George Goldsmith

George Goldsmith (born 1955) is a serial entrepreneur whose career blends cognitive psychology, clinical psychology, and computer science. He earned a BA in cognitive psychology from the University of Rochester (1978) and pursued MA/PhD work in clinical psychology at the University of Connecticut. His first company, The Human Interface Group, was a pioneer in collaborative software and was acquired by Lotus Development, where he went on to lead the Lotus Institute building tools for high-performance, distributed teamwork.

In the late 1990s he created TomorrowLab, providing strategic guidance to internet businesses, and became a senior advisor to McKinsey & Company's leadership — eventually joining as CEO of TomorrowLab@McKinsey. Through the Young Presidents' Organisation (YPO), where he served on the International Board of Directors, he founded YPO Networks. In 2002 he founded Tapestry Networks, a firm focused on leadership performance and governance effectiveness in regulated sectors (its networks reportedly reach a large share of Fortune 100 directors); he remains its Non-Executive Chair.

In 2016, Goldsmith and his wife, physician Ekaterina Malievskaia, co-founded COMPASS Pathways after their son's mental health crisis exposed the failures of existing mental-health care. COMPASS is a biotechnology company developing COMP360, an investigational synthetic psilocybin treatment for treatment-resistant depression that received FDA Breakthrough Therapy designation. Goldsmith served as CEO from founding until August 2022 (when Kabir Nath took over) and as Board Chair until stepping down from the board in March 2024. The company went public on Nasdaq roughly three years after founding and reached a peak valuation of around $2.2 billion, having raised on the order of $600 million across its financing cycles.

Since leaving COMPASS's board, Goldsmith and Malievskaia have said they are launching two new companies to continue their work in evidence-based innovation in mental health and wellbeing.

• Invests in and builds companies advancing evidence-based innovation in mental health and wellbeing — his stated mission: "We are aiming for a better system of mental healthcare – with patients having access to treatments that work, and innovation that has been tested and approved medically."
• Backs early-stage / seed ventures in psychedelic medicine, biotech, and drug discovery, drawing on his own operator experience founding and scaling COMPASS Pathways.
• Values mastery, persistence, and attention to detail, and favors collaborative problem-solving over hierarchical decision-making — a philosophy he attributes to his psychology and software background.
• Personal, mission-driven lens: his own family's experience with treatment-resistant depression/OCD is the origin of his focus on mental-health innovation. Philosophy: "Sometimes you win, and sometimes you learn."