he and his wife have also tried to connect their children with nature.

“It’s not easy with electronics, but we try to get our kids outside and off their devices,” said Dan. “I wouldn't say we're hardcore, but we love going for hikes, mountain biking, and snowboarding. Our family is hiking Mount Tallac and going backpacking in Yosemite this summer!”