“Culture and the arts put business and politics aside and bring hope and inspiration to people from different backgrounds. Where business and politics often fail, culture saves.”
Steve Powell was a media executive and an on-air talent before becoming an investment banker specializing in the entertainment industry.
A former US Ski Team member, Powell later founded HBO Sports and was the first Programming Chief at ESPN. Powell was and remains the youngest person ever to head sports programming at a major TV network. And he is the only person to have started two such operations.
His friend and colleague Mark McCormick, the late International Management Group founder, wrote the New York Times best seller “What They Don’t Teach You at Harvard Business School” but Powell went there anyway.
“My undergraduate degree in economics from Brown was mostly theoretical; HBS was more practical and results oriented,” Powell explained.
He founded SinoPowell Capital in 1999 and still manages the firm. This boutique investment bank has worked in over 30 countries primarily in mining, logistics and finance.
Powell understands that business can improve living conditions, create efficiency and generate wealth. But it can also lead to conflicts in a world where scarce resources face increasing consumption, growing populations, longer life spans and unequal distribution.
This realization and his desire for solutions led Powell back to the Harvard Kennedy School for a Masters in Public Administration.
He now uses his academic training, his business acumen, his network, his political connections and his international experience to bring the private and public sectors together for the common good.
Over the years, Powell has interviewed countless politicians and business leaders on-air and for magazine and newspaper articles that he has written. Powell has also created and produced other forms of entertainment for various media platforms.
And he is an amateur pianist (“very amateur,” says Powell) who owns and plays a Steinway bought by his grandfather in Montreal in 1927.
A dual US/Canadian citizen, Powell is pictured above in Washington DC after an Embassy of Poland recital. He is seated at a piano previously owned by Ignacy Paderewski, the renowned musician and former President of Poland.
“The audience had already left,” said Powell.
“Culture and the arts put business and politics aside and bring hope and inspiration to people from different backgrounds.”
“Where business and politics often fail, culture saves.”
