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James Doak

Jul 9, 2026

Jack ButlerMODERATOR
9:34
Sure.
9:35
Happy to do that, Jack.
9:36
I think what I would first say is hearing, you know, hearing David's story and Kevin's story, like the same nexus moment, the same explosionary evolutionary moment that may have happened with the code really was happening around the time that I was leaving my JD MBA program and thinking about credit and thinking about bankruptcy, which was just the growth of the non-regulated lending the growth of CLOs, the growth of securitized credit, the growth of syndicated loans, creating a whole, creating what was almost a, I would see as more of a backwater into this huge major asset class.
10:20
So in my case, to your point, I had, at the time it was 2000, I was interested in looking in investment banking and restructuring.
10:30
I can tell you I was one of few people that were actually looking at doing that at that point.
10:35
Most of my Most of my HBS colleagues were thinking about going to Palo Alto and doing, you know, whatever it was, beef.com, beer.com, thinking of something like that.
10:45
And they saw me as the kid on the short bus, basically, headed to go do Rust Belt restructuring.

19 MINS LATER

Jack ButlerMODERATOR
29:38
Jim, start with

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