He navigated the rise of leftist rebellion and a childhood in the growing shadow of the Medellín Cartel. She broke free of an unloving home on instinct and intellect, pulling herself through hungry nights in the cold din of steel boxcars.

They each joined the U.S. Army and met while assigned to Fort Carson. There they supported rapid deployment and intelligence demands for the European theater at a moment when America worried over a possible Soviet invasion on the eastern front.

Hunter Pike isn’t an agency. It’s an ethos forged on rugged land where the High Plains meet the Front Range, and where two survivors found each other at the edge of their youth.

And it’s the story of their son, who was raised to stay relaxed when the luxury of certainty is unavailable. Between his native Colorado and adopted Upstate New York, the boy grew within two cultures, two languages, two worlds. And what he took from each has mapped onto everything since.

There’s an old faded photo of me around two years old. I’m at my grandfather’s farm, mounted up on the muscular back of a caramel-colored hunter, and backgrounded by lush green, a rural red barn, and a wide wheated pasture. I don’t remember that morning, but I know what it opens up: racing my mother through the woods, branches reaching for our faces, our laughter echoing on the wind, the sound of hooves pressing into the earth beneath us, driving us forward at a pace that would leave most people trembling. It was here that my family taught me a fundamental lesson: not only how to stay cool under pressure, but how to lean into the joy of life even as you feel it rushing past you.

During warm summers in the Finger Lakes region, friends and I would wake early, collect our tackle boxes, wade into the cool waters flowing through the ancient, and to our child minds still magical, valleys of the Allegheny Plateau, and we’d slowly lift river stones to trap live bait before casting our lines for the pike holding somewhere below.

We’d set our rods and wait in the quiet for the slightest twitch on the end of our poles. In the stillness of these moments, I learned the skillful craft of patience and what it feels like to let the right moment come to you.

I started Hunter Pike for two reasons. I wanted to create a studio where clients, colleagues, friends and family all felt held when the pressures of the world seemed unpredictable. And I wanted to build something warm and sophisticated in a world that courts chaos at every turn.

Hunter Pike is about lightly holding a sliver of peace so ideas can form, emotion can rise, and people can dream. It’s not about hope, and it’s not about wishing for something we don’t have. It’s about believing in who we are and courageously building together. It’s about taking the lessons I learned as a boy and artfully pouring a bit of that magic into the people who make life better for us all.

Leo D’Cruz