Christina Perry

Christina Perry is a finance and operations executive who has spent most of her career building the back-office infrastructure of the Midwest's venture ecosystem. A Cleveland native, she earned a BBA from the University of Notre Dame (class of 2003) and a Master of Accountancy from Miami University, then began her career as a CPA at Deloitte. She has described leaving Ohio for school and intentionally returning to build her career in the state.

In 2013 she became the founding CFO of Drive Capital, the Columbus-based venture firm launched by former Sequoia partners Mark Kvamme and Chris Olsen. Working first through the fund administrator Winbridge (formerly FSM Capital Management) and then bringing the function in-house, Perry created and ran Drive's entire fund-administration operation from scratch — financial reporting, investor relations, financial-statement audits, treasury, HR, insurance, and tax. Over her tenure, Drive grew from zero investments to more than 47 portfolio companies in under seven years and scaled to roughly $1.2B in assets under management, becoming one of the largest venture firms in the Midwest.

Perry has since moved into the CFO role at The O.H.I.O. Fund, the Ohio-focused, multi-asset investment fund co-founded by Drive's Mark Kvamme along with Ray Leach, Jill Meyer, and Mike Venerable. The O.H.I.O. Fund invests across real estate, growth equity, and later-stage venture, deploying capital exclusively in Ohio to keep companies and returns anchored in the state. As of Q1 2026 the fund reported $647M in committed capital, having invested roughly $196M in about 30 Ohio companies and real estate projects and generated more than $75M in returns.

Her own framing captures why she fits a place-based fund: growing up in a family business shaped how she evaluates companies, and having made the case for Ohio to skeptical coastal investors, she says, "Being a true believer before it was fashionable gives me a lens on this state that you can't get from a term sheet."

• Perry's role is as the fund's chief financial and operations leader rather than a check-writing investing partner — she builds and runs fund administration, reporting, treasury, IR, audit, HR, and tax functions.
• At The O.H.I.O. Fund the strategy is explicitly place-based: keep capital and returns in Ohio, roughly balanced across real estate/infrastructure, growth equity (stable, growing private companies), and growth-stage venture, with the goal of recirculating wealth to fund the next generation of Ohio founders.
• Geographic discipline is central: the fund targets deploying meaningful capital in and around each of Cincinnati, Cleveland, and Columbus, with the remainder spread across the rest of the state.
• Perry applies coastal-caliber rigor — unit economics, growth trajectory, and operational discipline — to Ohio-based companies, and has recruited talent and companies into the state (e.g., relocating a California startup to Columbus).
• In her Drive Capital work she emphasized the growing importance of data and analytics across portfolio management, deal documents, and investor reporting as the firm scaled.