Beyond Job Security: Employability in the AI Era
For more than 37 years, I have been in leadership, Board, investor, advisory, and advocacy
I work with leaders who sense that something important is not adding up, even when dashboards look fine.
Across five decades in law, operations, finance, health, regulation, board service, and now AI-enabled decision systems, my work has been guided by a consistent way of seeing problems: pay attention to what others ignore, question what seems settled, and redesign systems so fear turns into agency and performance compounds over time.
This page focuses less on where I came from and more on what that lifetime of experience has produced: a set of operating principles, habits of mind, and results that I bring to every engagement—whether as an advisor, board member, partner, or builder through MoveFlux and the MakeUsWell Network.
If you want deeper background on my formative experiences, I encourage you to watch my Baruch College interview in Steven Baum’s Inside the Executive Suite series, which explores how early life shapes leadership judgment, which is available on both YouTube and as one of my posted videos.
Why AI Changes the Game
As I advise CEOs or any other client, I point out what is different now is speed.
AI dramatically lowers the cost of independent thinking. It enables leaders to surface anomalies earlier, test assumptions faster, explore counterfactuals, and close the loop between insight and action, if they resist the temptation to confuse capability with understanding.
But to do it, leaders need to know what prompts to give it and how to interact with it as a thought partner. It is a "co-intelligence" process, as that term was used by Professor Ethan Mollick in his book with that title.
Used poorly, AI automates broken thinking. Used well, it amplifies judgment.
The leaders who benefit most from AI are not those chasing efficiency, but those willing to question what looks inevitable, investigate what feels off, and redesign systems where incentives, metrics, and narratives are misaligned.
AI does not eliminate the need for judgment.It raises the stakes for leaders who have it.
The Work I Do Today
Through MoveFlux and the MakeUsWell Network, I work with CEOs, boards, investors, and leadership teams on problems where traditional approaches have stalled:
- Strategy that looks sound, but underperforms
- Health and wellbeing systems that cost more and deliver less
- Cultures where fear suppresses learning and agency
- Regulatory or stakeholder environments assumed to be “unsolvable”
- AI initiatives that optimize processes without improving decisions
The work spans strategy, health, culture, public policy, and AI-enabled decision support, but the underlying discipline is consistent: find signals, reframe the system, realign incentives, and embed learning into how decisions are made.
Five Operating Principles & Brand Promise
1. Outcomes Are Not Fixed
Success and failure are rarely permanent. Most “unsolvable” problems are constrained by assumptions, not reality. I continually test threats, opportunities, and narratives—especially those others treat as settled.
Brand promise:I help leaders escape false inevitabilities and design strategies, systems, and AI tools that expand what is possible rather than automate what is broken.
2. Look Where Others Don’t
I deliberately focus on data, voices, and patterns that contradict prevailing wisdom. Credentials matter, but front-line experience, anomalies, and lived reality often reveal more truth than expert consensus. Jargon hides weak thinking; clarity exposes it.
Brand promise:I translate complexity into decision-ready insight and design AI systems that surface weak signals, hidden risk, and overlooked opportunity.
3. Framing issues correctly is foundational to solving them.
The quality of the question matters more than the speed of the answer. I frame problems within the larger systems they belong to, search for root causes, and borrow ideas from unrelated fields. Incompatible goals are often reconcilable when framed correctly.
Brand promise:I help organizations reframe their hardest problems and embed that framing discipline into AI-enabled workflows, decision models, and operating dashboards.
4. Learning faster and more deeply from successes and failures is essential to success.
I obsessively study both success and failure and resist complacency. Failures should be examined, not punished. Technology is not a threat; it is leverage when paired with intent and judgment.
Brand promise:I guide leaders through AI adoption that increases learning speed, adaptability, and human agency—rather than replacing judgment with automation.
5. Acting with Resolve and Stewardship
I am mission-driven, frugal, and tenacious. I take on hard, thankless challenges, work with unconventional talent, and treat investor and client capital as my own. I persist, pausing when necessary, but never quitting. I guide clients on how to get results as cost-efficiently as possible, and set the example with how we operate MoveFlux and generate content for our MakeUsWell Network.
Brand promise:I build durable strategies and AI-infused solutions designed to perform under pressure, compound over time, and earn trust through results.
What This Means for Clients
- Strategic advice grounded in anomaly detection, systems thinking, and real-world operating experience
- AI-enabled SaaS and decision tools that clarify trade-offs, surface risk early, and improve outcomes—not just efficiency
- A leadership partnership focused on agency, adaptability, and long-term value creation
- Using fewer and stronger resources to address issues, rather than loading heavy personnel infrastructure to maximize billable revenues.
Selected Examples of How These Principles Produce Results
Rather than catalog a long career, I am selective. These examples illustrate how the operating principles above translate into outcomes.
Turning Antitrust Risk into Competitive Advantage
As Pitney Bowes’ front-line antitrust counsel, I rejected a fear-based compliance model and reframed the mandate: use the law to help the company win by delivering superior value. By grounding our defense in front-line operational reality and customer value—rather than legal abstraction—we reduced risk while sustaining an ~80% market share through my CEO tenure. I did this work myself, rather than taking the more commonplace step of retaining high-priced outside counsel.
If CEOs Employ People, They Are in the Health Business
Asked to lead HR alongside legal and operations, I inherited what many considered an impossible mandate: reduce healthcare costs while improving access, outcomes, and employee satisfaction.
We rejected procurement-driven thinking and reframed healthcare as a system-design problem. Insights from the Dartmouth Atlas showed that spending and outcomes were often uncorrelated. That anomaly led us to redesign incentives, guide employees to centers of excellence, reward healthy behaviors, and address upstream drivers such as stress, sleep, nutrition, and environment. I was unafraid to challenge conventional wisdom.
The results were empirical: better health outcomes, lower cost trends, higher productivity, and external recognition from Harvard, RAND, and others.
Small Signals, Big Outcomes
Great leaders know which details matter. By relentlessly focusing on small, scalable opportunities—pricing details, regulatory nuances, energy usage, procurement discipline—we unlocked hundreds of millions of dollars in value over time. Culture changed when “finding the pennies” became a habit, not an exception.
Language Is Action
When the Postal Service unlawfully terminated a key agreement, most leaders saw only bad options. By reframing our message to investors, “We have the technology, talent, customers, and capital to thrive regardless, we not only stabilized confidence but changed how the organization saw itself. We prevailed in litigation and, more importantly, converted institutional fear into agency.
Language did not describe reality.It reshaped it.
Regulation, Coalitions, and Stealth Change
Conventional wisdom held that postal reform was impossible. By asking what interests we actually shared with unions, we built a quiet coalition around growing mail volumes rather than fighting over share. Eleven years later, reform passed in 2006. I was happy to let others take the credit.
Influence does not always require visibility.
Learning from Failure and Timing
Not every insight succeeds immediately. I helped launch Dossia, a patient-controlled health record consortium that was directionally right but ahead of its ecosystem. The lesson was timing, not defeat. Some ideas don’t fail. They wait.
The Throughline
Across decades, my core beliefs have remained consistent:
- Health is a performance multiplier, not a benefit expense
- Systems improve when incentives, metrics, and narratives align
- Fear suppresses learning; agency unlocks it
- Language shapes outcomes
- Unarticulated emotional needs matter as much as stated business goals
- Leave nothing to chance
AI makes this work more powerful.It does not make judgment optional.It makes it decisive.