The Companies We Keep
America runs on companies…
From the sole proprietorship, to multi-member partnerships and limited liability entities, to the largest public companies like Exxon and Apple, the corporate entity is the fundamental construct and structure that facilitates the vast majority of all American business.
Companies are the organisms that allow people to work together with a common goal.
Companies are the legal entities that allow people to interact commercially, and without personal liability.
Companies are the vehicles for building enterprise value, raising capital, accounting, and distributing profit.
In America, companies operate pursuant to a common set of State and Federal laws and rules, including agreed upon norms for contract and exchange.
And companies make it so enterprise value, property ownership, and intellectual property rights can be sustained perpetually, and beyond the life span of any individual.
…And, not surprisingly, the business of companies is big business in and of itself!
All companies with two or more people are subject to all the vagaries of human interaction and are inherently enhanced, or limited, by the way the people in a company interact. Each company has a psychology that sets operations and outcomes.
...Pound Ridge local Dr. Karen Bridbord is a corporate psychologist who’s just authored a primer on organizational behavior titled The Relationship- Driven Leader.
Most private companies and all public companies have a Board of Directors - with, in most instances, ultimate responsibility for the company’s governance, operation and performance.
...And when it comes to the business of Boards of Directors and corporate governance, companies come to Bedford local Jonathan Foster, who’s just authored the new bible on Boards called On Board: The Modern Playbook for Corporate Governance.
And all public companies operate pursuant to Federal laws and rules, administered by the Securities and Exchange Commission among other agencies, and are thereby subject to rules of governance, including the ultimate authority of the company’s shareholders to set the policies of the company and elect the Board of Directors. Pursuant to the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, companies employ proxy solicitation firms to circulate their required reports and to solicit the shareholders’ votes on the election of directors and important matters of corporate governance, control and policy.
...New Canaan local John Glenn Grau runs InvestorCom, a powerhouse proxy solicitation firm best known as the leading firm for representing insurgents in contests for corporate control or policy.
DR. KAREN BRIDBORD
“Though I have to admit to being flattered when people draw the comparison between me and the character Wendy Rhoades, who is the corporate psychologist at Axe Capital in the hit TV series Billions - and ‘not uncertainly’ pleased by the attention she’s drawn to my profession…I have to make clear that, although I’m a licensed psychologist, what I do is not therapy when I’m working with companies. …And then there are a few other things - professionally and out-of-the-office – that Wendy and I do very differently,” Karen smiles. “Ultimately, I’m an agent of change for people who are willing to take a hard look at themselves, listen to others, and improve the way they build and manage relationships.”
Karen lives in Pound Ridge, with her husband Dr. Jason Vollen, Global Head of Innovation for Surbana Jurong, her 14-year old son, Max, a student at IMG Academy in Florida and her 13-year old daughter, Ginger Lily a student at the Pierrepont School, and is, quite exceptionally, the Town of Pound Ridge’s first officially recognized Poet Laureate.
Karen is a brainiac and a PhD psychologist, whose thoughtful pauses can reveal that she’s not only engaging with the conversation at hand, but also exploring its deeper layers and wider implications. She’s certainly serious, a tad formal, extremely polite, and very socially conscious - all in a way that gives her a touch of timeless charm, reminiscent of the grace and warmth from a bygone era. She’d be the kind of guest who feels right at home at any erudite affair.
She grew up in Great Neck on Long Island and went to Great Neck North High School. Her father was a doctor. Her mother had come to New York from Israel to work for the Israeli government. “I was imbued with what you might call a ‘bicultural identity,” Karen describes. “Half American kid, half Jewish member of the Hebrew State. I speak Hebrew fluently. My grandmother was the only one of her family who survived the Holocaust, my mother was raised in Israel, we actually lived in Israel for a few years when I was young, and except for one summer at a sleepaway camp called Camp Cejwin in Port Jervis, New York, I spent every summer growing-up in Israel. …We were all in Israel to celebrate my son’s bar-mitzvah on October 7 - and the experience changed us in many ways. …I believe we’ve failed to use psychology to reduce the ideological polarization in the world and, like it is in my field of organizational behavior, the first step lies in getting people to listen and understand each other despite their differences.”
Karen went to Tufts, where she did her undergraduate major in Clinical Psychology and took as many classes in International Relations at the Fletcher School as she could. She went on to earn her Masters in Organizational Psychology at Columbia, and then a PhD in Psychology from the University of Buffalo, followed-up with a Clinical Internship at Duke.
Having worked in succession planning at AIG, in management consulting at Towers Perrin, and for more than a decade at JP Morgan Career Services, Karen is now the Chief Talent Officer at a large critical infrastructure company called Alberici Constructors based in St. Louis, MO. Karen travels regularly throughout the country to visit offices and jobsites.
“Executives and teams turn to me to build what I call The Right Kind of Together, the relational infrastructure that prevents system crashes, fuels innovation, and makes performance sustainable. While other consultants focus on fixing strategy, my work strengthens the human system the strategy depends on. Healthy relationships aren’t a perk; they’re the hidden infrastructure of performance.”
“The emphasis is on people dynamics—not just what gets done, but how it gets done. By observing group interactions, identifying patterns, and offering targeted recommendations, I help strengthen collaboration and effectiveness. Competency models, along with assessments of leadership, communication, resiliency, collaboration, and decision-making, provide insight into what’s working and what requires attention. From there, the work spans advising on selection and leadership development, fostering a psychologically safe culture, and shaping company structures that allow teams to flourish. Programs and policies are then designed and implemented with measurable impact on both productivity and well-being.”
“I wrote The Relationship-Driven Leader : Strengthening Connections to Enhance Productivity and Wellness at Work, as a kind of a how-to toolbox on building and improving work relationships,” Karen says with a proud smile, having just published the guide and now out on a book tour to promote it, “...and to explain to my son - and, at least before Wendy Rhoades came around, the rest of the world - what exactly it is that I do at work!”
The Relationship-Driven Leader is divided into four major parts. Part One, ‘The Mirror’, challenges the reader to profound introspection and promises discovery about the impact of one’s behaviors and decisions on others. Part Two, ‘The Bridge’, teaches that leadership is about building bridges rather than hierarchies, and explores connection, collaboration, support, and appreciation as the four pillars of relationship-driven leadership. Part Three, ‘The Mountain’, refers to the ‘mountain’ of conflict every manager must face, and provides strategies for turning conflict into opportunity. And Part Four, ‘The Journey’, which preaches that leadership is continuous and provides suggestions for adaptability and growth. As Karen entreats in her forward: “My hope is that these principles I share will evolve into your newfound habits, reshaping how you interact and thrive at work. I firmly believe that building strong relationships at work is a must-have, not just a nice-to-have. The right relationships can greatly improve your efficiency and success. …Building meaningful work relationships takes effort, but with practice, these behaviors will become a natural art of our interactions. Human complexity means there’s always more to learn and new ways to grow in relationships. …My ultimate goal is to humanize the workplace.”
JONATHAN FOSTER
Most private companies and all public companies have a Board of Directors - with, in most instances, ultimate responsibility for the company’s governance, operation and performance.
…And when it comes to the business of Boards of Directors and corporate governance, companies come to Bedford local Jonathan Foster, who’s just authored the new bible on Boards called On Board: The Modern Playbook for Corporate Governance.
In the 1930s, B.C. Forbes, the founder of the Forbes financial media empire, said: ‘If the United States is to produce a nation of investors - as we must if we are to gain financial world-leadership-it is imperative that boards of directors be so constituted as to adequately represent the interests and inspire the complete confidence of investors of moderate substance.’
…Almost 100 years later, Jonathan Foster is defining what it takes!
Jonathan and his wife Roni have an apartment in Manhattan, but built a country home in Bedford about twenty years ago, in order to enjoy weekends and holidays with their then-young two kids, Rebekah and Jack. “We tried out summering up here starting about 25 years ago by renting Glenn Close’s house on Succabone and simply fell in love with the area. It’s still almost hard to believe, but Bedford really is heaven - just 45 minutes from New York City. …I still play some tennis, although we really built our court for Rebekah when she was playing competitively. And I like to ride my bicycle every time I get the chance. I do about 35 or 40 miles with some great loops in Bedford, Pound Ridge, South Salem, North Salem, and Ridgefield. And now we have our Goldendoodle, Winton, to fill the empty nest when the kids aren’t visiting.”
Jonathan really proved his Bedford bona fides when he showed up for the photo shoot for this B&NC Mag feature in outfits he’d purchased at Rivay, adding that he’d become friends with John and Katie who run the Bedford-based boutique haberdashery.
Jonathan exudes maturity and experience and warrants trust and confidence.
He’s the adult in the room, who’s seen the movie before, and who knows how to steer the ship. He seems to know everyone and have an enormous Rolodex of people to call upon to get any kind of deal done. And he can reel-off facts and figures about transaction specifics, company histories, and business litigation details like a computer.
His childhood in Manchester, New Hampshire, was fit for a Norman Rockwell painting. He walked through his grandparent’s backyard to get to public school, and played Varsity Tennis at Derryfield High School. He went to Emory, where he majored in Accounting - and met his wife - and then went on to earn a Masters in Accounting and Finance at the London School of Economics. “When I graduated from LSE,” Jonathan recalls, “I took some time to travel the world, and was even in Moscow when the Iron Curtain came down in ‘84.”
“I got a job at Price Waterhouse, which was one of the most ‘blue chip’ of the ‘Big 8’ accounting firms of the day. As soon as I realized that investment banking was the more proactive, and more lucrative field, I got a job as an investment banker at a firm called Morgan Grunfeld. Life was pretty good. I bought an apartment on Park Avenue. And then, in the late ‘80s, I got recruited to join what I considered to be the preeminent investment bank, Lazard Freres & Co., where I worked for a decade, made Partner, and had a very successful mergers and acquisitions practice.”
“I left Lazard for the opportunity to run the internet business at Toys R Us - as I just couldn’t resist getting to run something instead of serving as an advisor,” Jonathan continues. “And after that I went into private equity, including at Revolution, the then family office of Steve Case, who founded AOL, and back to banking, including at what is now Wells Fargo.”
“Over the years, I’ve developed into what used to be known - before everyone was an investment banker - as a ‘Merchant Banker’,” Jonathan explains. “And by that I mean that, beyond being an advisor in mergers and acquisitions and raising capital, I also take-on direct active involvement in a company, including investing my personal funds and the capital I’ve raised in various investment vehicles, sitting on Boards of Directors, and even taking over management of a company’s operations when that’s the best or only option.”
“I founded Current Capital LLC in 2008,” Jonathan recounts. “I have two partners and about ten people working for us - who are all family to me. I’d say I spend about 40% of my time on mergers and acquisitions, restructurings, raising capital, and other advisory business - where we represent all types of businesses from family-owned operations to Fortune 500 companies, and specialize in uncovering acquisition opportunities in the lower-middle-market industrial services sector. Another 40% sitting on Boards of Directors and doing all the work beyond the meetings that’s required - I presently sit on a half-dozen Boards and have served on about fifty Boards of Directors over time. And the other 20% of my time testifying in litigations as an expert witness - which I really enjoy. I’m having more fun at 64 than I did at 24 - I wouldn’t change a thing and I’m certainly not thinking about slowing down anytime soon!”
“I got the idea to write On Board about four years ago, and really took my time trying to produce a well-researched and serious, but readable book,” Jonathan says. “I interviewed 77 people to get a wide range of perspectives. I wanted to write the treatise on being on a Board and how to be a Director. I explore a lot of critical topics, like the increasing role of institutional investors in corporate governance, the corresponding upturn in shareholder activism, and the balance of shareholder value with other stakeholder interests. But I’ve also covered the laws of corporate governance and the rules and responsibilities of being a Director in a way that should be useful to any executive preparing to serve or already serving on a Board of Directors of a private or public company. We just released the book in July, and I felt validated seeing the pre-orders for a couple of thousand copies from companies, business school libraries, and lots of individuals who realize they will benefit from the read.”
JOHN GLENN GRAU
And all public companies operate pursuant to Federal laws and rules, administered by the Securities and Exchange Commission among other agencies, and are thereby subject to rules of governance, including the ultimate authority of the company’s shareholders to set the policies of the company and elect the Board of Directors. Pursuant to the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, companies employ proxy solicitation firms to circulate their required reports and to solicit the shareholders’ votes on the election of directors and important matters of corporate governance, control and policy.
…New Canaan local John Glenn Grau runs InvestorCom, a powerhouse proxy solicitation firm best known as the leading firm for representing insurgents in contests for corporate control or policy.
It is the guiding principle and ideal of American securities laws that corporate governance depends on the ultimate control of the shareholders.
John Glenn Grau was born on December 6, 1962 - and was indeed named in honor of John Glenn and his historic first orbit of the Earth in the Mercury-Atlas 6 earlier that year.
John lives in New Canaan with his wife, Brooke - who is currently working as a special education teaching assistant at South School in New Canaan, and as a curriculum writer for the Choose Love Movement, which provides free curriculum and resources for social-emotional learning - and his daughter, Emma - who went through the New Canaan public schools and graduated with a degree in Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences from UConn last spring. “Brooke and I were one of the first couples to meet on Match.com - in May of 1999. I was a Wall Streeter in a fancy suit and Gucci shoes and she was a kind of flower child from near Woodstock, New York, who only ate organic food, and no red meat. But I knew she was the woman I wanted to marry as soon as I met her and, after I convinced her of it, we were married in 2001,” John says with a smile.
“I grew up poor, so the idea of living in New Canaan was always aspirational for me,” John reveals. “We bought the worst house in town in 2001, as I’d been raised to believe that, with enough hard work, I could turn chicken poop into chicken salad, and I knew that our mission was to raise Emma in a great town with an exceptional school district. We fixed that house up and lived there until 2021, when Emma went off to college. We then bought our current house on Silvermine, which we hope is our last. We talk about buying a second home in California or Florida to retire to - but I don’t want to retire until I forget my name, or maybe a few years after that. I love what I do!”
“I grew up in Yonkers,” John recalls. “My dad died of lung cancer when I was 12, and my mom raised us. She worked at a call center, at night, to pay for me to go to Mt. Saint Michael’s Academy, an all-boys Catholic school. I got into Fordham University to study Economics, and was working all the time to pay to go to school during the day - but by the end of sophomore year I just couldn’t make the ends meet. My sister worked at Scarsdale National Bank and they needed someone to help with some bookkeeping and accounting work at their parent company, Irving Trust, and I got the job. I worked at Irving Trust during the day, and finished Fordham undergraduate - and then an MBA - going at night. With an MBA from Fordham, I got a job at a municipal bond broker-dealer called JJ Kenny ...but the job was really tedious, and the company laid everyone off after the Crash of ‘87.”
“A few weeks later I got a job at Carter, a proxy solicitation firm owned and run by a guy named Don Carter, which was best known for representing many of the corporate insurgents - or ‘raiders’ as they were then known - while more white-shoe firms like Georgeson & Co. and D.F. King stayed in league in the defense of their Fortune 500 clients during the junk bond-fueled heyday of contests for corporate control that took place in the ‘80s,” John explains. “In those days the proxy solicitation business had a lot more to do with organizing, counting, and storing proxy cards - the paper ballots used for shareholder votes - than the data driven and media involved business it has become today. …Don Carter revolutionized the industry. He was featured in the luxury lifestyle magazine Manhattan Inc. being chauffeured around town in a stretch limo with the plates ‘PROXY’. His office - in real life - was the massive marble-walled office used by Gordon Gekko in the movie Wall Street!”
“In the office, most people were in awe of Carter, even a bit afraid,” John continues. “I liked him, and I think he liked me. I got thrown right into the thick of things and learned everything there was to know about proxy contests. Ironically, the first contest I worked on involved Bank of New York taking over my old employer, Irving Trust. For three years I was happy working as one of Don’s lieutenants, in what had become a 110-person organization. …And then, in March 1990, the FBI raided the office and took Don away in cuffs - also just like in the movie Wall Street - and Don was convicted of grand larceny for stealing money from clients, and sent to prison.”
“I joined with two other guys from Carter and formed Beacon Hill Partners,” John recalls. “When we started we shared one computer! I was still living at my mother’s on Maclean Avenue. I cold-called to get business and bought a new white shirt for work each time I landed a new client - when I got up to five shirts I thought I’d ‘made it’! …Then I started to land some big clients, and developed a particular reputation working on proxy contests and for corporate clients in the biotech industry, and even more particularly located in Southern California. At one point I’d garnered so much of that business that I’d earned the nickname ‘Malibu’ - even though I’m not sure it’s a moniker that really fits me. …And after ten years we’d grown Beacon Hill Partners to be a substantial and respected institution, with thirty-plus employees, but I was bringing-in substantially all of the business and that created a tension with my two partners which we couldn’t resolve - so at the end of 2000 we broke up, they went to DF King, I bought the assets of Beacon Hill and assumed all the contracts and employees, and I formed InvestorCom.”
“After 25 years in business running InvestorCom, I’m even more excited now than when I got started, and I’m very proud to say that we are now the #1 activist proxy solicitor in the U.S.,” John proclaims. “We started with offices in Manhattan, then moved our offices to New Canaan. We were there for many years before moving to our current space at 19 Old Kings Highway South in Darien.. I’ve kept the group relatively lean, but we handle corporate communications, finance, legal, public relations, and everything else beyond the basic blocking and tackling that’s a part of servicing our clients in today’s market.”
“Over the last 25 years, the growth of the institutional shareholder has served as a catalyst for corporate accountability and better corporate governance. Where entrenched incumbent corporate boards used to have the unwavering support of their banking and trust colleagues and of the brokerage trustees who voted the shares of a majority of all public ‘non-objecting beneficial owner’ shareholders, institutional shareholders today, like Blackstone and Alliance Bernstein, hold sway over corporate boards…and are not hesitant to bring things to a proxy vote if they feel policy or control of any company in which they invest needs to be changed,” John explains. “Where proxy contests used to be seen as a hostile battle between a profiteering raider and a staid board, proxy initiatives are now viewed as a necessary part of the corporate process and a valid tool for shareholder protest. The activist is now most often seen as the ‘good guy’, bringing about necessary operational change, realigning the board room, protesting the value of a merger, or otherwise enhancing shareholder value.”
“The business of corporate democracy is constantly changing,” John expounds. “Digitization transformed, and social media has revolutionized the proxy industry. AI is the future!”
“Personally, the only real speedbump I’ve really encountered came in December 2020, in the middle of Covid, when I learned from a precautionary echocardiogram that I had an aortic aneurysm that was about to rupture. I’d never had a health problem, I was a health nut, I played tennis…but I needed an emergency open heart aortic replacement, and was lucky enough to have Dr. Leonard Girardi at Weill Cornell New York Presbyterian perform the surgery,” John relays. “The whole thing was very emotional for me. The months of rehab and recovery were tough, and I felt oddly isolated and incomplete. I felt great to be alive…but found myself in my car crying my eyes out - with no particular reason - one morning about six months after the surgery.”
“That’s when I became involved with the American Heart Association, and my work with them has become a passion that has filled whatever void and assuaged whatever ‘heartache’ I was previously feeling,” John says with some emotion. “I joined the Board in 2023, and am a current Board member and incoming Chairman of the Westchester and Fairfield Chapter. …And I have my work cut out for me!… Even though the American Heart Association is one of the most widely known and well-thought-of charities nationally, there are only about a dozen people - in an area as wealthy as ours - who give us a donation of more than $5,000! I have to get in front of more people to get the message out about the critical role the American Heart Association does in supporting research, educating the public, and making care available.”
John has a kind of quiet and unassuming manner that can belie the fact he’s running the most active firm for proxy activists and thereby qualifies as one of Wall Street’s most influential ‘movers and shakers’.
He’s friendly and warm and an involved conversationalist. He met all three of his closest friends on his first day at college. He’s a Yankee fan, a huge car guy and particularly a Porsche owner and enthusiast, and now plays tennis and pickleball…and he can be found dining-out in New Canaan so frequently he should be given a medal by the Chamber of Commerce.