Grey Matter with Declan Kelly: Inside the Minds of the People Who Move the World

Every CEO is being asked to make decisions about AI before there is a reliable playbook for what comes next.
Where to invest. How to create business value. Which risks to take. What to automate. And what should remain fundamentally human.
That makes experience a more complicated asset. The past may offer fewer obvious answers, but the judgment built through years of operating across different environments may become even more valuable.
Few executives embody that challenge better than Sarah Friar, CFO of OpenAI.
Her career has taken her from metallurgy and mining in Ghana to Goldman Sachs, Salesforce, Block, Nextdoor and now OpenAI. She describes it as a series of “zigs and zags,” but each move gave her another reference point for navigating unfamiliar problems and situations.
Today, she is applying that experience inside a company whose economics and capabilities are evolving in real time, while businesses everywhere are being forced to rethink software, talent, cybersecurity and the architecture of work.
In this episode of Grey Matter, Sarah joins Consello Founder, Chairman and CEO Declan Kelly to discuss how leaders make decisions when precedent becomes less reliable, how AI is already creating real business value, and why the ability to distinguish what should change from what should endure may become one of the most important advantages experience can provide.
In this episode, Sarah addresses:
How CEOs should make decisions about AI when there is no reliable playbook for what comes next
Why judgment becomes more valuable as intelligence becomes more abundant
How AI is already translating into real business value, from productivity gains to revenue growth and new operating models
Why the faster an organization moves, the more important it becomes to know what should endure
How a career of “zigs and zags” built the pattern recognition she now relies on at OpenAI
About Consello

Consello is an Advisory and Investing Platform with offices in New York, Miami, Atlanta, Dublin, Belfast, London, and Abu Dhabi. 

Consello’s distinct advisory practices provide the complete strategic counsel today’s leaders need to grow and transform their organizations. Consello’s advisory expertise spans Corporate Advisory; M&A; Management Consulting; Talent; and Sports and Entertainment. Dedicated teams operate in each practice, led by a leadership group with deep operational experience across industries, business growth stages and market cycles and with an expansive set of global corporate relationships.

Consello’s investment business, Consello Capital, identifies high-potential mid-market companies and invests capital and expertise to transform their growth.
About Grey Matter Host Declan Kelly

Declan Kelly is the Founder, Chairman and CEO of Consello, one of the world's most influential boutique advisory firms. A trusted advisor to dozens of CEOs leading the world's top companies, Mr. Kelly has built or run four global consulting companies over the last three decades prior to founding Consello. Mr. Kelly also served in government as US Economic Envoy to Northern Ireland during the Obama administration.

Larry Fitzgerald is an 11x Pro Bowler and now a first-ballot Pro Football Hall of Famer. Since retiring, he's built a second career as a successful investor, with a portfolio spanning more than 160 companies.
Despite being one of the greatest wide receivers in the modern era, what often gets overlooked is how much his inquisitive mind played in his success, and the discipline to treat the moments that tested him most as turning points for his evolution. That endless curiosity showed up in the way he approached the game, and it has carried into the way he has approached business.
In this episode of Grey Matter, Larry sits down with Consello Founder, Chairman and CEO Declan Kelly to talk about what it takes to keep learning at the highest level, why the hardest adjustments are often the most important, and how the moments that test us can become the moments that move us forward.
In this conversation, Larry discusses:
•Why he draws a hard line between mentorship and sponsorship, and how Dennis Green gave him both
•What Kurt Warner told him early in his career that he initially resented, and why he now calls him the most important quarterback he ever played alongside
•Why he agreed to give up the position that made him famous at the peak of his career, and what it taught him about pride
•How growing up between a sold-out stadium and a hospital ward shaped the way he processes both success and failure
•Why he never once pursued a trade in seventeen years, and what he tells young executives who call him asking whether it's time to leave

About Consello

Consello is an Advisory and Investing Platform with offices in New York, Miami, Atlanta, Dublin, Belfast, London, and Abu Dhabi. 

Consello’s distinct advisory practices provide the complete strategic counsel today’s leaders need to grow and transform their organizations. Consello’s advisory expertise spans Corporate Advisory; M&A; Management Consulting; Talent; and Sports and Entertainment. Dedicated teams operate in each practice, led by a leadership group with deep operational experience across industries, business growth stages and market cycles and with an expansive set of global corporate relationships.

Consello’s investment business, Consello Capital, identifies high-potential mid-market companies and invests capital and expertise to transform their growth.
About Grey Matter Host Declan Kelly

Declan Kelly is the Founder, Chairman and CEO of Consello, one of the world's most influential boutique advisory firms. A trusted advisor to dozens of CEOs leading the world's top companies, Mr. Kelly has built or run four global consulting companies over the last three decades prior to founding Consello. Mr. Kelly also served in government as US Economic Envoy to Northern Ireland during the Obama administration.

Over the course of his remarkable 26-year career, Mark Messier won six Stanley Cups and remains the only player in NHL history to captain two different franchises to a championship. Few elite athletes have been asked to reinvent themselves as often or as successfully.
In Edmonton, he spent a decade alongside Wayne Gretzky as the team's indispensable second star. When Gretzky was traded in 1988, Messier stepped into the captaincy and led the Oilers to another Stanley Cup two years later. Then he arrived in New York, where he joined a franchise that hadn't won a championship in 54 years and helped end that drought in his third season.
In this episode of Grey Matter, Mark joins Consello Founder, Chairman and CEO Declan Kelly to reflect on a career shaped by constant adaptation. They discuss how he learned to meet the demands of different teams, different moments, and different stages of his career, and why that same mindset matters just as much in business as it does in sport.
In this conversation, Mark discusses:
· The realization at nineteen that led him to train his mind as deliberately as his body 
· How he thought through the Gretzky trade in 1988, and why he changed his role 
· What separates a good teammate from a great one, and why surrendering to the team is the highest form of leadership 
· How leaders hold people accountable without breeding resentment 
· How he weighed the move to New York when the people he trusted told him not to go 
About Consello

Consello is an Advisory and Investing Platform with offices in New York, Miami, Atlanta, Dublin, Belfast, London, and Abu Dhabi. 

Consello’s distinct advisory practices provide the complete strategic counsel today’s leaders need to grow and transform their organizations. Consello’s advisory expertise spans Corporate Advisory; M&A; Management Consulting; Talent; and Sports and Entertainment. Dedicated teams operate in each practice, led by a leadership group with deep operational experience across industries, business growth stages and market cycles and with an expansive set of global corporate relationships.

Consello’s investment business, Consello Capital, identifies high-potential mid-market companies and invests capital and expertise to transform their growth.
About Grey Matter Host Declan Kelly

Declan Kelly is the Founder, Chairman and CEO of Consello, one of the world's most influential boutique advisory firms. A trusted advisor to dozens of CEOs leading the world's top companies, Mr. Kelly has built or run four global consulting companies over the last three decades prior to founding Consello. Mr. Kelly also served in government as US Economic Envoy to Northern Ireland during the Obama administration.

Steve Kerr has spent a lifetime studying his own mind. As a player, he was an overthinker with a fierce competitive drive who had to learn how to channel those qualities rather than be ruled by them. As a coach, that inner work became the foundation for one of the most successful dynasties in NBA history.
That journey was shaped by years spent inside the cultures of Phil Jackson and Gregg Popovich, two of the most exceptional leadership minds the game has ever produced.
When he became head coach of the Golden State Warriors, Pete Carroll challenged him to define what he stood for and build an operating system around it. What emerged were four values, creating a culture so clear that it could sustain itself.
In this episode of Grey Matter, Steve sits down with Consello Founder, Chairman and CEO Declan Kelly to explore what becomes possible when a leader's deepest understanding of themselves becomes the foundation for everything they build.
In this conversation, Steve discusses:
· Why values only take hold when they are genuinely personal and how he arrived at his four
· How growing up in an academic, internationally mobile family shaped the way he thinks and leads
· The role Phil Jackson's mindfulness practices played in his development as both a player and a coach
· What fifteen years as a role player taught him about ego, sacrifice, and what winning teams are actually built on
· How he united twelve of the world's best basketball players around a single goal at the Paris Olympics
· Why listening carefully is the most underrated tool a leader has
About Consello

Consello is an Advisory and Investing Platform with offices in New York, Miami, Atlanta, Dublin, Belfast, London, and Abu Dhabi. 

Consello’s distinct advisory practices provide the complete strategic counsel today’s leaders need to grow and transform their organizations. Consello’s advisory expertise spans Corporate Advisory; M&A; Management Consulting; Talent; and Sports and Entertainment. Dedicated teams operate in each practice, led by a leadership group with deep operational experience across industries, business growth stages and market cycles and with an expansive set of global corporate relationships.

Consello’s investment business, Consello Capital, identifies high-potential mid-market companies and invests capital and expertise to transform their growth.
About Grey Matter Host Declan Kelly

Declan Kelly is the Founder, Chairman and CEO of Consello, one of the world's most influential boutique advisory firms. A trusted advisor to dozens of CEOs leading the world's top companies, Mr. Kelly has built or run four global consulting companies over the last three decades prior to founding Consello. Mr. Kelly also served in government as US Economic Envoy to Northern Ireland during the Obama administration.

For nearly 40 years, Ruthie Rogers has run one of the most celebrated restaurants in the world on the banks of the River Thames in London.
The River Cafe has held a Michelin star for decades, launched the careers of some of the most acclaimed chefs in the world, and drawn a loyal following that spans generations and continents. And yet, what its guests most often describe is not just the exceptional food. It is how the restaurant makes them feel.
That quality begins with Ruthie. She is self-taught, shaped by a childhood in upstate New York where community and hospitality were simply how life was lived, and she brought those instincts to London at 19 and never stopped applying them.
Under her leadership and that of her late co-founder Rose Gray, the River Cafe became something restaurants rarely achieve. A place that feels entirely uncontrived, where the warmth is real and the food reflects it. The goal every single day is to leave people feeling better than when they arrived.
In this episode of Grey Matter, Ruthie sits down with Consello Founder, Chairman and CEO Declan Kelly to discuss what it means to build something genuine in a world that rewards the manufactured, and how a commitment to hospitality, simplicity, and human connection can sustain an institution across four decades of change.
In this conversation, Ruthie discusses:
· How a childhood shaped by immigrant grandparents and a household that always had room for one more person informed her approach to hospitality
· Why she turned down additional Michelin stars rather than change what made the River Cafe what it is, including the paper tablecloths
· The collaborative kitchen culture she and Rose Gray built from day one, and why it remains unlike anything else in the industry
· How she rebuilt and reopened the restaurant after a fire without outside investors
· What she has learned about grief, resilience, and continuity through the losses that have marked her life and career
· Why food is, at its deepest level, a form of refuge and how a restaurant becomes a stage for the full range of the human condition
About Consello

Consello is an Advisory and Investing Platform with offices in New York, Miami, Atlanta, Dublin, Belfast, London, and Abu Dhabi. 

Consello’s distinct advisory practices provide the complete strategic counsel today’s leaders need to grow and transform their organizations. Consello’s advisory expertise spans Corporate Advisory; M&A; Management Consulting; Talent; and Sports and Entertainment. Dedicated teams operate in each practice, led by a leadership group with deep operational experience across industries, business growth stages and market cycles and with an expansive set of global corporate relationships.

Consello’s investment business, Consello Capital, identifies high-potential mid-market companies and invests capital and expertise to transform their growth.
About Grey Matter Host Declan Kelly

Declan Kelly is the Founder, Chairman and CEO of Consello, one of the world's most influential boutique advisory firms. A trusted advisor to dozens of CEOs leading the world's top companies, Mr. Kelly has built or run four global consulting companies over the last three decades prior to founding Consello. Mr. Kelly also served in government as US Economic Envoy to Northern Ireland during the Obama administration.