The person behind the work

Tony G Gregory J. Kaple

He ran a $150M legal operation for one of America's largest healthcare organizations. He built companies, taught at universities, relocated families, and delivered results for thirty years straight — while quietly losing himself in the process. What he learned on the other side is what he now does with other high-performing professionals.

Tony G — Gregory J. Kaple
The career

1995 — Ohio University

Where it started

Tony launched his first venture — CyberSearch, an internet research service — while still a student. He worked with Ohio University's business incubator, helped launch one of the web's first e-commerce sites, and learned early that he was wired to build things other people hadn't imagined yet.

Late 1990s — Microsoft · PwC · AT&T

The enterprise years

Product manager at Microsoft. Business turnaround consultant at PricewaterhouseCoopers. Then enterprise sales at AT&T, working with Columbia University, Memorial Sloan Kettering, and Ernst & Young. The pattern was clear: he moved toward complexity, pressure, and high-stakes environments.

2001 — Hoboken, NJ

Building TeamDynamix

He co-founded TeamDynamix, an online project management and collaboration platform — years before the category existed. The company still operates today, headquartered in Columbus, OH. He was building the future of work while most people were still figuring out email.

2005 — Stevens Institute of Technology

The master's degree

Completed an MS in Telecommunications Management from Stevens Institute in Hoboken, with a thesis on applying real options theory to managing operational risk in IT. Groundbreaking work at the intersection of finance, strategy, and technology infrastructure — the kind of thinking that would define his leadership style at scale.

2010s — Kaiser Permanente

The apex: $84 billion, 80 attorneys, 170 staff

As Senior Director of Legal Business Services at Kaiser Foundation Health Plan, Tony ran the legal operations for one of the largest nonprofit healthcare organizations in the world — responsible for protecting an $84B enterprise from risk. He pioneered practices that became the field of legal ops. He presented at CLOC conferences. He was cited in industry podcasts as a person who had been doing this work before it had a name.

Concurrent — Ohio University · WVU

Teaching what he'd learned

Served on the Ohio University Sales Centre Advisory Board since its founding in 2004 and taught Entrepreneurial Sales as a joint venture between the Sales Centre and the Centre for Entrepreneurship. He also taught at West Virginia University. The same man running enterprise operations was investing in the next generation of builders.


He had built systems to run at scale. The one system he hadn't built was himself.

The turning point

At the height of his career, Tony had everything that looked like success from the outside. What he had inside was a nervous system running on performance logic that had been accumulating for thirty years. His weight climbed. His health declined. His work never ended and never felt like enough. His relationships had more friction than warmth, more absence than presence.

He hadn't broken. That's the thing about high-performing professionals — they don't break all at once. They tighten, then tighten again, until the tightening becomes invisible because it feels like normal.

Tony found his way out — first through his own awareness, then with help. Not a weekend retreat. Not a mindset program. A sustained, expensive, humbling multi-year investment in understanding the actual architecture underneath his patterns.

5 Years of deep work
30+ Professionals engaged
$100K+ Personal investment

What he discovered was not a broken man. It was a learned architecture — wiring built in childhood, reinforced by every promotion and praise, so deep it felt like identity. He learned what it actually takes to stabilize a nervous system that was built for survival, not presence.

That knowledge — earned, not read — is what he now carries into the room with every client.

Tony G — the look of a man who has done the work
The Bard

Tony G is also known as The Bard — a performer, storyteller, and community host who has been running live events across the DMV (Washington DC, Maryland, and Virginia) for years. Fire circles. Drum circles. Sound baths. Jam sessions. Mindfulness workshops. Networking dinner parties where people actually connect.

This isn't a side project. It's the other half of the same work. The executive coaching practice stabilizes clients in private. The community practice gives them somewhere to land — in real relationship with other people, not just a network of business cards.

These two things don't contradict each other. The man who ran a $150M legal department and the man who hosts fire circles under the stars in Annandale, VA are the same man. That integration is the point.

Events hosted at The Woodlark Refuge & beyond

  • Community fire & drum circles
  • Sound baths
  • Group expression sessions
  • Networking dinner parties
  • Mindfulness workshops
  • Destination retreats
  • Jam sessions

Home base

The Woodlark Refuge

A private one-acre property just outside Washington DC in Annandale, Virginia — an oasis for mindful community and intentional gathering. Many of Tony's events are held here: part sanctuary, part proving ground for what it looks like when people actually show up for each other.

Why this work

Tony doesn't coach executives because he read about executive pressure. He coaches them because he lived it — at the level they're living it — and he paid the full price of not addressing it early enough.

He knows what it feels like to carry a $150M budget and an 80-person team while your marriage has more friction than warmth. He knows what it feels like to be the most capable person in the room and the least present person at home. He knows the specific flavor of the tightening that high-performing professionals experience — because it was his tightening first.

The work he does now is the work he wishes had existed for him. Not mindset coaching. Not performance optimization. Actual stabilization of the nervous system architecture underneath the performance — done privately, with rigor, at the pace the client actually needs.

He is not a therapist. He is not a guru. He is a builder who learned, the hard way, that some things cannot be built from the outside in.

BBA, Ohio University MS Telecommunications Management, Stevens Institute Sr. Director, Kaiser Foundation Health Plan Co-Founder, TeamDynamix Faculty, Ohio University Sales Centre Faculty, WVU CLOC Presenter

The Bard's Map — The terrain you're moving through

THE WOBBLE THE CRACK EXEC ROOM Arc of Pressure → LEAD Presence TRANSFORM Architecture ORIENT Identity STABILIZE Foundation Stage of Work ↑ Entry Private, contained Inflection Patterns loosen Presence The room feels it Still functioning Privately off Leaking outward Relationships affected Systemic risk Room feels it The Bard's Map

Every client arrives somewhere on this map. Knowing where you stand is the beginning of moving.

"If you're at the point where what worked is no longer working —
that's exactly where the work begins."

Private engagements only. Limited availability.

If this is landing — reach out. A 20-minute conversation is the right first step.
No pitch. No commitment. Just a chance to locate where you are and whether this work fits.

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