Client Transformations

The Record

Since 1993, I have worked with executives, institutions, entrepreneurs and elite athletes on consequential decisions and high-performance challenges.

The work spans three arenas:

Corporate Business. Professional Sports. Innovation.

Much of it remains confidential. What follows is the record I can disclose.

Three arenas. One standard.

Corporate Business

I have worked with international banks, financial institutions, global companies and entrepreneurial organizations across four continents.

The work has included strategy, leadership, integration, culture change, innovation, performance and succession.

UBS. Julius Baer. Morgan Stanley. ABN AMRO Private Banking. A.T. Kearney. Coca-Cola. Bausch & Lomb. Aberdeen Asset Management. KUONI. Electrolux. The New York Knicks.

The Nobels Colloquia in Venice. The U.S. Air Force Academy. The Swiss Military Leadership Academy at ETH.

The situations were different. The requirement was the same:

Better judgment before consequential action.

Professional Sports

I have worked with Grand Slam champions, Formula 1 drivers, Olympians and professional athletes. The environment is unforgiving.

Performance is visible. Pressure is constant. There is no room to hide behind process - and there is no room for excuses.

My work applies the principles of elite performance to the individual behind the performance: focus, pressure management, emotional regulation, resilience and access to an Ideal Performance State under pressure.

When the moment matters, preparation must become performance.

Innovation

For more than two decades, I have worked at the intersection of innovation, entrepreneurship, product development and business growth.

The work has involved strategy, product development, commercialization, positioning and execution.

In private banking, it involved web and software development. In sports, it included equipment innovation, sports technology, software and virtual reality content development.

In media and publishing, it encompassed the launch integration of video content, books, online platforms and speaking tours in formats never attempted before.

The objective of my innovation approach is to identify the idea worth pursuing and build the conditions for it to succeed.

What I Offer My Clients

A different perspective at the point of consequence.

You already have expertise around you. You have executives. Specialists. Lawyers. Bankers. Consultants. Analysts.

My role is different. I operate outside your organization.

I have no internal position to protect. No transaction to advance. No hierarchy to navigate.

I can question the premise. Challenge the assumption. Connect what others see separately. Suggest alternatives. Create the path for new ideas to emerge.

My independence and my thinking methodology are value of having me in the room.

Examples of Client Transformations

The Situation → The Blind Spot → The Change → The Value

Swiss Private Bank

A Swiss private bank hired me to organize a series of offsite retreats to build the strategy behind a new chief executive’s growth mandate and the integration with another international financial firm.

The internal culture of the organization required pruning, alignment, and a new mindset to sustain their performance through the new architecture. The integration process became more difficult and longer than anticipated and required the buy-in of the managers in other regions of the world.

I organized the retreats sequentially, collaborating with the internal leadership development executives. I suggested organizing the critical meetings into four conversations and put the relationships ahead of the strategy, against the political instinct of every executive in the room. At one point, it all seemed lost, as the organization’s management team demanded full commitment after the final retreat. At the eleventh hour, I suggested the top executive to share his true feelings with the team. It worked, as he elicited empathy and showed everyone a rational path to understanding. Led by a local executive with both ascendence and influence, they unified their positions and their commitment.

Over time, the division increased assets under management consistently, and the same leadership group used the crisis to reshape the organization according to the agreements at the retreat.

Value delivered: seven years of creative work focused on human performance, and a leadership group that survived a crisis, inside a private bank that integrated executives from a different culture to sustain its growth.

Global Leadership Consultancy

The head of a global consulting firm’s German-speaking division requested from my Swiss associates a two-day offsite in Berlin in January 2011 for three hundred consultants to celebrate a billion dollars of revenue. I was asked to build the architecture for the event.

The CEO’s idea of a successful meeting was him talking for three hours at a lectern. My suggestion was to invite emotional engagement from everyone at the event, rather than extending a tradition of passive engagement. That would be part of his core message: we did this together, so let’s go for another billion.

With his approval, I designed the two days as a sequence of structured conversations, films the consultants made about themselves and a handshake line at each end. He gave up the podium and walked among the participants as he spoke. They experienced high performance in action: intellectually, emotionally, physically and spiritually.

The management team turned the output into client engagements, the division booked the same design the following year at an Olympic stadium, and he was promoted to run the whole of Europe.

Value delivered: six months of preparation that produced a memorable, high-emotion meeting architecture the firm reused, and a leader positioned for Europe (his personal political gain).

Legacy Portfolio for Retired Media CEO

My client had built the largest independent Spanish-language television production group in the world. At the peak of his career, he had complicated partnerships, five hundred employees and no child who wanted the business. He engaged me to turn the next chapter of his career into something larger than another business venture. Exploring other passions and philanthropy were intriguing to him.

His extraordinary business success was driven by intuition, trust, relationships and an instinct for opportunity, but those principles remained largely implicit rather than consciously articulated as a transferable leadership philosophy.

Over the course of one year, I helped him recognize the patterns behind his own success, articulate them as principles of leadership and legacy, and translate that experience into a new mission: managing a national public television station during a financial crisis (ensuring its survival), supporting start-ups, traveling around the world, and philanthropic endeavors he could oversee personally.

Value delivered: an exit turned into a portfolio of opportunities. The new value was the conversion of decades of entrepreneurial experience into a framework for legacy, and into a new platform through which he could transfer his wisdom to future generations.

Strategic Transition for Senior Leader

A young female executive in wealth management asked her superior in 2019 for the role she had earned, and was told to wait. She did, and several months later, she insisted, with record results in hand.

Her promotion had already been promised to two other executives, and he was never going to be able to fight for her, despite her having support from the CEO of the international company, a woman.

For several months, I worked through the all the possible scenarios with her until the choice was obvious. She stopped declining the calls from larger firms and took the one that had done its homework on her. She was offered a higher, more promising position. The counter-offer from her employer arrived as a reaction, offering her too little and too late, which validated her decision.

After several successful onboarding interviews, we strategized her transition, her introduction to the new corporate culture, analyzed the team’s politics and planned the first meetings that mattered. She runs a prosperous territory now in global investment as a senior leader.

Value delivered: a blocked career released into a top-tier international firm with a soft landing, reflecting several years of advisory work with a talented leader who continues her ascending path, fully expressing her capacity.

Formula 1 Driver Career Breakthrough

In September 2017, Pietro Fittipaldi was racing in the Formula Renault V8 3.5 Championship. He had two races left in the calendar and a sponsor who had made winning the world championship the condition of funding his path to Formula 1.

Everyone around him was working on mechanical speed, and no one could figure out who to help Pietro with his confidence, reaction time and executing under pressure to become World Champion. There were only six weeks available to work on Pietro’s mental training. He decided to work with me and invest all of himself in the process.

During those six weeks, I built him a day-by-day plan he could execute on the road that turned every session into a target, a measurement and a refinement he carried into the next attempt, and he followed it without missing a day.

He won the World Championship in Bahrain, kept the relationship with the sponsor, later got the points required for his F1 license, and signed with Formula 1 Team Haas two years after that. His debut as an F1 pilot took place on December 6, 2020 in Shakhir, racing again on December 13, 2020 in Bahrain.

Value delivered: a career saved inside six weeks, and a performance discipline that has held through a broken-legs rehabilitation, an IndyCar season and a Formula 1 debut, in work that has held solid since 2017. Pietro is now a reserve and test driver for F1 Cadillac Team, and is developing an entrepreneurial career with his brother Enzo.

Grand Slam Tennis Champion Breakthrough

In April 1990, five months before the U.S. Open, Gabriela Sabatini’s father told me she considered walking away from professional tennis while ranked #3 in the world. That same evening, sport psychologist’s Dr. Jim Loehr and I flew to Miami to meet her and her family.

Years of pressure had turned the sport she loved into an obligation, and that burnout, left unspoken beneath the talk of results and rankings, was pushing her toward the exit while her talent remained fully intact. Gabriela needed to learn to love the challenges of her profession, while protecting the recovery times, where she could be by herself, with friends, relax, write and sing.

Working regularly with Dr. Loehr's peak performance methodology and with my direct support, she reconnected her performance to her purpose and rebuilt her confidence, motivation, and joy on court. Her talent was in full display as she consolidated her mental toughness. In September 1990, I watched her win the U.S. Open Championships final against Steffi Graf from her players’ box, along with her coach and her family. Mission accomplished.

Value delivered: I provided Gabriela with emotional support as a trusted confidant during her transition, adapting Dr. Loehr’s recommendations into her daily routines, as well as helping her family join in the process. Her commitment to training allowed her to become the only Argentine woman to win a Grand Slam singles title, to remain in the world top ten for 508 consecutive weeks until May 1996, to build a solid portfolio of lucrative endorsements, and to be inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame.

Client Testimonials

From corporate executives

“Carlos is a true all-rounder. A real "Renaissance man" (performance coach, superb tennis player, writer and consultant are just a few of his many occupations), he generates affection and admiration in all people he works with. As a serious and keen listener, he is able to build a warm and productive dialogue that helps you get to the core issues. I sincerely recommend him as a real peak performer who speaks from experience.”

- Walter Kiceleff, CEO Zurich Santander Insurance America, Madrid, Spain

From private clients

“Carlos helped me take a great leap in my life – twice. He sees more in me than I see in myself at times, and his belief and enthusiasm are compelling. Thank you Carlos, for helping propel me to my most authentic self, starting my own company and focusing on my highest level of impact for others.”

- Lori Collins, President, Collins Climate Consulting, 2026 Harvard ALI Fellow, Charlotte, NC

From those who judge my work independently

"Carlos is one authentic thought leader in a world where those words are often overused. Time with him is worth every minute."

 - Brian Hackett, Founder of The Learning Forum, Greenlawn, NY, USA

Enduring Value: The Resonance of the Work

The work has to survive my absence.

A successful engagement does not depend on my continued presence.

• The decision must hold.

• The leadership team must own it.

• The organization must be able to act on it.

• The thinking must remain useful after I leave.

• That is the standard I bring to the work.

Confidentiality is paramount.

• Some clients cannot be named.

• Some decisions cannot be described.

• Some outcomes are private by their nature.

• The same discretion applies to your work with me.

When the stakes are high, a clear perspective matters.

• I work with leaders before consequential decisions.

• I bring an independent point of view.

• I ask what needs to be asked.

• I help you see the situation more completely.

• Then, I help you decide how to execute with what you see.

• You See, Decide, and Execute Better. That’s the work’s enduring value.