As a coach and thought-partner for founders and CEOs, Geoff combines his 30-year career as an entrepreneur, executive, and adviser with a passion for supporting leaders of evolutionary businesses. Geoff co-founded Evolution to partner with companies to fulfill their purpose as world-enriching entities, serving all stakeholders while building iconic cultures. He has worked with Slack, Snapchat, Radiology Partners, Coursera, Collective Health, CrossCut Ventures, NVA, Change.org, Scopely, Density, Winc, and Kleiner Perkins, among many others.
Geoff began coaching more than twelve years ago after recognizing the critical need in companies for leadership and culture development, as well as a belief that business has far greater potential than just profit maximization through increased consciousness and progressive organizational design, culture, and governance. At the time, he joined Axialent, a global firm with clients that included Yahoo!, Google, Microsoft and Facebook, and received extensive training and mentoring by experts in the field, including Fred Kofman and Carolyn Taylor.
In addition to his work as a coach, Geoff started and led a number of technology companies. He launched the first video games company in China for Electronic Arts (EA), and led Yahoo! Games to become the world's largest games website. Geoff also founded three prior companies: IQI Accessories (at age 22), Muse Communications (for which he raised $12m from angels and VCs) and Scout OnDemand (which was acquired by CoachSource). Geoff’s career began in venture capital at BankAmerica Capital Corp. and IDG Capital Partners, the first VC in China.
Geoff graduated with honors from UCLA in East Asian Studies and Business. He also studied at Soochow University in Taiwan, at the East-West Center at University of Hawaii, and at the California Institute of Integral Studies. He lives in Los Olivos, CA with his wife, Cathy, daughters, Genevieve and Chloe, and English Lab, Fiddlestix. Geoff makes wine under the San Sé label and enjoys hiking, skiing, travel and soccer.
“Evolution has been a valuable partner to Slack, starting with guiding us to develop our core values and helping us live them every day. Geoff and Matt advised on the development of leadership programs and people processes that reflect our fundamental beliefs, and their team at Evolution has coached many of our leaders. I highly recommend working with Evolution in the early stages of scaling a company to establish an organization’s distinctive culture and provide leaders the confidence and tools they need to thrive.”
“Evolution was instrumental in helping us articulate our culture and building the necessary framework around it to help us scale successfully. They truly understand the needs of start-ups and the cultural challenges they face.”