There are plenty of nuclear physicists in finance – in fact there are whole venture funds, such as Qwave, covering the area – but it is rare to have people trained to operate nuclear power plants make the move.
Tyson Clark, a partner at GV, a corporate venturing unit of US-listed conglomerate Alphabet, is one who has. Another is Arthur O’Keefe, CFO at Movile and another Rising Star in this pubication.
After two years of training by the US Department of Energy after the turn of the millennium as a nuclear reactor power plant supervisor, he served for a further two years as a lieutenant on board the navy’s fast-attack submarine USS Salt Lake City.
The navy had paid for his college tuition in industrial engineering at Stanford University.
After leaving the navy in 2007, he returned to school to collect his MBA from Harvard Business School before taking a more conventional route through the upper echelons of financial institutions. He was an associate at investment bank Morgan Stanley, a director of corporate development at technology company Oracle and a partner at venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz (A16Z) before joining GV last summer.
Jamie McGurk, a partner for strategic relations at A16Z, explained why he hired Clark: ”He had a well-rounded and high-calibre pedigree that made him attractive to work in my enterprise strategic mergers and acquisitions team.
“He has a great academic pedigree from Stanford and Harvard. Oracle corporate development team is well known and one of the better teams, especially for its structure and discipline. I am also a Morgan Stanley alumnus, so I have a high respect for people who have worked there. Last, but certainly not least, his military background was impressive.”
McGurk supported Clark’s move to Google even if it meant he had only a few months at A16Z because “investment roles at good firms are not opportunities to pass up if you really want to be an investor”.
Although Clark declined to comment for the awards profile, in a promotion shot in 2011, he talked about the type of skills he developed: “I think in the navy, in the submarine force, it’s work hard, play hard. I felt like there was really nothing I couldn’t tackle, you know, based on what I had overcome when I was in the navy.
“Some of the biggest lessons that I learned, integrity, telling the truth. Under pressure, being as honest with people that you work with as you absolutely can be. Those lessons I think transcend the navy and create leaders that go off and do huge things.”