Elite Traveler Spring 2022

INFLUENCE THE BIG INTERVIEW

TimReynolds on championing local talent TimReynolds, founder of Àni Private Resorts, talks to Jo Knowsley about overcoming life-changing challenges and empowering oneself through creativity

When Tim Reynolds met the woman who would later become his wife, he wrote her a 17-page love letter outlining what he wanted to achieve in his life. Near the top of the list was: Graduate from Cornell Business School; make $10m; retire young; build a school in the developing world; write. Now, looking back over the decades, it is as if he owned a crystal ball. Co-founding the globally successful trading house Jane Street Capital in 1999, the entrepreneur and philanthropist retired in 2012 to focus his ener g y on building the luxurious Àni Private Resorts — fi rst in Anguilla (2011), then the Dominican Republic (2013), Thailand (2016) and Sri Lanka (2017). Alongside this ambitious endeavor, he developed the Àni Art Academies, a nonpro fi t organization that o ff ers multi-year scholarships to aspiring young local artists, promising them and their families a secure fi nancial future. Aside from locations in the Caribbean and Asia, there is an academy in Waichulis, Pennsylvania and an outpost in Red Bank, New Jersey, built to bene fi t veterans and individuals with disabilities. All this despite — or perhaps because of — a near-fatal car accident in New York in 2000 that left Reynolds a paraplegic. “You’d have to be a zombie not to be a ff ected by something as traumatic as that,” says Tim, who still commuted to his New York o ffi ce for the next 12 years in his wheelchair, before he retired from Jane Street. “If you make it through a traumatic experience you certainly change — and it’s nearly always for the better. I now have a lot of contact with people who have su ff ered trauma. People can easily get overwhelmed by it but, when you get past it, it helps you put everything else into perspective. It’s hard for me now to get upset over little things. It’s also a wake-up call that you’re not going to live forever. If you want to do certain things, you should start them sooner.” “When I had my accident, it was a challenging time. We had just started the company and had 15 employees. Today it has over 1,500. I took three months o ff when I was in the hospital. But then, although I took a lot of sick days, I returned to the o ffi ce.” Tim, now 55, admits he has always been fueled by looking ahead: “I have an unusually long-term perspective on life,” he says. “I planned for 10 years

Left Tim Reynolds Right Àni Art Academy in Sri Lanka Far right, top Emily Garlick’s Of The Sea

Far right, bottom Catherine Acosta’s Esperanza

from now 10 years ago. The best part of looking towards the future is that I will get to bring my friends and family for some serious ‘togethering’ at my resorts. And, on a sel fi sh level, I’ll get to substitute-teach at the academies.” (He is a graduate of the program he founded.) Tim sees the twinning of the resorts and the Art Academies as “a virtuous circle. The villas support the academy, and the academy supports the artists who are local people — giving them a secure future. Many of their pieces of art hang in the villas in our resorts; our clients have the opportunity to meet the artists and buy their work. That’s a one-of-a- kind memento.” The artists keep 100 percent of the sales made through the villas, and early sales have reached prices of around $2,500 and upwards. “The impact is signi fi cant. For many of our students, that’s a “I’ve always loved art, but it’s since my car accident that I’ve learned to draw and paint. I know the psychological lift that comes with empowering abilities like painting”

fortune,” says Tim. “In most families in these developing countries, both parents are working for $7 a day, so some of these families have never seen a check of that size.” The idea to create the Àni Private Resorts came when Tim and his wife Caroline were looking to build a vacation home in Anguilla. Not long after, the inspiration for the Àni Art Academies — wholly fi nanced by the resorts and the Tim Reynolds Foundation — came when Tim read two biographical novels by Irving Stone about Michelangelo and Vincent van Gogh.“I was impressed by the fact that these two men weren’t born geniuses,” he tells me. “They worked feverishly to hone their skills and their talent. It’s my belief that great artists are not born, but educated. And you can apply that across life. “I saw the opportunity to create beautiful resorts in gorgeous places around the world, to produce a one-of-a-kind hospitality educational operation, where the art schools work alongside the boutique resorts, which are rented to one group at a time.” The resorts o ff er the exclusivity of a private estate rental with the amenities of a full-service resort. But Tim says he has also always wanted to help alleviate su ff ering and so seized the chance to o ff er young people in developing countries equal opportunity.