You can do very well in private equity by being brilliant at deals.

But a team of brilliant dealmakers doesn’t make a great firm.

Nurturing the pipeline. Negotiating with management. Completing due diligence. Execution. Full-stack deal specialists build highly rewarding private equity careers. But many struggle to become great leaders at the same time.

Too often, PE firms expect their best dealmakers to become leaders without giving them the training or tools they need for the role. They want them in the office, setting the tone, answering questions, and mentoring others. But they won’t give them ownership of strategy, budgets, decision-making, and dedicated resource. They’re told to become a leader and drive performance, with nobody to manage and no agency to drive real change.

At Copilot, I want to nurture high agency leadership alongside dealmaking skills, so team members consistently take responsibility for developing our capabilities and culture as a business.

To me, high agency means two things:

🔹 𝐓𝐚𝐤𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐩𝐨𝐧𝐬𝐢𝐛𝐢𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐲 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐚𝐜𝐜𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐭𝐚𝐛𝐢𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐲 – Whether something goes well or badly, you take responsibility and don't look to blame others or external factors.

🔹 𝐒𝐞𝐥𝐟-𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 – You take ownership of achieving our objectives, instead of waiting for others to tell you what to do. Our goal is to be best-in-class—a constantly moving target—so we want people who are always looking for continuous improvement in how we work to get there.

At Copilot, each team member has ownership over a core area of our strategy—whether it's direct origination, banker coverage, or investment papers. It’s up to them to drive this area forward through new ideas, iteration, and key decisions.

I don’t want our team to do what they're told. I want to see who steps up and shows real agency over our success. This is how real leaders emerge.

Of course, doing so means more work, on top of hunting down deals. But that’s what it takes to build a great firm—and I want everybody to have the chance to be part of that.