Aaron D. Cohen

Aaron D. Cohen is a Managing Director and Head of the Financial Services & Technology group at GTCR, one of the premier private equity firms in the United States. He joined GTCR in 2003 and has risen through the ranks from Associate to Vice President, then to Principal, and ultimately to Managing Director. Before joining GTCR, he worked at Hicks, Muse, Tate & Furst (a prominent private equity firm) and in the Mergers & Acquisitions group at Salomon Smith Barney, giving him a broad foundation in both deal-making and investment management.

Cohen holds a B.S. in Accountancy with high honors from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and is a Certified Public Accountant (CPA). His financial and accounting expertise underpin his analytical approach to evaluating investments across GTCR's core sectors. He has built a strong track record overseeing investments in financial services, insurance, payments technology, and related sectors, and has served on the boards of multiple portfolio companies over his two-decade tenure at the firm.

Beyond his professional work, Cohen is active in the Chicago community. He serves on the board of Chicago Youth Programs, reflecting a commitment to civic engagement and youth development in the city where GTCR is headquartered.

Aaron Cohen operates within GTCR's signature "Leaders Strategy," which focuses on identifying and partnering with exceptional management teams in core sectors to build market-leading companies through a combination of organic growth and strategic acquisitions. Rather than relying solely on financial engineering, this approach emphasizes operational improvement and leadership-driven value creation.

His primary focus is on financial services and technology, including insurance distribution, payments infrastructure, and financial technology platforms. He looks for businesses in large, fragmented markets where a buy-and-build strategy -- consolidating smaller players under strong management -- can create significant scale advantages. The insurance brokerage and payments sectors have been particularly fruitful areas under his leadership, exemplified by the transformative growth achieved at AssuredPartners and Worldpay.