About Chris Pollitzer
I am building the work my entire life prepared me to lead.
Today, I am an entrepreneur, strategist, author, and builder working across leadership, human behavior, artificial intelligence, and organizational transformation.
I am helping build a company, a book, and a human-development methodology that connect belief science, coaching, therapeutic care, technology, longitudinal understanding, and community. I also work with leaders and organizations confronting complex decisions, change, and the gap between vision and execution.
The military forged my standard, but it was only the foundation. After retiring, I learned business from inside enterprises, established mid-sized companies, startups, and investments. I was burned more than once along the way. Those experiences ultimately pushed my business partner, Leo, and me to step out on our own and build Noble Team. The three years that followed became my wilderness: building a company, working as a fractional executive, serving as Chief Strategy Officer for Honor and Remember, studying at Columbia Business School, and developing the methodology at the center of my upcoming book.
The Foundation
The military forged my standard. It did not finish my education.
4 Months · 7 DaysUnited States Army service
I served for more than twenty years in the United States Army, beginning in the infantry before moving into Psychological Operations. I earned the Ranger Tab and Expert Infantryman Badge, deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan, built and rebuilt teams, redesigned assessment and selection programs, and modernized operational systems.
In the final five years of my career, I served with B Company, 9th Psychological Operations Battalion, directly supporting missions involving the 3rd Ranger Battalion, DEVGRU, and Delta Force. The trust and reputation earned through that work led to USASOC G3X-SA, and that command-level sensitive-activities experience opened further opportunities within the Intelligence Community. The progression taught me to understand exceptional teams, complex human systems, competing narratives, and decisions made without complete certainty.
More than anything, those years showed me that outcomes are shaped by belief, trust, culture, identity, communication, and the decisions people make when pressure narrows what they can see. That insight became foundational to my work, but military experience alone could not teach me how to build in the civilian world.
Learning Business From the Inside
Retirement ended one career.
It began an entirely different education.
After retiring, I entered civilian business by working inside large enterprises, established mid-sized companies, early-stage startups, and investment funds. That progression let me see how organizations behave at very different stages of scale. Enterprises taught me how process, culture, and institutional friction shape execution. Established businesses showed me what it takes to protect a working operation while still changing it. Startups exposed the speed, scarcity, and fragility of building before the systems are mature. Investment work taught me to examine capital, incentives, risk, and the difference between a persuasive story and a durable business.
It was also in the investment world that I was burned multiple times. Some people misrepresented their intentions, competence, or loyalty, but I also had to confront my own errors in judgment. I trusted access too quickly, gave promises more weight than behavior, and sometimes confused shared language with shared values. Those experiences did not teach me to distrust everyone. They taught me to slow down, test alignment, and practice discernment before commitment.
The Last Three Years
Leo and I stepped out on our own.
That is where the wilderness began.
After being burned, my business partner, Leo, and I made the decision to step out on our own and build Noble Team. That is where the entrepreneurial journey of the last three years actually began. We were no longer learning business only from inside someone else’s organization or trusting someone else’s vision. We became responsible for deciding what to build, whom to build it with, how to fund it, and what standards we would refuse to compromise.
I call those years the wilderness because several demanding paths were unfolding at once. Leo and I were building Noble Team while I worked as a fractional executive across different organizations, served as Chief Strategy Officer for Honor and Remember, and pursued executive education at Columbia Business School. At the same time, I was turning years of research, lived experience, therapy, and collaboration into the methodology contained in my upcoming book. None of those experiences sat outside the wilderness. Together, they were the wilderness.
Building in the Real World
The last three years turned everything I had learned into responsibility.
Fractional leadership placed me inside organizations at the moment they needed clarity, change, or execution. Honor and Remember gave me responsibility for strategy inside a national mission where the work carried a deeply human consequence. Noble Team forced Leo and me to make the decisions every founder eventually faces: what the company would become, which opportunities fit, what had to change, and how to keep building when the path was not yet obvious.
I was also blessed to meet exceptional leaders, generous mentors, trusted collaborators, and friends who opened doors, challenged my thinking, and shared hard-earned knowledge. The people who burned me before the wilderness sharpened my discernment. The people who invested in me during it expanded what I believed was possible. Together, those experiences prepared me to choose better partners, build a stronger team, and lead the work in front of me now.
A Second Education
I did not want experience to become an excuse for what I still needed to learn.
I supplemented what the work was teaching me with structured executive education at Columbia Business School, completing the CEO Program and additional study in venture capital and private equity. I also deepened my work in artificial intelligence and organizational transformation while continuing to study neuroscience, belief systems, coaching, and therapeutic care.
Columbia was part of the wilderness, not a credential added after it. I used structured education to test what fractional leadership, Honor and Remember, and building Noble Team were teaching me in real time. It helped me close gaps in my understanding and connect practical work with stronger frameworks for leadership, capital, growth, and organizational change. The last three years were demanding, but they were not directionless. They were the period in which the lessons from every earlier chapter finally began to converge.
Before the Wilderness
Enterprises, established businesses, startups, and investments taught me how organizations, capital, incentives, and execution behave—and being burned taught me where my judgment still needed to grow.
Inside the Wilderness
Noble Team, fractional leadership, Honor and Remember, and Columbia forced me to learn through ownership, execution, education, and constant adaptation.
Prepared for Now
Those experiences converged with the development of the methodology and book, preparing me to lead the company and body of work we are building today.
Who I Am Today
Today, I lead with a wider field of view
and fewer illusions.
I am not simply a veteran who moved into business. I have now learned business from both sides: inside enterprises, established companies, startups, and investments, then outside those structures as an entrepreneur, fractional executive, and strategy leader. I understand pressure and high-performing teams because of where I came from. I understand incentives, capital, organizational friction, and the fragility of execution because of what came next.
Those experiences now converge with years of studying belief, behavior, neuroscience, artificial intelligence, coaching, and therapeutic care. Together, they inform a single body of work: helping people and organizations see more clearly, make better decisions, build stronger systems, and create change that can survive beyond the moment.
Entrepreneurship & Strategy
Through Noble Team, alongside Leo and the team we are building, I develop ventures, intellectual property, and organizational systems at the intersection of people, strategy, technology, and execution. The work begins with real problems and remains accountable to real outcomes.
Human Systems & AI
I am helping build a methodology that connects neuroscience, belief science, systems thinking, coaching, therapeutic care, community, and artificial intelligence into a more continuous way of understanding and supporting change.
Executive Leadership
I work with leaders confronting complexity, transition, growth, and decisions that cannot be solved by surface-level advice. My role is to challenge assumptions, widen the field of view, and help convert clarity into accountable execution.
Selected Digital Work
Strategy is incomplete until something works.
As Chief Strategy Officer for Honor and Remember, I moved beyond advising and took ownership of execution. I led the strategy and development of these platforms, translating national storytelling, fundraising, and public participation into working digital experiences.
declarationofremembrance.com
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Declaration of Remembrance
A national America250 public signing platform honoring the nearly 1.4 million service members who gave their lives for the nation and building awareness for H.R. 1363.
donate.honorandremember.org
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Honor and Remember Giving Platform
A mission-centered giving and personalized flag sponsorship experience connecting supporters directly to remembrance, Gold Star families, and the impact of their contributions.
Leadership in Service
The work matters because the mission matters.
Serving as Chief Strategy Officer for Honor and Remember connected national strategy, organizational modernization, public awareness, fundraising, and digital execution to a deeply human responsibility: recognizing America’s military fallen and standing with the families who carry their legacy. It became one of the clearest demonstrations of what I now believe about leadership: strategy has value only when it improves what the mission can actually accomplish.
What I Believe Now
Discernment begins by challenging the story you most want to be true.
The strongest leaders are not the people most invested in appearing certain. They examine their assumptions, test their interpretation, listen seriously to what challenges them, and change when the evidence demands it.
I believe trust matters, but behavior is what validates it. Accountability without context becomes punishment, while context without accountability becomes excuse. Technology should deepen human understanding, not flatten people into scores. Experience should improve what you build, how you lead, and who benefits from both.
No single chapter—not even the most accomplished one—should be allowed to own the rest of your life.
Coming Soon
Human Belief Systems
The methodology at the center of Human Belief Systems took shape inside the wilderness: while Leo and I were building Noble Team, while I was working as a fractional executive, serving as Chief Strategy Officer for Honor and Remember, and continuing my education at Columbia Business School. It grew from research, therapy, reflection, experimentation, and the repeated discovery that people are often forced to navigate therapy, coaching, technology, personal history, and community as disconnected experiences.
Written by Chris Pollitzer and Dr. Kymberly Lasser-Chere, along with Leonard Mello and Dr. Dean Alderucci, it explores how those parts might function as a coordinated continuum—preserving context, supporting growth, and adapting as a person’s needs change across the seasons of life.
Learn About the Book →The Next Conversation
Better decisions begin with better questions.
If you are leading through complexity, transition, growth, or a decision that deserves more than surface-level thinking, let’s talk.
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