20 years ago, I signed my name to something I had no idea how to run.
The gratitude I feel looking back is overwhelming.
The entity that’s now Greenleaf Capital Partners, LLC was first organized back in 2006 under a different name. In 2012 we gave it the name it carries today. The same year we started building ATIS from a startup into an industry leader.
Different name. Same thesis, from day one:
Build the right way. For the long term. With people who care.
Here’s what nearly two decades of that has taught me, and it’s the part worth keeping:
The name on the door changes. The values underneath it shouldn’t.
Companies rebrand and get sold. Strategies get rewritten. Markets turn over.
But the reason people trust you — whether you treat them like a person instead of a line item — shouldn’t change with the logo.
So this is gratitude. Going all the way back to 2006, and forward to what we’re building today at Centered Partners, R&R Sanitation, Arco Heating & Cooling, Mrs. Chill, and Friendever.
To the people who believed in the thesis regardless of the name on the door, and to every teammate since who’s helped carry it forward.
The names evolved. The people are the reason the thesis never had to.