Our origin story
We started Wisdom Partners to provide today’s founders the support we wish we had years ago.
It all started with pushups outside a Fazoli’s in Kansas in the late 90’s. Charles and Josh have been pushing each other to grow as people and as leaders for 25 years.
As Josh was finishing his PhD in Organizational Leadership, he was talking with Charles and later Chu and other CEOs about their journey in quickly growing companies. They all noted similar challenges: loneliness, lack of mentors, difficulty empowering a team, unexpected conflicts, bad hires, imposter syndrome, etc. Another common theme was the immense difficulty to find trusted advisors and a confidential group of true peers that can handle the most vulnerable conversations.
We’ve been there. Charles started his first business in high school, designed the first Mac-OS word processor, and sold companies to Facebook and Apple. Chu led a real estate services company to 10X growth, and now he travels the world helping executive teams become healthier and more productive. Josh has invested his life in the nexus of organizational development and innovative change. From fighting human trafficking, to regional nonprofits, to a $100B healthcare company, he cultivates leaders and creative solutions everywhere he goes. We understand what it takes to lead, and we have the trophies and scars to prove it.
Wisdom Partners is here to help founders make their wonderful crazy visions become reality. We have great empathy for founders and leaders. We are building communities and systems to share hard-earned wisdom so it’s not quite as hard for the next leaders.
We want to change the world, and we think the best way to do that is to help you accomplish your mission as a leader and as a company.
The Founders
Josh Broward
Josh has invested his life in developing leaders and organizations to change the world. After working in the non-profit sector for the first half of his life, he worked as a strategy consultant at Kaiser Permanente, a $100B integrated healthcare company. He is also wrapping up his PhD in Organizational Leadership with a dissertation focus on the deep development of leaders. He has written and taught extensively on change, innovation, leadership, and culture. Lately, he has taken up triathlons, where his motto is: “Anything worth doing is worth doing slowly!”
Super Connector, CEO & Co-Founder
Charles Jolley
Charles is the founder of Tinman Capital, where he invests in and develops early stage technology companies with a focus on positive impact. His AI-focused investments include health care, music, e-commerce, and logistics. Prior to Tinman, Charles founded and sold several venture-backed companies, including Ozlo, an AI-powered voice assistant with problem solving capabilities, bought by Facebook in 2017. He also spent time at Apple, where he helped launch iCloud, and Facebook, where he ran Facebook for Android.
Scaling Guru, Co-Founder
Chu Shin
Chu Shin helps leaders amplify their positive impact by applying behavioral science and natural principles to make a significant difference in the development of others. Chu has advised tech founders, CEO’s, and executive teams on topics ranging from CEO succession, executive development, and company retreats to ensure that their people in their organizations are in alignment to building things that they truly care about. Chu is an avid reader, a prolific hugger, spends time in nature, and enjoys traveling the world. In his free time, he loves sharing experiences with friends, particularly over food and cigars.
Business Monk, Co-Founder
Ty Walrod
Wartime Operator, Co-Founder
Ty Walrod, a seasoned founder and executive, also serves as the Managing Director at Denali Summit Partners, focusing on strategy and operations in early-stage tech. He previously co-founded Bright Funds, a corporate giving SaaS platform (acquired), and OutServe, a significant LGBT resource for the U.S. military. At On Deck, he served as Partner on a $100M accelerator fund, and he founded the On Deck Scale fellowship, connecting more than 250 CEOs from venture-scale companies globally, with over $10B in raised capital.
Partners
Diana Maichin
Diana is a Fractional CFO, COO, and CBO serving Founders and CEOs of Seed, Series A, and Series B companies. Diana has incubated five NewCos which subsequently raised over $150M in venture capital financing and was co-founding COO of three; two have exited. With a deep understanding of early-stage growing pains, she offers Founders hands-on company formation, fundraising, business strategy, operations, and financial management leadership and support.
Fiscal Falcon
Mark Phinick
For SaaS companies who struggle with Enterprise sales, Mark coaches sellers to close individual deals faster. This frees sales leaders to focus on strategy and operations. By helping sellers translate technology into increased productivity and profitability, Mark accelerates growth and liquidity by enhancing deal management, value optimization, discount mitigation, storytelling, and crafting of outcome-based proposals. His track record includes leading the pack in Enterprise sales during seven successful exits of early stage start-ups, plus global leadership roles at HCL and IBM.
The Rainmaker
Mark Scrimenti
Mark is a fractional COO and executive coach with 20+ years’ leadership experience in B2B & B2C ecommerce, software product management, digital marketing, creative direction, data literacy, HR, customer support, and CX. For over 10 years, Mark led operations and CX for an online retailer and developed and executed an innovative growth strategy that delivered over $100 million in sales growth while increasing profitability 3.5x. For the past four years, he’s been leading operations, product, and rev ops for small to midsize enterprises, advising startups on strategy, and coaching CEOs and their leadership teams using a variety of proven frameworks for sustainable growth, profitability, and impact.
Growth Optimizer
Keith Davenport
Keith Davenport is the founder and CEO of Blazer Strategies. He has more than two decades' experience in executive leadership, strategic communications, and program management. He spent the pandemic managing daily crisis communications for Johnson County Mental Health Center and has consulted for more than a dozen local and state-level candidates on their campaigns. Keith earned his Masters of Public Affairs from the University of Missouri and is an international award winner in employee engagement.
Communications Whisperer
Steph Thommen
Steph is a fractional Head of People who works with busy founders to unmuddle people operations while they focus growing the business so that they can achieve their goals faster. Skilled at People Operations, she helps startups establish the foundational principles that will enable them to scale effectively. She works across industries with a focus on creating work environments where all team members thrive while enabling faster growth. With a background in large service corporations, she chose to focus on startups and scaleups 15 years ago and has been part of some exciting journeys; notably Yammer, the Wikimedia Foundation and Linden Lab.
People Catalyst