As a kid in Benoni, South Africa, I spent hours hitting tennis balls against our aluminum garage door. At some point I turned it into a business: a folding table at the end of the driveway, a boombox, and the only cassette I owned — Michael Jackson's Bad. Fifty cents to listen. A dollar to dance. I was convinced it would fund my ticket to a professional tennis career in America.
It didn't. And 5'2" doesn't get you to the big leagues. But that same grit, curiosity, and optimism opened a different door — an NCAA Division I scholarship, something I'd only dreamed of from a small town most people can't find on a map. I still have that cassette. Still my favorite album.
I arrived in the U.S. with two checked bags, a couple of tennis rackets, and not a soul on this continent I could call. First in my family to go to college. First to graduate — twice.
First-generation college student. McNair Scholar. B.S. in Advertising and M.S. in Mass Communication, both from Murray State — while playing four years of Division I tennis. Here's the road from there to BIP Capital.
First job out of grad school — learning the fundamentals of institutional brand and communications.
Cutting teeth on project-based marketing inside a national executive search firm.
Sat on the Executive Leadership Team. Grew the company from 5 employees / $200K ARR to 39 employees / $4.5M ARR. Supported the $10M+ Series A (Emergence Capital) and $15M Series B. Conceptualized and launched the first Rainmaker Conference — grew attendance 60% year over year, and ran 60+ industry conferences and sponsorships. SalesLoft would later be valued at over $2B following its acquisition by Vista Equity Partners.
Ran global social for a nonprofit that has grown to 360,000+ members in 147 countries.
Built a marketing agency from scratch, Atlanta.
Helped run the largest network of SaaS founders and executives in the world, including events that pulled 10,000–50,000+ virtual attendees during the shift to fully digital gatherings in 2020.
Joined the firm purpose-built to back durable, multi-stage venture investing across the Southeast, and grew into leading marketing strategy across the firm's institutional and wealth management businesses — brand, audience infrastructure, and the systems that connect the two.
With a startup budget and zero war chest, we posted a Craigslist ad: "Wanted: Marc Benioff lookalike." We dressed him head to toe — custom-painted blue cloud Converse included — gave him security and a PR handler, and let him sign autographs and accept an award on stage. The real Benioff thanked him for "taking those press interactions I couldn't get to." Cost: a few thousand dollars. A year later we came back and nominated him for President — thousands of "Benioff 2020" buttons, a petition site, and a running mate announcement from Adrian Grenier that got picked up by Business Insider. It's the kind of stunt that would never survive an approval chain today. It also generated more real conversation and mindshare than any line item on a media plan could buy. The lesson stuck: sometimes the biggest risk is taking no risk at all.
A few things I'm equally serious about that have nothing — and everything — to do with the day job.
Races attended: Miami, Austin, Silverstone, Monza, Barcelona, Zandvoort, Monaco, and Spa is next. Favorite: Monza, when Ferrari wins and the Tifosi show you exactly what a podium finish means. Off the track, I train with the AMG Driving Academy and a personal driving coach — one of the few things that fully occupies my brain — with endurance racing and NASCAR next on the list. It's not all left turns.
Four years of D1 tennis at Murray State — and yes, that culture shock is exactly what you're picturing. My overall win-loss record wasn't hall-of-fame material. But against conference opponents — the rivals I saw year after year — I was nearly unbeatable. Total record blends every variable; conference record shows the pattern. I use that lens on marketing metrics every day.
A former D1 tennis player decided golf was next. Featured in the Wall Street Journal on the rise of golf as "corporate America's" pro tour for athletes who didn't go pro. Ordered 1,296 custom BIP Capital Pro V1x golf balls for investor events — I use them only for putting, obviously. Still working on the handicap.
Grew up speaking Afrikaans and Zulu — neither carries much outside South Africa; roughly 7 million people speak Afrikaans as a first language worldwide. Since we travel to France often, French was the obvious next investment. I work with a tutor three times a week on Preply — you can match by native tongue, location, teaching style — and supplement with practice drills on Claude and other apps between sessions.
Seven things I know now that I wish someone had told me at your stage — some from tennis, some from the field, all still true.
The fake-Benioff campaign cost a few thousand dollars and out-performed a $500K media buy. Limited budgets forced better thinking, not worse. If you have unlimited resources, you rarely have to be clever.
My overall college tennis record blended every variable — opponent strength, lineup shifts, momentum. My conference record, against the same rivals every year, showed how I actually performed over time. Chase the metrics that hold constant, not the ones that just look impressive.
The best teams look like a duck on the surface — calm above water, paddling hard underneath. Staying regulated under pressure isn't about optics. It's what makes decisions sharper and communication clearer when something breaks right before a big event.
Every Friday: what has to move next week, where I need to show up as a leader, who needs my attention, what moves the firm forward. It's a roadmap, not a recap.
Memory is unreliable — we overweigh the hard stuff and forget the wins that quietly moved everything forward. Write it down when it happens. Don't wait for December to tell you how the year went.
Most people know where the starting line is. Fewer know how to keep going. Cohesive teams, the right mix of calm and urgency, and unreasonable commitment are what finish things — not the initial burst of optimism.
Nobody remembers the reset after a bad point. But that's the part that decides matches — and quarters. The discipline to stay curious about what's actually happening, instead of rushing your next move, transfers directly from the court to the boardroom.
BIP Capital is a private market operating system built for independent advisory firms — integrating investment strategy, proprietary market intelligence, and the infrastructure to operationalize private markets. Marketing's job is building the brand, go-to-market motion, and audience infrastructure that connects our institutional and wealth management businesses — and increasingly, embedding AI into how the entire function runs.
Some of the biggest plays in the worlds you already watch every weekend were marketing plays, not product ones.
Take the Test to Determine Your Marketing Career Path
Three things worth having before the summer ends. Fill in your details, generate the draft, copy it, make it yours.