The 5th annual first Bigelow Connectors event focused on the psychology of decision-making under uncertainty — how we weigh risk, extend trust, and fool ourselves when the stakes are highest.
The 2025 Bigelow Connectors event brought together world-class advisors who serve Entrepreneur Owner-Managers™ (EOMs). Attendees included leading M&A attorneys, CPAs, tax professionals, wealth managers, and consultants. At Bigelow, we live at the intersection of corporate finance and behavioral psychology, and this event is our opportunity to share learnings from the EOM ecosystem that may not be obvious from a traditional advisor’s perspective.
This year’s featured speaker was Maria Konnikova, psychologist (Columbia Ph.D.), New York Times bestselling author, and professional poker player. Maria took the room deep into the science of human decision-making: how our brains process risk, trust, and uncertainty—and why we so often fool ourselves under pressure. Drawing on both behavioral science and the high-stakes poker table, she unpacked the cognitive biases and emotional traps that shape our judgments, and made the case that the stories we tell ourselves quietly drive our behavior.
The fit with our work was immediate. An EOM contemplating a capital gain someday is making the highest-stakes decision of their life, usually once, with incomplete information and a great deal of emotion in the room. Maria’s framing—separating the quality of a decision from the quality of its outcome—is exactly the distinction we try to hold for EOMs, and for ourselves as their advisors.
The morning also gave us time to build relationships, participate in scholarly discussion, and introduce INTENTION before closing over a light lunch.
As always, Connectors isn’t just about information — it’s about re-aligning our frameworks. Our hope is that sharing these insights, with candor and intellectual generosity, leads to better advice and better outcomes for the EOMs we all serve.
