Kevin Torgerson

Kevin Torgerson is an Operating Partner at Norwest Equity Partners (NEP), the long-established Minneapolis middle-market private equity firm. He joined NEP in 2014 as a Principal on the investment staff, bringing roughly 25 years of executive and operational leadership experience across global, functional, and general-management roles. At NEP his work spans both sides of the deal: operational improvement and strategy formation for portfolio companies, plus sourcing new investments, developing investment theses, and supporting evaluation and due diligence across a range of industries.

Before NEP, Torgerson was President of Strategy, Marketing and Growth Operations at BT Global Services, the enterprise arm of BT Group, where he led teams across several industries and lived and worked internationally, including in London, São Paulo, and Buenos Aires. Earlier in his career he spent many years at Electronic Data Systems (EDS), where he was Senior Vice President of Service Delivery Operations & Engineering and held senior leadership roles spanning sales, marketing, engineering, operations, strategy, quality, and procurement.

At NEP, Torgerson has been described by the firm as an Operating Partner with more than 20 years of business services and technology strategy, marketing, and growth experience. He has worked hands-on with multiple NEP portfolio companies on their growth and strategic initiatives — including Marco, Bailiwick, and Avtex — and has served on portfolio company boards (notably Marco). His background is heavily weighted toward technology-enabled business services, reflecting the kinds of companies he tends to back and operate alongside.

• Invests through NEP's middle-market private equity strategy — growth equity, buyouts, and recapitalizations of profitable, growing companies, not early/seed startups.
• Core sectors: business services, technology services, consumer products/services, and industrial growth, with a personal lean toward technology-enabled business services given his operating background.
• Brings an operator's lens: focus on operational improvement, growth acceleration, strategy formation, sales/marketing scale-up, and value creation post-close.
• Looks for proven financial performance. In NEP's Bailiwick deal he highlighted that the company "has significantly grown EBITDA over the last several years; realized strong historical growth and developed diverse, longstanding customer relationships."
• On the Avtex investment he framed the thesis as backing a company that "has significantly grown over the last several years" and using the partnership to drive "a continuation and acceleration of growth in areas that provide … customers increasing value."