Join the Polsky Center and Career Services for a workshop featuring Chicago Booth Adjunct Professor of Entrepreneurship and Polsky Center Investor-in-Residence (IIR), Chris McGowan. Chris will discuss the process of interviewing for roles in private equity as a career changer. He will explore how best to present your background, your career interests, and your story when making the transition into PE. Even if you don’t have direct experience in PE, you can still demonstrate transferrable skills and talk about steps you have taken to make the transition.

Chris is the general partner of CJM Ventures (CJMV), a Chicago growth equity and private equity investment firm…… McGowan’s private equity career began 26 years ago with AEA Investors in New York City, after earning an undergraduate degree in theoretical mathematics from Columbia University’s College of Arts and Sciences, and following two years of mergers and acquisitions training at Morgan Stanley. After completing an MBA at Harvard Business School, he joined Madison Dearborn Partners (MDP), where he co-headed their basic industries practice for the last five years of his 12-year career there. At MDP, he oversaw more than $2 billion of equity investments focused on buyouts and growth equity globally in the industrial, consumer, and energy and power sectors. In 2011, with the help of MDP leadership and mentors, McGowan formed CJMV, an investment firm focused on buyouts and growth equity investments in companies located near Chicago and London. McGowan is an active angel investor and currently serves as chairman of the limited partner advisory committee for Hyde Park Venture Partners Fund I (and a member of Fund II and Fund III’s boards), on the board of directors and portfolio advisory board of Hyde Park Angels, and as chairman of the advisory board for Valley Growth Ventures.