Abstract
This research aims to uncover how the personal values of a social enterprise CEO (Paul) influence strategic leadership and choices. We adopt the upper-echelon theory by Hambrick and Mason (1984) of bounded rationality to provide insights into the lived experience of an executive social entrepreneur - how personal values influence the establishment of Local Power and subsequent strategic decisions. To achieve this, we followed Kempster and Stewart's (2010) co-produced auto-ethnography approach, described as two parts of a sandwich: the ‘bread’ as the interpreted observations and the filling as the reflections on the experience. The 'meat' of Paul's auto-ethnographic sandwich reflected significant episodes from 1995 to 2022 when he developed Local Power, California C Corp CEO and LLC President. From a theoretical perspective, this research contributes to creative opportunity recognition and the coupling of personal values that influence strategic leadership and choices in social entrepreneurship.