David Donnini

David A. Donnini joined GTCR in 1991 and has spent his entire post-consulting career at the firm, rising to Managing Director and one of its most senior deal leaders. Today he serves as Head of Business & Consumer Services, leads the firm's Business Services investing, and is a Co-Head of the Financial Services & Technology Group — three of GTCR's core investment domains. Before GTCR, he worked as an Associate Consultant at Bain & Company.

He holds an MBA from Stanford University's Graduate School of Business, where he was an Arjay Miller Scholar and won the Robichek Finance award, and a BA in economics, awarded summa cum laude, from Yale University.

GTCR itself was founded in 1980 and is headquartered in Chicago, with offices in New York and West Palm Beach. The firm has invested more than $30 billion in over 280 companies and manages more than $45 billion in equity capital; in 2025 it closed its Strategic Growth Fund II at roughly $3.6 billion. GTCR is known for pioneering "The Leaders Strategy™" — backing accomplished executives ("Leaders") in a target domain and then building market-leading companies through acquisitions and organic growth. Donnini has been a central practitioner of that model in services and financial-technology businesses.

Over his career he has sat on the boards of numerous GTCR portfolio companies. He is currently a director of AssuredPartners, Consumer Cellular, Everon, itel, Park Place Technologies, PPC Flex, Senske Services, Sotera and Vivid Seats (where he serves as Chair of the Board). His past board roles include Classic Media, Coinmach, Fairway Outdoor, GreatCall, HSM Electronic Protection Services, Ironshore, Land Lease Group, Polypore, Prime Succession, Protection 1 and Syniverse. Outside investing, he has served as a vice president of the board and Capital Campaign Cabinet member for the Countryside School in Champaign, Illinois.

• Invests via GTCR's control-oriented private equity model, not angel/seed rounds — platform equity checks generally in the ~$50M–$250M range, targeting the middle and lower-middle market.
• Applies "The Leaders Strategy™": identify and back a proven management leader in a domain, then acquire and build a market-leading company through transformational M&A plus organic growth.
• Concentrates in Business & Consumer Services and Financial Services & Technology — insurance brokerage/distribution, tech-enabled services, payments and financial technology, consumer services, and related roll-up-friendly sectors.
• Values disciplined acquisition strategy and management judgment. On the AssuredPartners exit he credited the team for "discerning the quality of the businesses that they acquired" and emphasized cultural alignment — "very broker centric, very customer centric" — as key to a successful buy-and-build.
• Prizes long-term partnership: he described GTCR's AssuredPartners relationship as "one of the longest and most successful" in the firm's history, having grown the company from nothing to over $1 billion in EBITDA in under 15 years.