- Principal
- 609-439-3350
Etienne Perold, PhD
Etienne Perold, Ph.D., a psychologist and entrepreneur, is a principal of the Boswell Group LLC, a leadership advisory firm based in New York. In addition he is the managing member of Founding Partners, LLC, a leadership and strategic advisory boutique. Etienne has invested his career in the intersection of psychology, business, and company-building, focused on the value creation potential of accurate insights that drive pragmatic leadership approaches. His advisory work draws on his psychological expertise, his experience as a trusted advisor to leaders in business, and his years directly building emerging companies as a founder, CEO and board member.
As an advisor Etienne serves as a sounding board to leaders facing complex intra- and inter-personal challenges in their firms, including their evolution as leaders, and managing complex dynamics with their executive teams, board, investors and other stakeholders. Clients are typically firms, closely held partnerships or family businesses experiencing a leadership challenge or transition, acquisition or restructuring, embarking on an exit or a major corporate initiative such as self-disruption. In special situations he partners with early stage and mid-market firms in an advisory role, and through Founding Partners LLC is able to deploy critically needed domain expertise that emerging firms may not have available to execute on a special opportunity.
In addition to his advisory work, Etienne has co-founded four technology-based companies in the pharmaceutical, healthcare informatics, network management, and digital printing sectors. In each case, a psychological and leadership dilemma was both the chief obstacle and opportunity that led to his role in growing the firm. He served as co-founder of each, CEO of two, and chairman of three of these firms, gradually shifting from founding and operating roles to governance as these firms progressed through capital and revenue acquisition, strategic evolution, development of management teams, partnerships and exits. Two of these firms were sold and two continue as stand-alone companies.
He currently serves on the board of Aprecia Pharmaceuticals. As co-founder and CEO he licensed the 3-dimensional printing technology from MIT, raised $50MM of common equity capital in an adverse market, and led the evolution of the firm from a science and technology start up to a commercially focused specialty pharmaceutical company.
Dr. Perold holds a BA in Psychology and English from the University of Witwatersrand (South Africa), and a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from Rutgers University.