Nathaniel Koloc

I established and run the Pardon family office with Nicholas Pardon. I architected the portfolio of holdings, hired our industry-leading CFO, recruited our most senior creative executive, and established an operating system for the family office that fuels growth in our venture portfolio while parlaying our strengths in digital media to substantially grow enterprise value.

Aside from managing our operating companies, Pardon acquires art, funds in-house arts programming, develops real estate, and makes early-stage investments. Pardon has hubs in Orange County, CA, Denver, CO, and New York City.

While running the Pardon family office, we re-constituted and reconfigured the owned-and-operated inbox-first media companies of the portfolio into a single global brand: Optimism. We changed and added leadership in multiple executive roles, modernized the revenue strategy, re-ignited the brand launching capability, raised the bar for brand quality and data infrastructure, and launched three of the most successful brands in the company’s history. Those efforts have lead to Optimism becoming an iconic American media company, reaching just under 20 million Americans each month.

Optimism's flagship brands include Nice News and Super Age.

This turnaround effort has resulted in substantial increase in free cash flow, as the business grew from a plateau around $XXM/year to ~$YYM/year in revenues and double digit YoY growth, while also growing margins from ~A% to ~DD% in the same time period.

I advise a Greenwich CT based single family office in their talent strategy as they adapt a longstanding capability in mature company turnarounds into an early-stage venture studio model of acquiring stuck companies and pivoting them into success. Key contributions include advising on hiring multiple Partners and the firm’s first Chief of Staff, strategizing on several portfolio CEO and CXO hires, and architecting best-in-class talent infrastructure for building pipelines quickly and effectively.

BerlinRosen is an industry-leading communications & public affairs firm. When I met them their business growth was being held back by an outdated and dysfunctional people department. I re-architected their people department, overhauled their processes and approach to searches, and recruited several team leads across the company. As their growth compounded from $XXM/year to $YYM/year, they eventually raised private equity funding, began acquiring other communications firms, and created a parental company called Orchestra and began acquiring other communications firms.. I advise Brightmode Talent, their spin-out communications search firm, now run by the woman who I initially referred to lead BerlinRosen’s talent function.

HR&A Advisors is an industry-leading firm in urban and economic development, advising private, public, and philanthropic clients on how to improve quality of life in cities. When I met them, they had a talent function that was sorely in need of upgrades and the development of a strategic roadmap. I built them a roadmap, recruited multiple Directors and dozens of Analysts while diversifying their team, recruited their first Head of People, and designed a fundamentally new organizational model that would allow them to effectively scale their high-performing, cohesive culture. All of this took place over several years, enabling them to grow from $AAM/year to $BBM/year.

My first experience with business was a “turnaround” of the Vermont university newspaper. I took the business manager job from a friend who was uninspired by it, because it was the only work-study role on campus with uncapped pay (from ad sales commissions). Over the course of two years, I rebuilt a team of sales reps, overhauled the workflows for ad sales, and put the Cynic back on strong business footing. We went from having -$25K in our student government bank account, to be being profitable with a balance of $200K when I graduated.

I built Formidable, a boutique talent consultancy and executive search firm. I used a network of org design consultants, recruiters, and other specialists to help companies navigate challenges and opportunities related to talent, recruiting, and organizational performance. Formidable used a mix of retainer and project/search-based models to serve a wide range of companies. In addition to HR&A and BerlinRosen, Formidable's clients included other organizations leading sustainable development in New York City, including The High Line and the Waterfront Alliance.

I cofounded ReWork, a recruiting firm centered around meaningful work, with two friends. ReWork came out of my fellowship at the Unreasonable Institute, a social venture accelerator program which has since become the Unreasonable Group. ReWork helped nonprofits, social enterprises, foundations, and other impact-driven organizations hire the best talent. I served as ReWork’s first CEO for the first few years of operation, reaching a $1M/year revenue run rate. ReWork was acquired by Koya Leadership Partners in 2018.

During and after college I started several businesses and enterprising projects of various types, most notably Hired Hands, a simple service of hiring friendly recent college grads (starting with me and my friends). We built the business on Craigslist, made tens of thousands of dollars over the course of a few seasons and – most importantly – had a ton of fun and interesting stories helping the people of Pittsburgh that hired us.

Unite America is a leading national catalyst for nonpartisan election reform, a healthier democracy, and more functional government. I helped their founder with strategic projects for over a year and placed their first Managing Director who helped oversee years of expansion and strategic wins for the organization.

In 2018, I chaired my wife’s insurgent run for New York Senate, overseeing campaign strategy, communications, team structure, and hiring. She won, unseating a 14-year political kingpin who was caucusing with Republicans in Albany to keep Democrats in the minority, and effectively preventing many much-needed reforms for the state of New York.

Her victory dismantled his rogue caucus, returned control of the Senate to the Democrats, and set the stage for the most prolific legislative session in New York history (not hyperbole), in which she and her colleagues delivered a landslide of progressive and common-sense reforms, including:

I was recruited to serve as Director of Talent Acquisition and Development for Hillary Clinton’s (second) campaign for President, in 2016. I was there from the start, working out of her private office in Manhattan before campaign headquarters were opened and the campaign officially launched in Brooklyn, to the bitter end – standing in the Javitz Center watching the map tip to Trump on election night.

I oversaw all recruiting operations. The $1B campaign operation hired over 800 staff at HQ in Brooklyn, including engineers, designers, and data analysts, and 3,600 field organizers across the country. We built the most diverse campaign staff in history.

This experience was a fascinating, up-close look at the dynamics and ultimately the shortcomings of the dominant beliefs and strategies of  Democratic Party leadership.

My wife and I are in the process of developing Woods End, our home in Bedford, NY. The woodland property has a newly renovated single-story main dwelling, and grounds that include pollinator gardens, a rose garden, an orchard, and wetlands.

I have a B.A. in Global Human Impact Studies from the University of Vermont. This was a self-designed course of study rooted in ecology, climate science, complex systems, community development, and applied economics. I was fortunate to study abroad twice, studying coastal ecology in Zanzibar with the School for International Training, and doing a pacific rim voyage of Semester at Sea.

I went on to pursue a M.S. in Strategic Leadership towards Sustainability at the Blekinge Institute of Technology in Karlskrona, Sweden. This was a graduate degree in navigating complex systems, strategy, and applied sustainability, something akin to a “green MBA” program.

After Sweden I joined the world of entrepreneurship and social innovation, as a fellow of StartingBloc, the Unreasonable Institute, and the New York City Venture Fellows, while building ReWork.

I was born and raised in Pittsburgh. I've studied in Vermont, Zanzibar, and Sweden. I spent several years in Boulder, Colorado before relocating to New York City. I live in Westchester County, NY with my wife and son, although we are based in Cambridge, MA until mid-summer 2025.

Many of my current interests don’t fit neatly into boxes or  relate directly to each other. Some things I’m exploring and enjoy having conversations about:

I tweet about some of these things, which is a good place to connect with me.