We’re sharing some of our favorite pieces from the Praxis archives here on Praxis Press. In 2024, we profiled Mike Bontrager, the Founder and former CEO & Executive Chair of Chatham Financial and the Founder of Square Roots Collective.
There’s a small town about an hour outside Philadelphia called Kennett Square.
Tucked in Chester County, a rural area with equestrian heritage, this square mile is home to 7,000 residents, with tree-lined streets and brick architecture that make a picturesque backdrop for community life.
Kennett Square is the unlikely setting for a redemptive quest that has spanned more than three decades, as Mike Bontrager has created lasting influence in business, community, and family. Through a series of moves that might have seemed foolish at worst and counterintuitive at best, he has activated teams toward an audacious vision that’s still in the making.
An Entrepreneurial Adventure
Mike grew up in nearby Lancaster County as the son of a Mennonite minister. “I believed that my future would be entrepreneurial, probably from the age of 13,” he says. “That continued to be affirmed as I went through high school and college, and really started to ask, ‘What gives me life?’”
After college, Mike married his high school sweetheart, Dot, who describes him as “a dreamer, with never just one idea.” He proposed to Dot with the opportunity to move to Zurich, Switzerland, and they began their marriage as expats while he worked for Chemical Bank (now JPMorgan Chase). Ten years saw them through a move back to New York City and the birth of their older daughters, Stephanie and Kymm.
Mike continued to work at Chemical Bank, gaining expertise in the derivatives markets and observing how the imbalance of information on Wall Street led to exploitative behaviors. When faced with a choice of doing what was best for the client and what was best for a bonus payout, the industry rewarded the latter. Mike felt the disconnect acutely: “I wanted to be at a place where doing what’s right for a client and doing what’s right for me are aligned.”
In 1991, Mike decided to found his own derivatives consulting firm, and he and Dot moved back to Pennsylvania to raise their family and start the business.
“People told me, if you want to do derivatives, you’re going to have to be in New York or London or Hong Kong,” Mike remembers. “They said it couldn’t be done in Kennett Square, and I said, ‘We’re going to try.’”
For her part, Dot was fully on board with the “adventure,” as she recalls it. “I said, ‘Let’s go!’ I figured that we could always come back to New York if it didn’t work out.” They moved to a fixer-upper in rural Pennsylvania, about 15 minutes outside Kennett Square, and Mike set up shop above their garage.
For four years, Mike worked alone to build Chatham Financial. “I almost quit,” he says. “We moved to Pennsylvania, and I’m by myself. I became much more intentional about getting together with other business people to have that camaraderie.”
It was around this time that Mike had a profound spiritual experience while listening to sermons by Tim Keller that introduced the idea that striving for performance and righteousness can create a barrier to God.
He grew up believing that he could never be too righteous; the goal was to become a better person and make God happy through hard work and discipline. Mike came to learn that God’s unmerited love unlocks a transformation that goes beyond being a “good person” and opens the door to realize a vision of restoration that God has for the world.
He began to ask what that meant for this young company he was growing. “I didn’t want us to be just a kinder, gentler version of Wall Street,” he says. “I wanted us to think totally differently than Wall Street.”
Mike became convinced of a fundamental imbalance of information between banks and their clients. “It’s not an uncontroversial statement to say that the trust gap between Wall Street and Main Street is pretty wide,” he says. “And having lived through the financial crisis, inside of some of those meltdowns, that lack of trust is well placed. So how do we as a company step into that?”
In 1995, Dave Hall joined as the first full-time employee, operationalizing the vision as they built the firm, and he witnessed this evolution in thinking firsthand. He saw how companies had enormous risks, particularly around interest rates and currencies, and they didn’t know how to manage those risks well.
Meanwhile, the banks that had all the knowledge sold them products that didn’t fit their needs. Dave explains, “The idea of Chatham was to help level the playing field in terms of knowledge and skill in negotiation to help companies address risks properly, and then help manage everything from accounting to regulation to compliance and all those kinds of things along the way.”
The Trust Business
The team began to refer to trust maximization rather than profit maximization.
Mike recalls one scenario when he made a costly mistake on a foreign exchange trade. “I messed it up and got the trade backwards, so we took the worst price, not the best price. I realized it about five minutes after the trade was done.”
He told the client about the mistake, offering to write a check for the difference, which would have been sizable. Mike remembers, “There was this long silence on the other side of the phone. I don’t think he would have ever known, and he realized it on the spot.” The client asked not to be charged for the transaction, but Chatham did not have to cover the error.
Transparent interactions like this built a foundation of trust that resulted in decades-long client relationships. In every interaction with a client, vendor, or employee, Mike learned to ask, “How do we maximize trust in this situation?”
As the company grew, Mike used the language of values to scale the culture he hoped to see. “I was very open that my values come from my faith; however, I would say to people, ‘You don’t have to have my faith to have my values.’ It led to some very interesting conversations about where our values come from.”
He expanded the idea of trust maximization into a “Chatham quest”: to demonstrate and catalyze the restoration of trust in the capital markets.
In every interaction with a client, vendor, or employee, Mike learned to ask, “How do we maximize trust in this situation?”
He says he likes the quest term “because it’s not clear you’re going to be successful.” This quest goes beyond interactions between individuals or even between firms—the scope reaches to finance as a system that could be repaired in some way through the actions of Chatham Financial.
In 2000, Chatham experienced a breakthrough in defeasance, a highly technical process in the commercial mortgage-backed security market. When the team examined it, they realized that the common pricing model contained hidden fees that all other firms were simply pocketing. They spent the better part of six months building their approach to do right by their clients.
When Chatham finally entered the market, opting to be fully transparent, they lost out on significant profit. Later, at an industry meeting, Mike fielded angry questions about why Chatham was preventing other firms from making a huge amount of profit.
Mike remembers, “I was not ready for this. The only thing I could say was, it’s because it’s the right thing to do. Is that an okay answer?”
The Chatham approach became the standard in the market, and today, they compete with the same companies who were exploiting the information imbalance.
The firm does not win every defeasance deal, but Mike sees it as a win because Chatham created a new kind of fairness. It became newly possible—and even imperative—for firms to act with transparency that would have been previously inconceivable.
Chatham created a new kind of fairness. It became newly possible — and even imperative — for firms to act with transparency that would have been previously inconceivable.
For this degree of systemic influence, Mike firmly believes that we need more Christians in the capital markets whose faith gives them a vision that goes beyond the legal or ethical standard.
Currently, the markets are constrained by the law through regulation, usually as a response to something going wrong in the markets. Chatham chose not to maximize profit in defeasance—which would have been legal—and they were able to influence the entire system because they had built client trust and earned market power.
“We need a lot of people building companies that are large enough to have market power,” Mike says. “You need to have a critical mass.”
When Dave joined Chatham for this startup adventure, Mike decided to build a new carriage house for a new office. He told the contractor to “build it for 8 or 10 people because we wouldn’t grow much more than that.” Today, Chatham Financial has over 800 employees and operates in eight cities all around the world, with approximately 500 employees based out of Kennett Square.
Along the way, Mike realized, “We are in the trust business more than we are the derivatives business, and it was more important for us to hire people who are trustworthy. We could teach derivatives rather than hire derivatives people that we had to try to teach to be trustworthy.”
Looking back on his time at the firm, he feels most proud of the team Chatham Financial built through its work and culture. “It was the opportunity of a redemptive enterprise to attract people who have that instinct, and for the enterprise to then form those people, and for those people to be part of a community that then is formed by the character of those individuals and all the things they do, from raising kids to being part of school boards and on and on and on.”
Mike’s faith animated him to voluntarily, sacrificially hold back from maximizing profits. At the same time, this faith freed him to put conventional incentives to the side, act with transparency, and empower others to join him.
This motivation was generative in that the Chatham team members who came alongside Mike did not need to be compelled by the same faith; yet, they caught the vision of transparency and trust in the capital markets and helped the firm increase its reach. The relationships that emerged from long-term trust-building created the opportunity to act at scale for broad influence in the system.
Two Kennett Squares
In 2004, Chatham Financial moved from the carriage house into office space in Kennett Square, and Mike and Dot moved with their four daughters into the downtown neighborhood to be part of a tight-knit community.
Stephanie, their oldest daughter, remembers Mike approaching her about the move, acknowledging that it would be a big shift for her in terms of school and friendships. “I was so honored that he was inviting me into this decision with him, and I was really excited about this new journey,” she recalls. “We were doing something together as a family.”
Although Kennett Square is located in the wealthiest county in Pennsylvania, 40–50% of the nation’s mushrooms are grown nearby, and a vibrant migrant community has emerged around that industry. The range of economic status and diverse cultures in such a small area make Kennett Square more similar to an urban center than a suburban town.
From housing to job opportunities to education, the experiences of residents can feel sharply divided. To some, there are two Kennett Squares. Attending public school for the first time, the Bontrager girls became friends with classmates who had radically different life experiences from them.
“I see it as a huge value-add in my life that I was able to be in community with people who are very different from me,” Stephanie remembers. “At home with my parents, we wrestled through these things to start to understand the bigger world.”
Mike and Dot began to be more involved through nonprofit volunteering and community groups. As their relationships in town grew, they became more committed to Kennett Square.
“The deeper that we’ve gotten to know the town and really understand the people, their stories, and their history,” Mike said, “the more we’ve been able to strategize about what it means to have a community where everyone can thrive.”
Planting a Beer Garden
Over time, Mike and Dot purchased real estate around town, renovating it for residential or commercial use. One property was the original site of the Eastern Condensed Milk Company, built in 1902 and operational until 2001, but it had since fallen into disrepair.
Sandra Mulry, Redevelopment Project Lead at Square Roots Collective, remembers when Mike purchased the property in 2011: “I was so confused because I didn’t see an opportunity for investment or development. It was this derelict industrial building, and the electric and copper had been stripped out. But Mike saw something there, and then there’s no stopping him.”
Mike learned that the site was built by the Pennock family of local abolitionists, and it became imperative to save the building for the community. “It was potentially going to be demolished, and I didn’t want to see that happen to a historic building,” he says passionately, even years later. “I wanted it in the hands of someone who loved the town.”
He had an idea to use the site as a pop-up beer garden, a family-friendly gathering place for the community that was rooted in history, art, and horticulture. Sandra and the team approach every project by asking, “What does the space want to be?” She says, “The Creamery started to talk to us and tell this story, and it became really obvious what it wanted to be.”
Today, the Creamery is a beautiful industrial mix of concrete, distressed wood, and metal, almost all of which was saved from the site. Outdoor and indoor spaces include artful plants and landscaping, including wisteria arches and a green wall of ivy inside the quonset hut (familiarly known as the “Q Hut”).
The incorporation of large sculpture is striking, like the driftwood lion or the 10-foot metalwork heart. Sandra remembers telling local artists about the Creamery: “They wanted to see the space. They loved the whole concept, so they brought over pieces on loan for the summer, just to beautify the space. They were so special that we ended up buying them, and they’re there permanently now.”
What’s the connection between a beer garden and community thriving? Mike had a vision for the Creamery as a platform for community life: everyday interactions between friends and neighbors as they visit with their families and larger-scale gatherings like the annual holiday village market or the year-round farmers market (both in partnership with Kennett Collaborative). He also realized that the profits from a for-profit venture like this could fuel nonprofit work that would serve the town.
Re-Risking for the Community
After 30 years as CEO at Chatham Financial, Mike transitioned to Executive Chairman, eventually retiring from the firm. Instead of turning to a life of leisure, he saw the opportunity to build something new in and for Kennett Square.
“I’m an entrepreneur,” he says, throwing his hands up. “I love creating. I love pulling people together to create.”
The same faith that propelled him in the financial markets ignited his imagination for what could be possible in his community.
Mike had started various for-profit and nonprofit ventures to address challenges where he saw them, and he decided to pull them together under one umbrella organization called Square Roots Collective, which is committed to advancing the community of Kennett Square so that all residents can thrive. The collective encompasses nonprofit initiatives including:
Kennett Trails Alliance: In partnership with local municipalities and Brandywine Red Clay Alliance, this initiative strives to connect the Kennett community to its natural beauty through the formation of a safe, well-maintained, 14-mile pedestrian and bicycle trail loop called the Kennett Greenway.
Voices Underground: In partnership with Longwood Gardens and Lincoln University, the first degree-granting HBCU in the country (just 15 minutes away from Kennett Square), this organization promotes the nationally significant history of the Underground Railroad in the region through scholarly research, creative partnerships, public experiences, and historical memorialization to further its mission of racial healing through storytelling.
One innovation of Square Roots Collective is its financial structure: Square Roots Collective is a nonprofit organization that owns other initiatives, including businesses like the Creamery, whose proceeds enable other nonprofit work.
Luke Zubrod, Chief of Staff, explains, “A beer garden helps bring the community together and nurture social capital, but it also produces profits that flow back into the community.”
In contrast to a typical profit-maximizing, extractive posture of development, it’s not always an intuitive model to the community. He says, “We try to explain it simply: When you drink a beer at the Creamery, you help build a trail.”
A two-part quest has emerged in the work of Square Roots Collective. First, they hope to re-weave the social fabric of the “two Kennetts” by creating spaces to cultivate connection and an integrated town. Second, they aim to demonstrate the role that business can play in the renewal of neighborhoods by creating a sustainable cycle in which for-profit entities help fuel community benefits.
In January, Square Roots Collective hosted a memorable Three Kings Day event that provided a glimpse of this quest coming to life. At a combination of a grand opening of a renovated park, photo ops with camels, and salsa dancing at the Creamery, Mike recalls, “We probably had 50/50 Latinos and Anglos here, which is really representative of this community. It was the most integrated night I’ve ever seen in my 20 years of living in this borough.”
A cross-section of the town came together to celebrate nature, culture, and collaboration, and profits from the Creamery will go on to help the community flourish.
Building with and for the Next Generation
Recently, Stephanie and her husband, Luis, as well as her sister, Kymm, have joined the Square Roots Collective team, drawing from their backgrounds in real estate management, finance, and social work. Stephanie works closely with Mike, and their relationship has deepened from father-daughter to more of a partnership, due in part to their experience as Capital Fellows in the inaugural cohort in 2023.
Their shared journey in the program helped them to articulate ideas that were only previously in Mike’s mind, and Stephanie had the opportunity to speak into others’ situations from a position of expertise and support.
She remembers, “There was one afternoon when he was listening not to his daughter, but someone who was going to help him build his business and build something with him. That was such a pivotal shift for us.”
Looking toward the future, Mike and the Square Roots Collective team have big projects on the books. They plan to open two boutique hotels, including Artelo, where each room will be the canvas for a local artist. The original factory on the Creamery site is set to become a reserved dining space, and there are plans for a speakeasy that will elevate African American stories and history.
Although these projects are tangible developments in Kennett Square, Stephanie knows that the real work is building trust. In a small town where everyone knows each other, it’s critical to invest in long-term relationships that will enable collaboration among residents and other local organizations.
“I’m committing to figuring out how we build trust,” she says, “and a piece of that is sharing our story. How can we tell our story so that people understand what our motives are, and we can lay the groundwork for building trust?”
Decades after Mike realized that he was in the trust business at Chatham Financial, he and the Square Roots Collective team find themselves in the same business now. What’s more, their community can feel more complicated than the finance industry. In its one square mile, the long-term collaboration in Kennett Square might be a prototype for other towns or cities.
Mike says, “I am impatient in that I want to see things done, but I’m patient in that I realize that probably some of the great things we want to do are years away, and I may never see them.”
This sense of urgency with a very long time horizon is essential in a redemptive quest. He waits and hopes for generational transformation, and he acts in the short term where he and his team can make a difference in his community.
One day in the future, when children walk and bike down the Kennett Greenway or learn about African American history through art and storytelling, they probably won’t know who made it possible, and that’s exactly what Mike would consider success.
Mike’s ongoing quest is one of risk, trust, relationships, and sacrifice. He took on financial risk by founding Chatham Financial, setting up shop in a nonobvious location. To maximize trust rather than profit, the Chatham team operated with radical transparency and a willingness to sacrifice financial gain, which allowed them to shift what was possible in the system.
When it came time to retire, Mike chose to forgo a safe or comfortable route by re-risking his resources through the work of SRC. Motivated by a love for the community and fueled by the knowledge that deep community change requires many actors, he now empowers the SRC team toward collaborative, innovative placemaking with a long-term vision of a thriving Kennett Square.
“These are our neighbors,” Mike says, “and we love our neighbors. One of our theories is that real change is going to happen at the neighborhood level. If we can’t do that in a community, where can we? This is a great place to experiment with that.”
brilliant & inspiring.
“I am impatient in that I want to see things done, but I’m patient in that I realize that probably some of the great things we want to do are years away, and I may never see them.” 🔥