We announced some leadership appointments last week that I’m proud of. Alexei Solomon to Chief Accounting Officer and Treasurer. Elena Plesco to Chief Investment Officer. Samantha Butcher continuing as President of Abacus Life Solutions. Bill McCauley continuing as CFO and COO.
The press release uses the word “appointed,” which is technically accurate. But that’s not really what happened.
These people weren’t appointed. They earned it.
Twenty Years of Showing Up
Samantha has been with Abacus for over 20 years. She’s overseen every aspect of the policy lifecycle—origination, contracting, servicing—through multiple market cycles, regulatory shifts, and the evolution from a small life settlement shop to a publicly traded alternative asset manager.
Twenty years. That’s not resume-building. That’s ownership.
Alexei came up through the ranks doing SEC reporting and technical accounting. The kind of work that doesn’t get headlines but absolutely has to be done right. He spent years learning the business from the inside before stepping into this role.
Elena ran our capital operations before moving into the CIO seat. Before Abacus, she was at KKR managing multi-billion-dollar portfolios and at J.P. Morgan in investment banking. She didn’t need this job. She chose it because she believed in what we’re building.
Bill has been CFO and COO through our public offering, our NYSE listing, eleven consecutive quarters of beating earnings expectations, and the infrastructure build required to scale from hundreds of millions to billions in assets. Abacus wouldn’t have grown to what it has become today without Bill.
None of these people were handed anything. They did the work. They built the relationships. They proved they could execute. And when the opportunity came, they were ready.
What My Dad Taught Me About Promotion
My father was a fireman for 40 years. He didn’t talk much about leadership philosophy, but he lived it.
One thing I learned from watching him: you don’t promote people because it’s their turn or because they’ve been around long enough. You promote them because they’ve shown you—through their actions, over time—that they’re capable of more.
And the people worth promoting don’t need the title to start acting like leaders. They’re already doing the work.
That’s what I see in this team. They were already leading before the titles changed. The announcement just made official what was already true.
Building for What Comes Next
The other thing about these appointments: they’re not about where we are. They’re about where we’re going.
We’re a publicly traded company on the NYSE managing billions in assets across four verticals. We’re building infrastructure for institutional partnerships, securitizations, and wealth advisory at scale. We’re integrating AI and proprietary longevity data into financial planning products that didn’t exist three years ago.
That requires a different level of operational sophistication than what got us here. It requires people who can scale systems, manage complexity, build teams, and execute under scrutiny.
These four can do that. I know because I’ve watched them do it.
The 80% Ownership Culture
As I’ve said before, nearly 80% of our employees are shareholders.
When people own the outcome—not symbolically, but financially—they make different decisions. They care about long-term value, not short-term optics. They protect the culture. They’re willing to do the hard, unglamorous work that doesn’t show up on LinkedIn but absolutely shows up in results.
That ownership mentality is what makes announcements like this possible. Because when everyone has skin in the game, promotions aren’t political. They’re earned. And everyone knows the difference.
Alexei, Elena, Samantha, Bill—congratulations. You’ve earned it. And I’m looking forward to what comes next.
