Meet Peter Bryant | Corporate Advisor

We had the good fortune of connecting with Peter Bryant and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Peter, how do you think about risk?
I think about life as a journey where we are constantly faced with uncertainty, opportunities(known and unknown) and the need to make trade offs. As a result the ability to accept and in fact embrace risk has played a huge role in my personal and professional life. My mother, who was a holocaust survivor and than a refugee, told me, and its something that only recently I have understood its significance “always walk through an open door, it may not be the right door but it leads to the right door” never over think it and just do it! So personally that led me at the age of 21 to migrate from New Zealand to Australia with one bag of belongings , $200 and no job and than in 1996 migrate from Sydney to Denver originally for ten years and in 2020 here we are in California with 2 american daughters of which one is a sophomore at SMU in Dallas! They say by the mere fact of immigration you are self selecting as someone who accepts high levels of risk (immigration is the ultimate high risk personally) and hence are an entrepreneur at heart! So professionally I realize I am an entrepreneur migrating from working in large corporate to founding my own organizations for profit and non profits! I have always started new businesses and encourage my clients to always consider new ways and paths to getting things done whether in the current or new businesses. I think approaches that mitigate risk are in fact self defeating and lead to complacency.

Can you give our readers an introduction to your business? Maybe you can share a bit about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
I actually have two key businesses/Firms: 1. Clareo, established 15 years ago, a boutique strategy advisory firm that works alongside companies to make innovation work. We are small, but punch way above our weight with the bulk of our clients in the Fortune 500 that spans oil and gas; power; mining and manufacturing. We have delivered real value, not just impressive slide decks, helping companies to move faster and with less resources to create new value growth opportunities for them in areas like digital transformation; new business ventures; energy transition and sustainability. We just launched out of stealth and in the midst of Covid our software group, Forest Software, that is the digital twin of FastPath our proven approach to guiding and managing the full life-cycle of innovation. A leading analyst firm sees this as a hot area and more so now as we work in a hyper distributed world – we say that its time to move from managing innovation via excel and power-point to a more sophisticated and robust SaaS capability. When this all started 16 years ago it was one person, so was it easy to grow into who we are now today, hell no. The challenges along the way have been many – no need to dwell on what were the challenges, what is more important was what allowed us to overcome these and grow into who we are today; a highly collaborative team and a learning culture; a willingness to experiment and pivot; great people that helped develop a strong set of values by which we live; always delight our customers and deliver value and finally have fun in the work we do and do it with people we genuinely like. 2. My non profit, for which I am the Board Chair, is the Development Partner Institute (DPI)which I co founded 4 years ago with the CEO of Anglo American. The DPI is a global coalition of ambitious leaders, committed to maximizing the contribution of mining to economic and social development. We work together, collaboratively, with stakeholders from across the ecosystem to advocate for new ways of operating, sparking multi-stakeholder conversations on the sector’s toughest challenges, preparing and sharing knowledge and research and catalyzing pilots and demonstrations to accelerate the vision of mining as a development partner. I am most proud of the wonderful and highly effective team of four we have that deliver results that make people believe we have 5x the resources we do – great things happen with small teams especially when driving change. I am most proud of the joint program with the Rockefeller Foundation that takes a whole of value chain approach plus communities and investors to accelerate towards achieving responsible sourcing from mine to consumer whilst delivering prosperity to communities and regions where resource development occurs!

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
So much to recommend but I never get tired of the space museum; a must is to see an Astro;s game and even a Texans game,as Houston is a great sports city and of course a day trip to Galveston to hang out! If shopping is for you than of course the Galleria and the Heights and if the art is is there thing visit the museum district and the arts museum. A night at the Houston Opera is a must – high quality and unexpected for Houston! Other spots include the Alley Theater, River Oaks Country Club and Menil Collection/Rothko Chapel. And what a foodie scene where does one start -call outs would be Nancy’s Hustle, shopping for smoked venison sausage at Doziers Barbecue and try one of the many taco food trucks around town. especially the W Alabama IceHouse

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
Three shoutouts if I may: 1. My late mother – God bless her 2. My first mentor who believed in me and made me believe in myself – David Wardle 2. And a book that has recently had a profound impact on me The Choice – Embrace the Possible by Dr Edith Eva Eger

Website: www.clareo.com
Linkedin: linkedin.com/in/peter-bryant-71b12
Twitter: @peterjbryant
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkiSDl8CmNCxT5zOzTeWisQ?view_as=subscriber
Other: www.dpimining.org www.twinglobal.org

Image Credits
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