Kevin Macdonald

Kevin A. Macdonald is a career private-equity investor, director, and advisor with more than 30 years (and by some counts 25+ years of active board work) collaborating with owners and managers of small and mid-sized companies to build business value. Since 1990 he has served as a director of roughly 21–25 private companies across a broad range of industries, and over his career he has raised more than $2.0 billion of private equity capital from institutional investors and high-net-worth individuals. He states that he has personally led 15 investments that returned over $1.5 billion to investors.

He is a co-founder of three investment firms. He was a founding member and senior partner of The Clipper Group, a ~$1.5 billion private equity firm that spun out of Credit Suisse First Boston in 1990, and its successor Monitor Clipper Partners, a ~$2.0 billion firm launched in 1997 and affiliated with Monitor Group, the global strategy consultancy — together representing over $3.5 billion of combined assets. He also served as Co-Managing Partner of Morgenthaler's private equity activity. In 2011 he founded Lightbridge Partners LLC, an investment and advisory firm serving promising businesses with a flexible combination of capital, advice, and relationships (the firm assists with acquisitions, mergers, joint ventures, divestitures, capital raising, recapitalizations, and restructurings).

Today he is a Partner & Head of Direct Investments at Kingfish Group, a strategic advisory firm and private-equity investment partner he co-founded in 2004 with Jonathan Goldenstein and Christian Dubiel. Kingfish specializes in middle-market opportunities, partnering with private-equity managers and seasoned executives; the firm and its affiliates have invested in over 55 private companies across technology, healthcare, business services, industrials, transportation, consumer, and financial services.

Earlier in his career, Macdonald worked in leveraged acquisitions at Credit Suisse First Boston and in strategy consulting at the Boston Consulting Group. He holds an M.B.A. from the Stanford Graduate School of Business, where he was an Arjay Miller Scholar, and a B.A. in Economics from Yale University.

• Focuses on middle-market private equity — control and growth investments in established small and mid-sized companies, not early-stage venture or angel checks, despite the "angel" label attached to some directory listings.
• Invests where he can "build value in businesses" (the tagline of Lightbridge Partners) through a combination of capital, hands-on advice, and relationships, typically taking board seats.
• Sector-agnostic within the middle market, having invested across business services, consumer, distribution/logistics, healthcare/medical, manufacturing, technology/software, transaction processing, transportation, and industrials.
• Values operational engagement and governance — a 25+ company board record indicates a preference for active involvement rather than passive minority stakes.
• Through Kingfish, favors partnering alongside experienced PE managers and executives to evaluate, enhance, and execute deals across the investment lifecycle.