Before Mark Loehr helped put investor meetings on screens, he had a telephone with 120 buttons. Each button offered a direct route to somebody he might need on a trading day. The machine was bulky, about three toasters’ worth of desk space, but its appeal was simple: press here, reach a person. For a young equities trader, that was a useful piece of equipment. For the future CEO of OpenExchange, it became a surprisingly durable idea.
The attraction was the ease of making contact. Long after the telephone turret belonged to an earlier generation of office technology, Loehr remembered how readily it connected him to other people. His subsequent work would take him through investment banking, a public-company chief executive’s office and managed video events. The equipment kept changing. Reaching somebody without a small administrative expedition remained a good proposition.
A connection at a fingertip.
A career that refused to retire
Loehr graduated from Cornell University, where he studied economics, and began his trading career in 1978. By his own account, he was running a Credit Suisse trading desk by 1987, before moving into banking and working on initial public offerings. The path gave him experience with several kinds of financial conversation: the quick exchange, the extended pitch and the explanation that has to survive an investor’s questions.
His later positions included president of Smith Barney Pacific and leadership of global equity sales and equity capital markets at Smith Barney. At Wit Capital, he headed investment banking. He became CEO of SoundView Technology Group and, after its acquisition, an executive vice president of Charles Schwab. Much of the career involved getting information to people who had a consequential decision to make.
Retirement offered its own attractions. Loehr enjoyed nonprofit work, investing in small companies and time at home with his children. Yet OpenExchange drew him back into full-time work. He described the opportunity as a way to bring earlier chapters of his career together: financial services, relationships and video technology. There is a certain economy to that kind of career change. He could use what he had already learned.
His account of mentorship begins with his mother, a political campaign manager whose composed, direct arguments impressed him. A later lesson came from Tenneco chief executive Mike Walsh, who challenged a banking pitch to explain what distinguished it. Loehr’s response became a service philosophy: see the situation from the client’s shoulder. The image is slightly awkward as office seating advice, rather better as a reminder to understand another person’s view.
“Instead of sitting across the table, try to sit on your client’s or employee’s shoulder.”
Mark Loehr
The people behind the screen
OpenExchange gives that philosophy an operational setting. Its work joins video technology to managed services for meetings and events. People prepare the event, check equipment, coordinate speakers and help keep the proceedings on schedule. Financial communication provides the context: an earnings presentation, an investor day or a meeting between executives and professional investors. The invitation is only the beginning of the work.
Someone must still make sure a speaker is ready, a presentation appears and participants arrive where they should. A conversation can be important without being glamorous. Loehr’s business occupies that practical territory, where the quality of the experience depends on decisions most participants would prefer never to have to consider. The reward for a well-run meeting is often that people remember what was said.
The company’s growth produced a run of Inc. 5000 appearances: No. 183 in 2021, No. 124 in 2022 and No. 277 in 2023. These are rankings of OpenExchange in those years, a record of a particular business period. They also place Loehr’s second act in a measurable context. The return from retirement had become a substantial operating commitment.
OpenExchange’s annual list positions. Lower numbers indicate a higher ranking.
A Zoom visit, with a handshake
In February 2025, Loehr visited Zoom founder Eric Yuan. He dated their friendship to 2017 and described the visit as an unusually warm business encounter. They discussed virtual communication, being empty nesters and managing the hours in a day. Two executives responsible for helping other people meet had plenty to talk about themselves.
There was company business behind the visit. Zoom had selected OpenExchange as its preferred professional services partner for the transition of its Events Services team. Loehr said OpenExchange would take on senior members of that team to help the handover. He wanted to communicate the responsibility of the assignment to Yuan in person.
OpenExchange’s account of the expanded collaboration described more than 500,000 meetings and events delivered using Zoom technology and a team of more than 500 video operators and event specialists. Those were company-reported figures accompanying the collaboration. They explain the scale of the service proposition: experienced people supporting communication built on another company’s platform.
Six thousand miles for a match
For a business built around remote participation, OpenExchange has an engagingly physical connection to Wigan Warriors. It became the rugby league club’s main partner and front-of-shirt sponsor during Wigan’s 150th anniversary year. Loehr spoke about shared interests in developing people and building teams. A company relationship had opened the door to a community with a much longer history.
In a message to supporters ahead of the 2023 season, he said he would make a 6,000-mile round trip for Sam Powell’s testimonial against Salford. He described himself as an enthusiastic sports follower who had only recently come to rugby league. His pleasure in the sport was evident in his references to players, coaches and the occasional appearance of a Matt Peet smile.
What stayed with him was the welcome. Wigan’s community reminded him of his youth in Cleveland, Ohio: the neighborhood, the church and the feeling that people knew one another. That comparison gives the sponsorship a personal geography. There was a recognizable piece of home in a place thousands of miles away.
It also leaves room for a sensible distinction between making travel optional and having something worth travelling for. Loehr’s work can help an executive join a meeting remotely. A match, a shared occasion and the people around it can still be reasons to board a plane.
Back to Economics 101
In 2024, Loehr introduced a podcast called Compound Interests. His team had heard enough of his Wall Street stories to encourage a wider conversation. The name reflected his interest in the ingredients that nurture a small idea and help it grow. For the opening episode, he returned to a relationship that predated the executive titles.
His guest was Edwin T. Burton, his Economics 101 professor at Cornell, later teaching at the University of Virginia. Loehr asked about the evolution of economic theory, the experience of teaching and changes among students. The pairing gave the conversation an unusual continuity. The former student could ask what had changed while sharing some knowledge of what had come before.
The presentation used OpenExchange tools, with chapters and additional material so viewers could browse particular topics. It was a practical demonstration of his interest in what happens after a live conversation. A recording gains another use when people can return to the part they need. An old classroom connection had become material for a new audience.
The next investor conversation
More recently, Loehr’s work has centered on how companies explain themselves to investors. A December 2025 strategic alliance between OpenExchange and Computershare combined event delivery with investor engagement capabilities. The announced offering covered annual general meetings, capital markets days and earnings presentations, bringing meeting production together with information about investors and their participation.
Computershare’s contribution included its ingage investor engagement portal, Georgeson’s shareholder engagement expertise and investor intelligence. OpenExchange brought its event management technology. The combination links a company’s knowledge of its audience with the occasion it creates for that audience, and with what it can learn from participation.
In February 2026, the NIRI Virtual Chapter listed Loehr and OpenExchange’s Emilia Tapsall to lead a discussion about investor days. The program emphasized the pressure on companies to provide context amid AI-driven change and de-globalization. Preparation, executive alignment, speaker selection and the balance between strategy and operational detail were on the agenda. These are editorial problems as well as production problems: what should be explained, by whom, and in what order?
His May 2026 LinkedIn article Extraordinary put his aspiration plainly: “Earnings calls shouldn’t feel like obligations. They should feel like opportunities.” It is a recognizable ambition for someone whose career has repeatedly returned to financial communication. There is information a company must deliver, and there is care it can take over how people receive it.
A meeting with a longer memory
Another project gives Loehr’s interest in communication a longer horizon. In September 2001, while leading SoundView, he invited employees to write about their experiences and contribute a message for somebody reading fifty years later. The collection became And Then the Rain Came. A question addressed to colleagues was also an invitation to future readers.
In 2026, he revisited that effort through The Light We Kept, inviting written and recorded reflections and promoting a virtual gathering. The project returned to individual voices and what they might pass on. Alongside his investor meetings and podcast, it offers a different reason to preserve a conversation: somebody years from now may want to understand the people who were there.
The trading turret put a person within reach of a button. Loehr’s later projects add the possibility of reaching people across time. An old professor can find a new audience. Colleagues’ recollections can outlast the office where they were written. There is still plenty of equipment involved. The interesting part remains the voice that comes through.