David Ellison

David G. Ellison is a healthcare private-equity investor who spent the bulk of his career at Altaris Capital Partners, a New York–based investment firm founded in 2003 that invests exclusively in the healthcare industry. Ellison served there as a Managing Director from June 2007 to June 2021, where he led the firm's investments in the provider services and payor services sectors. Altaris manages several dedicated healthcare funds and has invested in roughly three dozen portfolio companies across healthcare technology, diagnostics, medical devices, pharma services, and provider/payor services.

Before Altaris, Ellison worked in the healthcare investment banking group at Lehman Brothers (June 2005 – June 2007), where he advised clients on mergers, acquisitions, and financing transactions across the healthcare industry. He holds a Bachelor of Arts in Mathematics and Economics from Washington and Lee University.

In June/July 2021, Ellison left Altaris to join Byron Trott's BDT Capital Partners (now BDT & MSD Partners, the merchant bank formed by the combination of BDT & Company and Michael Dell's MSD Partners) as a Managing Director, hired specifically to help the firm build out its healthcare investing efforts. BDT & MSD is a merchant bank that provides advice and long-term capital to family- and founder-owned businesses and long-term investors. He is based in New York.

Because he moved firms in 2021, the `@altariscap.com` email and the Altaris phone number in the stub are almost certainly legacy contact details; his current professional home is BDT & MSD Partners.

• Sector: Deep, career-long specialization in healthcare — with particular expertise in provider services and payor services businesses, the areas he led at Altaris.
• Stage / type: Private-equity control and growth investments in established, operating healthcare companies — not early-stage/seed or angel checks.
• Approach: Comes from an M&A and financing background (Lehman Brothers healthcare banking), so he evaluates companies through a buyout/growth-equity and transaction lens — durable revenue, defensible market position, and a path to scale within healthcare services.
• At BDT & MSD: aligns with the firm's model of providing patient, long-term capital and advisory to family- and founder-owned businesses, applied to the healthcare sector.
• Note: No publicly published personal "thesis statement" or blog by Ellison was located; the above is inferred from firm materials and his documented mandate.