As managing partner of ReichmannHauer Capital Partners, Prashant Shanker Pathak focuses on the strategic decisions that help lead to superior returns. But he'd much rather talk about his charitable efforts.
"I essentially derive meaning from pursuing social activities that, at the core, enable young children and people to become more … independent through entrepreneurship, innovation and technology," he says.
He's involved with Project Beyshick - a program to foster entrepreneurship among First Nations Youth, The Indus Entrepreneurs (a global network for entrepreneurship) and UNICEF HIV-AIDS. He's on the board of North York General Hospital and is an alumnus of Vartana - a fledgling Canadian bank that would allow charities to pool their resources.
Mr. Pathak immigrated to Canada in 1998 and lives in Toronto. He earned an MBA and a degree in electrical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, where he was named best all-round student in his class.
Before joining ReichmannHauer, he worked as a partner at McKinsey & Company, where he advised global corporations on a range of general management, strategy, mergers and acquisitions and operational issues.
Prior to McKinsey, Mr. Pathak worked at Schlumberger Geco-Prakla supervising the seismic navigation operations for Asia Pacific and at Halliburton India in its upstream exploration business.
He credits his wife Geetu and three children as inspirations, and said he has four basic rules of business: "Argue for your constraints and they are yours. If you can think unthinkable thoughts, you can do unthinkable things. Do not believe too much in your knowledge and education, they are true in the past and often bias the view of the future. And models do not make decisions, people do."