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LDI Ltd. vice president of strategy and operations
During college, Ben Fouch co-founded a college admissions consultancy for high school student athletes called Dark Horse Sports Recruiting. The company sourced more than $30 million in scholarships and placed more than 200 students into college programs across multiple states before they sold it in 2019. He joined LDI in April 2019 as a private equity associate and has worked his way up the ladder to vice president of strategy and operations, a post in which he’s responsible for helping to define the strategy for both LDI and its portfolio business, OIA Global, and leading key initiatives to help the companies realize those strategies.
Proud moment in your career? “My biggest achievement recently is making myself redundant,” he said. Since mid-2020, he’s been tasked with leading a team of 20 to complete a strategic transformation effort at OIA Global focused on the areas of procurement, operational productivity, back-office efficiency and commercial strategy, something he said has been an “enormous task.”
What have you learned about yourself since joining the workforce? “A phrase we used at LDI in our talent development discussions is that ‘everyone has a balance sheet,’” he said. “Early on in my career, I was quite anxious and focused on trying to identify, attack and eliminate all of my professional liabilities. What I didn’t appreciate is that even good businesses (and people) have liabilities.”
Where do you see yourself in 10 years? Working with today’s businesses and political leadership to “help carry on their work through the design and execution of visionary projects for the city and state.”
Favorite social media platform: none
Favorite podcast: “The Bugle”
Netflix recommendations: “One Punch Man”
Morning person or night owl: night owl
Go-to coffee order: “I’ll take the largest trough or bucket you can find me and have it filled with black coffee, please.”•
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