Tri-cities Influencer Podcast With Paul Casey

Brian is the CEO of CI (Columbia Industries) and Jeff Thompson is the Director of CI. A funny thing about Brian is that he has 3 candy dishes that he uses to lure people into his office for discussions. One of the candies always has to be Swedish fish. Jeff got the fever for derby racing when he was a kid! He raced in 3 races and is now retired. Brian was born the youngest of 7 kids in an Irish Catholic family on the East Coast. Being the baby, he was very independent. He went to college, worked on Wall Street with Morgan Stanley, andwent back to school to get his MBA from Harvard. He went into the venture capital and the private equity world. What he learned was that he likes to operate companies. He learned how to do that the hard way by operating companies that were failing. In the process he learned how to fix problems, building teams and running the companies they bought. The approach for turning a failing company around, start-ups, and any other company is the same. He is now giving back by working in t