Craig Fowler

Craig Fowler is a Managing Director at HarbourVest Partners and a member of HarbourVest’s Primary Investment Team. His work focuses on institutional mandates seeking exposure to emerging managers, diverse managers, the lower middle market, and underserved markets. His responsibilities include capital formation, investment due diligence, origination, and relationship management.

Fowler joined HarbourVest in 2016 when HarbourVest acquired the BAML Capital Access Funds business from Bank of America and renamed it HarbourVest Horizon. The acquired team included Fowler and other BAML Capital Access Funds investment professionals; the platform continued its focus on emerging and diverse managers.

Before HarbourVest, Fowler was a Managing Director of BAML Capital Access Funds, a Bank of America platform focused on private equity investing in emerging and underserved U.S. markets. Earlier at Bank of America, which he joined in 1997, he was an investment officer with the bank’s Small Business Investment Company, making mezzanine and equity investments in small and minority-owned businesses in the Midwest. Before Bank of America, he spent 15 years in commercial banking, including as a corporate relationship manager and vice president at Mercantile Bank, now part of U.S. Bank.

Fowler holds a BS in Business Administration from the John M. Olin School of Business at Washington University in St. Louis and is a graduate of the Venture Capital Institute. He has also served on boards and initiatives connected to minority business growth, including the National Association of Investment Companies, the St. Louis Local Development Company, and the Center for the Acceleration of African-American Business.

• Focuses on fund-level investing rather than typical seed-stage angel investing.
• HarbourVest Horizon’s mandate is to invest in “newly-formed general partners, women and minority-led funds, and organizations that have historically lacked access to capital.”
• Looks for emerging managers, especially first-, second-, and third-time funds, diverse managers, lower middle-market funds, and underserved-market strategies.
• Fowler has described the Capital Access Funds approach as “double bottom-line investing” that seeks both economic and social-impact returns.
• His prior Bank of America work included mezzanine and equity investments in small and minority-owned businesses, especially in the U.S. Midwest.
• For founders and managers seeking capital, Fowler has emphasized fit and diligence on investors: “You should do your homework, just like we do our homework on you when we’re evaluating you.”