Fortune Daily · Oct 14, 2026 · 26m · 18m saved
With Evan LePatner, Board Chair of the Wesley Mittman LePatner Foundation and Managing Partner at Courizon Partners · Kim Ng, Commissioner of Athletes Unlimited Softball League · Melissa Bamberg, Founder and CEO of Nodpod
Evan LePatner's wife, Wesley, was 43 when she became CEO of Blackstone's roughly $70 billion real estate income trust. She was killed in a mass shooting at her New York office building in July 2025.
Evan LePatner, board chair of the Wesley Mittman LePatner Foundation and managing partner at Courizon Partners, told Fortune's Ellie Austin on Fortune Daily how he turned that loss into a leadership program. Its fellows are not students. Wesley Leaders is aimed at established private-sector professionals in their 30s and 40s, to widen the good they do outside their jobs.
"There's no way I can take this and not turn it into something very real and tangible... I'm going to build something that is more impactful than she could ever have imagined doing in her lifetime." — Evan LePatner
Evan met Wesley on their first day of college at Yale and was with her for more than 26 years. The episode also carried Kim Ng, the first woman to serve as general manager of a major North American men's professional team, on her new softball league, and Nodpod founder Melissa Bamberg on building a one-product company.
The full episode is covered here so you can skip it. 26 minutes of audio, 8 minutes of reading.
Here are the 10 moments that matter.
Key Takeaways
Evan's wife, Wesley, ran Blackstone's roughly $70B income trust at 43 and later oversaw more than $120B
The foundation's first eight fellows were announced a year after her death
Evan's lesson from her career: leadership is judged by what a person did for others, not for themselves
Kim Ng's league owns all of its teams, so it can set one standard across the league
A three-year ESPN deal puts 50 games on the network
Players get a say through a committee that meets with the league every week in the off-season
Nodpod stayed a single-product company rather than dilute a patented mask
1. A Fireball Since Yale
Evan began with the person rather than the résumé. He described Wesley as relentlessly high-achieving and as demanding of the people around her as she was of herself.
Evan LePatner describes Wesley as committed to excellence in everything
"She was a absolute fireball of a person. She exuded energy and warmth... extraordinarily committed to excellence in everything that she did." — Evan LePatner
The two met on the first day of college and were together "26 plus years," in his words, until she was killed. Her standards applied to him too, starting with his grades at Yale.
"That is a C plus. That is unacceptable. You will not ever do that again." — Evan LePatner
