William Peterffy, the only son of billionaire Thomas Peterffy, has cycled through a lifetime’s worth of occupations in his 32 years. He’s been a ranch hand in Colorado; an organic farm worker in California; a student of yoga, sound therapy, and Chinese medicine; a board member for an environmental advocacy organization; and a post-production associate for a 10-part documentary series on “archetypal astrology.” He served time at two investment firms, for about nine months apiece, but those stints left him “heart-crushed” and pushed him in 2016 to go, with his dog Bowie, from New York to New Mexico in hopes of absorbing the healing powers of the desert.
Boulder, Colo., is his latest adopted home, where he now lives in the mountains with Bowie and a new dog, Raksha, named for the mother wolf in The Jungle Book. In late November he visited friends for dinner at their regenerative farm. A citrine crystal, believed to symbolize positivity and new beginnings, sat nearby as he feasted on braised lamb shoulder, mashed potatoes, arugula, beet sauerkraut, and a punchy fermented hot sauce—a meal his friends prepared using only crops and animals raised on their farm, except for a bit of clarified butter and a few glugs of olive oil.
He was still adjusting to his latest occupation, one he’d been avoiding for, really, his entire life. More than two years earlier he’d joined his father’s company, a giant trading platform called Interactive Brokers Group Inc. Rather than become a sales rep or data analyst, he carved out a role more simpatico with his worldview. Not unlike when he was 7 and made the case for getting a pet ferret, he pitched his dad on a big idea: that he could become the company’s first director of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) affairs, helping to make the firm a better steward of the Earth and society. Interactive Brokers would reduce its environmental footprint, boost gender and racial diversity, and, in the triple-bottom-line spirit, draw a whole new set of younger customers who want to invest in companies doing the same. “We’ve been saturated with this idea that we are separate—we are separate from each other, we are separate from the Earth, we are separate from nature—and it’s just not true,” he says. “We’re very connected with each other. All life is connected. And it’s not even woo-woo.”
