From 2013 to 2023, RJ served as President & CEO of UniFi Equipment Finance, a bank-owned leasing platform inside Bank of Ann Arbor. He didn't inherit a high-growth operation — he built one. Assets scaled from roughly $14M to $250M+. The company originated over $400M in financing, cut operating costs by double digits, and built a culture of ownership through an internal intrapreneurship model called UniFi 2.0, where people acted like owners, not employees.
Before the corner office, RJ's operator lens was shaped by real experience: growing up in a family of entrepreneurs, serving in the U.S. Air Force, and co-founding Scriba Town Inn in Oswego, New York with his father and brother — building it into his first seven-figure business in his early 20s. That combination of small-business reality and bank-grade discipline sits at the core of how he works today.