David Nierenberg is the founder of The D3 Family Funds and our largest personal investor. All his liquid net worth, retirement funds, and children’s funds are invested in D3. He is a summa cum laude graduate of Yale College and a graduate of Yale Law School. He brings several complementary disciplines to the fund: lawyer, strategic management consultant, corporate director, and venture capitalist. After law school he worked seven years at Bain & Company, a large global consulting firm, where he was a partner. He has been a professional investor for 23 years, a decade as a venture capitalist with Trinity Ventures, and since the beginning of 1996 at D3. He has been a director of numerous companies and not-for-profit organizations. Currently, David serves on Washington State’s Governor’s Council of Economic Advisors; the Washington State Investment Board, which oversees $85 billion of public employee retirement funds; and is Vice Chair of Southwest Washington Medical Center, the principal not-for-profit hospital serving our community.
Henry Hooper joined D3 as our second employee of the general partner in 2001 after having been an investor with us from our inception. All his liquid net worth, retirement funds, and children’s funds are invested in D3. Henry and David have been friends since 1974. Henry majored with distinction in psychology at Yale, while lettering in two sports and singing with an a cappella singing group. In 1986 he earned a Yale MBA. He has 15 years of line management experience, mostly at TESSCO Technologies, a rapid growth distributor of telecommunications products, where he served in most functional and senior management positions. Like David, Henry is an experienced corporate director. He is currently on two non-profit boards of trustees: St. Mary's Academy (Portland, OR) and Cottonwood Gulch Foundation (Albuquerque, NM). Henry is responsible for administration and compliance at D3.
Cara Denver, our third general partner employee, joined D3 in 2002 after graduating from Yale with a degree in economics and a specialization in finance. She was a pitcher and four year letter winner on the women’s fast-pitch softball team, where she was named to the All Ivy League and All Ivy Academic teams for athletic and academic achievement among varsity athletes. Cara is a native of Vancouver, Washington. She returned here to pursue her career on the buy side of the investment business. She helps us find, research, and analyze new investment opportunities, as well as monitor existing investments. Cara currently holds our only public company board seat.
Peter Johnson joined D3 as our fourth general partner employee in 2007. Peter and David have known each other since working together at Bain & Company in London and Menlo Park between 1979-1983. Peter holds two Oxford and two Stanford degrees. After earning his MBA in 1983, Peter co-founded the LEK Consulting firm, where he spent the next decade, including a spell setting up the Paris office. Post LEK, Peter completed a doctorate and then helped get Oxford’s Said Business School off the ground in senior administrative roles while teaching undergraduates and MBAs. From 2000-4 he co-founded and ran a start up boutique, Cartezia, that specialized in digital technology; in parallel, while tenured, he was CFO and endowment CIO at Exeter College, Oxford. From 2004 he consulted part-time with us and a family office, and wrote his latest book Astute Competition. Peter helps us find and evaluate our new, and monitor our existing, investments.