Take 10 is a series of occasional features on prominent local residents and the possessions dear to them.

To become CEO of Plank Industries, Tom Geddes didn’t follow the career track you might expect — studying business and working his way up the corporate ladder.

The Homeland resident took a more “circuitous route,” as he puts it, which he said gave him just the right training for his role managing all of Kevin Plank’s family investments, as well as his businesses and philanthropy efforts outside of Under Armour — a job he clearly relishes, as many of his 10 favorite possessions bear out.

His path to becoming the right-hand man to one of America’s top business leaders didn’t even begin in America. Geddes grew up outside London and came to the U.S. in 1996 at age 18, as a Morehead Scholar at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, studying history and specializing in the early 20th century, the end of the British Empire.

After he graduated, Geddes spent a year teaching at a private school in Seattle, where he met his wife, Amy. The two maintained a long-distance relationship for the next year, as he returned to England and graduate school at the University of Cambridge.

Another grad school stint — this one at the Johns Hopkins University — brought both of them to Baltimore.

“I thought, at that point, that I might be an academic,” he said. “We had gotten married. We were thinking about a family. You’re making a decision at that point you’re going to go wherever the job is around the country or around the world.”

But one issue complicated that plan: He and Amy had fallen in love again, this time with Baltimore. Moving away was not an option.

“I think academics is almost not too different than the priesthood. It is a calling, and it is a commitment. So, I think maybe I had a lapse of faith,” Geddes said with a wry smile.

Geddes taught high school and college courses for a couple of years, and then transitioned into nonprofit management before going into wealth management.

In 2012, Geddes had been pitching Plank on his firm’s services, when the Under Armour founder turned the tables, pitching him the job opportunity of a lifetime.

“[He said] ‘I have ideas about things I’d like to do, and the impact I’d like to have on Baltimore. But I can’t divert my attention from Under Armour to do it,’” Geddes said.

At the time, the only “outside project” was Plank’s race horse-breeding facility, Sagamore Farm.

Five years later, it’s quite a different story. Plank Industries now encompasses Sagamore Development, which — among other things — has South Baltimore’s gigantic Port Covington project in the works; City Garage, a startup incubator; Sagamore Spirit Distillery, which debuted its signature rye last year; and the Sagamore Pendry Hotel, which opened its doors in Fells Point this March.

Not that Geddes has completely left teaching behind. These days, his “class” consists of his daughters, Lauren, 10, and Betsy, 6.

“I feel like I’m uniquely positioned to do an awful lot of good for Baltimore from both an investment and philanthropy perspective. [I hope] that my kids grow up seeing that as an example and understand that when you’re put in a position where you have resources and opportunity at your disposal, that you grab it and do the best with it that you possibly can,” he said.