Michelle Brauner
Principal
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- Full Name
- Michelle Brauner
- Title
- Principal, Ares Infrastructure Opportunities
- Firm
- Ares Management Corporation
- Firm Type
- Institutional alternative asset manager (infrastructure & energy private equity) — *not* an angel/seed investor
- Investment Stage
- Private-market infrastructure and energy investments (project equity, platform build-outs, portfolio-company/asset transactions) — institutional, not seed
- Check Size
- Institutional-scale infrastructure equity (Ares Infrastructure Opportunities has deployed ~$14B across 350+ assets); per-deal figures for her specifically are not publicly disclosed
- Sector Focus
- Energy transition, sustainable infrastructure, digital infrastructure, midstream and utilities/power
- Geographic Focus
- Primarily North America
- Location
- Boston, Massachusetts
Background
Michelle Brauner is a Principal within Ares Infrastructure Opportunities (formerly Ares Infrastructure and Power), the Ares Management platform focused on energy transition, sustainable and digital infrastructure, midstream and utilities. She is based in Ares's Boston office, and her contact number (781 area code) is consistent with that greater-Boston location.
Brauner joined Ares in 2015 as part of Ares's acquisition of Energy Investors Funds (EIF), a Boston-based power and energy infrastructure investment firm. At EIF she spent much of her career — reportedly from the mid-1990s through the mid-2010s — rising to Vice President, where she focused on managing portfolio assets, executing sale transactions, and evaluating project investment opportunities and financings. Earlier in her career she held roles connected to the power sector, including work associated with Gas Venture Advisers and the AES Corporation.
On the education side, she holds an ScB from Brown University (in mechanical engineering) and an MPPM (Master of Public and Private Management) from the Yale School of Management. That engineering-plus-management background is typical of infrastructure investors who underwrite the technical, contractual, and financial risk of power and energy projects.
Investment Thesis & Focus
- Invests through Ares Infrastructure Opportunities in real-asset infrastructure — energy transition, sustainable infrastructure, digital infrastructure, and midstream/utilities/power — rather than early-stage venture or angel deals.
- The broader Ares Infrastructure Opportunities platform has deployed roughly $14 billion across 350+ assets, with a team averaging ~22 years of experience — signaling a focus on operationally intensive, capital-heavy assets, not startup equity.
- Her personal skill set centers on asset management, project investment evaluation, financings, and sale/exit transactions, indicating she engages with the full lifecycle of an infrastructure asset (acquire, manage, optimize, divest).
- Emphasis on North American power and energy infrastructure, a direct continuation of the Energy Investors Funds franchise Ares absorbed.
Notable Investments
- No individual deal attributions to Michelle Brauner are publicly disclosed. Her work sits within Ares Infrastructure Opportunities' broader portfolio of energy-transition, power, midstream/utilities, and digital-infrastructure assets rather than named angel/venture investments. (Publicly attributable, dated portfolio companies could not be verified and are therefore omitted rather than guessed.)
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