About
“To discern what is truly essential we need space to think, time to look and listen, permission to play, wisdom to sleep, and the discipline to apply highly selective criteria to the choices we make.”
Michael Messer
Executive Career Coaching for Professionals Passionate About Making an Impact
My Mission
I believe private enterprise can have a transformative impact on people and communities. And I believe that impact starts by empowering high-achieving, values-driven people to build successful careers that are a force for good in the world.
Why I Do What I Do
A Siberian City
Imagine a city in Russia’s far east.
It was built in the 1930s as the administration center for Stalin’s Siberian gulags. Many of the residents are descended from political prisoners literally sent there to die. The city is called Magadan. It is the birthplace of the idea that would become Discerning Strategies.
I visited Magadan in the late 1990s. I was beginning my career as a social impact investor, and I had been sent there to measure the economic impact of western investment. As I met with local officials, business owners, and employees of my client’s company, I dutifully recorded the jobs and exports that had been created. But I was struck by how much deeper the impact ran.
The local people told me this company offered more than jobs and wages. It offered a new way of thinking.
Employees were encouraged to innovate, to try new things without the fear of failure, and to collaborate rather than compete. The higher standard of living was great, but what really excited them was the way they felt. They felt hopeful. They felt empowered. They felt like the future was a place of possibility. It was a powerful example of what can happen when a business intentionally chooses the impact it wants to make.
The American Gulag
After returning to the States, I spent 20 years building a successful career in banking. From my vantage point in the executive offices of some of the world’s top financial institutions, I kept seeing similarities between the successful executives around me and the frustrated residents of Siberia.
Many people in corporate America suffer from a gulag mentality. On the surface, they seem to have everything success has to offer. But beneath, they have the same fearful, powerless feelings as the residents of a prison camp.
That’s why I left corporate finance at the top of my career and founded Discerning Strategies.
From Wall Street to Main Street
In some ways, I’m back where I began, working to make a change in the world. Except this time, my impact is amplified by you.
I began my career driving for impact on an international stage. Years on Wall Street broadened my perspective and narrowed my focus.
Instead of traveling the world, today I work to support you in creating new and better opportunities on Main Street, USA. Using my skills as a professionally trained coach, I deliver decades of experience as a senior banking executive, social impact investor, and community development professional to my clients, helping them to escape their gulag mentality and contribute powerfully to positive change as they envision it. I want values-driven professionals to find hope and fulfillment in their work. I want them to see that the future is a place of limitless possibility.
I want to empower these smart, high-achieving executives to choose the impact they want to make.
LISTEN TO THE FULL STORY
“We can choose to empower our people, and we can choose to engage with the community. We can offer up solutions to solve local problems in ways that are meaningful for those impacted.”
“After being in a role for 15 years, I needed a guide to make sure the next thing was meaningful and sustainable. I didn’t anticipate the level of personal growth I would experience while working with Michael. I just feel like I have the capacity to be more fully myself in my work.”
LEIGH ACEVEDO
My CV
I’m uniquely qualified to coach people straddling the worlds of corporate finance and social impact because I’ve spent decades straddling that line myself.
My background includes domestic and international community development as well as executive positions within two of the world’s leading financial institutions, Standard & Poor’s and BNP Paribas.
