At McKinsey and Company’s T-30 Summit
As this year comes to a close, I find myself deeply grateful — not just for the places I’ve been, but for the people, ideas, and institutions shaping what comes next.
I had the chance to travel to many new places including Spain whose wonders I am just beginning to discover. But more than the travel, it was the conversations that stood out: the hundreds of new people I met who brought vision, conviction, and a generous spirit of connection.
It was a privilege to reflect on the past while exchanging new ideas about the future with visiting scholars, researchers, authors and thought leaders at long-standing institutions. I walked away inspired and convinced that many of the people I met are likely to shape mega-outcomes in the years ahead.
Looking Back On 2025
2025 was intentional and satisfying. I began my third act and pivot in June of 2024 after retiring from Coherent Corp, with the ambition to shape another twenty years of leadership impact — and to leave one more imprint on a better world.
I set out to be a thought leader and resource to policy researchers and contribute to conversations on how the U.S can compete more effectively in a deglobalizing, rapidly evolving world.
My agenda during this time has been simple:
- Prioritize my health and deepen my faith
- Use this time to initiate a strategic roadmap and communication plan for our family foundation, Where There Is Light
- Study history, a long-time passion of mine, to better understand today’s inflection points
- Immerse myself in emerging technologies
- Listen carefully and reflect
- Write. I have started writing my first book, drawing on those reflections.
These priorities shaped a schedule as demanding and rewarding as any I have had. Highlights included:
- Conversations with researchers working at the frontiers of life sciences at the Cleveland Clinic Research and Innovation Center and Max Planck Institute for Neuroscience in Florida.
- Policy discussions at The Brookings Institution on the future of U.S.–China relations, interactions with experts in the National Labs across the United States and Europe.
- Visiting classrooms, boardrooms and labs and engaging with students, founders, scientists, and policymakers.
Avalanche Thinking
One of the major steps this year was re-establishing Avalanche Thinking, an investment platform for the future that aims to spark the creation of novel capabilities for new and emerging growth markets.
The name is inspired by the physics of avalanche photodetectors, where a single trigger can unleash the amplified power of a transformative cascade.
Through this lens, Avalanche Thinking invested in, and I became the Chairman of HyperSpectral, an AI-and software innovator which is affording me an exciting opportunity to contribute while learning about the integration of the vital evolution of physical world with AI and ML.
All these activities have been illuminating and insanely fun, and I must include a personal one as well: my experiments at mastering rhythm guitar for blues — even if it is showing poor correlation between aspiration and actuals!
What This Year Taught Me
Across domains — from the convergence of next-generation energy and information systems to biotech, quantum computing and defense and space — a few themes emerged:
1) Convergence is real and accelerating.
Energy systems, information networks, and intelligent machines are colliding — and enabling entirely new capabilities.
2) China’s advancement is significant.
This year, I participated in the Brookings Foreign Policy China Study Tour, the first of its kind since 2018. Having spent 25 years traveling to and operating in China, my most recent visit amplified my awareness of how far China has systematically and remarkably advanced in industries underpinning the mobile, intelligent and electric transitions as in addition to robotics and AI.
3) Technology alone is not enough.
Even as we stand at a civilizational transition driven by the early adoption of AI — I believe we still have agency to move beyond previously fragmented, short-term policy approaches and towards integrated strategies that match the scale of the challenge and rising political will to invest accordingly.
Our technological advances are extraordinary, but I believe we need to re-wire and supplement our policies and economic statecraft to support long-term thinking, incentives for patient capital and workforce development — in particular for scaling dual use manufacturing. We cannot afford to drift or get lost in endless debates about consequences.
4) We’ve done it before.
The Bell Labs era reminds us what is possible when long-term thinking, diverse skills, scientific rigor, manufacturing excellence, and shared values come together. That alignment produced platforms, not just products, and many of the technologies that still power modern life.
5) The future demands new forms of courage, imagination, and humility.
What lies ahead is just as demanding, and perhaps more so.
It asks for the courage to re-industrialize — knowing it will take time, capital, workforce development, and sustained political ways and means, and that resilience comes with cost.
It asks for the imagination to embed AI, quantum, and active inference into the physical world as trusted systems, not abstractions.
It asks for the humility to remember that technology must ultimately serve people: families, workers, communities, and nations. Given the exponential pace of change that AI is accelerating and the reality of finite resources, collaboration among allies may matter more than ever.
6) Optimism is earned — and necessary
I am optimistic — but not naïve. My optimism is grounded in:
- A lifetime of working with extraordinarily talented people dedicated to solving hard problems
- Meeting this year with the next generation of leaders, whose clarity and energy are inspiring
- Having the confidence that problems this complex can be solved.
My optimism is, however, tempered by real challenges: geopolitical fragmentation, disrupted and guarded supply chains, uneven workforce readiness, and institutional inertia that too often lags behind technological change.
Even so, I am optimistic and excited about America’s manufacturing and industrial renewal. I believe that energy abundance, resilient resource systems, improved health and longevity, and secure digital infrastructure are achievable outcomes — not abstract ideals.
And even as we contemplate humanoid robotics, space systems, and world-scale intelligence, we can anchor progress in faith and family, the dignity of work, and a renewed sense of civic spirit.
7) Avalanche Thinking matters more than ever
Going back to Avalanche Thinking, it’s not just an investment platform, but it also offers an intellectual framework shaped by decades of building, observing, and learning, and it exists for moments like this.
The principles of an Avalanche Thinking mindset:
- Seeing around corners and beyond the horizon
- Recognizing small sparks before they become unstoppable forces
- Connecting well documented lessons to emerging inflection points
- Understanding the slopes — technological, economic, and human — and acting deliberately before they steepen beyond control
- Doing a lot more with a lot less
- Above all, it is about acting together, with purpose and humility
Looking Ahead To 2026
The work ahead is obviously becoming more complex. I am reminded that during the moment of upheaval of his time, Abraham Lincoln advised that we must think anew and act anew. So, as we step toward 2026, and I start my 70s, I still maintain that the best is yet to come.
I plan to continue to leverage the infrastructure, institutions, giants, and the accumulated knowledge that brought us this far — and to enable greater impact alongside those leading the next waves of innovation, scale, and policy.
In the year ahead, we also hope to share more about our family foundation, Where There Is Light, and the exciting work we’re planning.
Together, I am optimistic that we can build a future worthy of the power of yesterday and the people of tomorrow.
