While I’m the founder and current CEO of High Performing Culture, my leadership story began in the 1980’s where I cut my teeth as President of RSI, an award-winning employee benefits firm in the Philadelphia area. My team and I grew that company to be one of the largest independently-owned agencies in the country.

In addition to winning awards for leadership and customer service, we were proud to be named one of the Best Places to Work in the region seven times, and four times we were named one of the fastest growing companies. In 2006, we were the only company to win New Jersey’s highest award for quality – the Governor’s Award for Performance Excellence. Yet through it all, it was our unique culture that was the foundation for our success.

A cornerstone of that culture was a collection of 30 behaviors that I wrote and taught, known as the RSI Fundamentals.  You can hear the story behind their development in the video above. Those Fundamentals were formalized through a series of weekly practices and they ultimately became the signature of my career. After selling RSI in 2008, I left the insurance industry to more actively pursue my passion for speaking and writing. In 2011, I published my first book, Fundamentally Different, which is based on the insights I learned and taught throughout my leadership career.

Since that time, I’ve led more than 600 workshops, taught more than 7,500 CEOs, and had the privilege to work personally with scores of organizations around the country. In 2018, I published my second book,
Culture by Design, which quickly became the “go to” manual for companies looking to truly operationalize their culture, and in 2021 I published its 2nd edition, updating my original work to address the challenges of the new remote workforce.

With my team at High Performing Culture, I created the
CultureWise® operating system which is now used by nearly one thousand companies across North America.  I’m a 1983 graduate of the College of William & Mary with a degree in philosophy (yes – philosophy!), and I’ve lived in Moorestown, NJ for many years with my wife Catherine.