Robert E Grady

Business career

Grady is currently a Partner at Gryphon Investors, a middle-market private equity fund. Prior to joining Gryphon, he was a partner for five years at the private equity fund-of-funds Cheyenne Capital. For nearly a decade before that, he was a prominent partner at the Carlyle Group, the world’s second largest private equity firm, where he served as Managing Director, member of the Management Committee, and head of Venture and Growth Capital. During his tenure at Carlyle, Grady also served for six years as a director and as Chairman (2006 to 2007) of the National Venture Capital Association (“NVCA”), which represents more than 400 U.S. venture capital firms. He was a director of several Carlyle companies, including Blackboard Inc. (which came public, then was sold to Providence Equity), AuthenTec (which came public, then was sold to Apple Inc.), Wall Street Institute (sold to Pearson PLC), Ingenio (sold to AT&T), USBX (sold to Imperial Capital), Secure Elements (sold to Fortinet), eScreen (sold to Alere), and Viator (sold to Trip Advisor).

In the 1990s, Grady was a Managing Director and member of the Management Committee at Robertson Stephens, an investment bank focused on growth companies in technology and healthcare, that was acquired by Bank of America and subsequently by BankBoston (which itself was acquired by Fleet and then Bank of America).

Today, Grady is a director of companies Maxim Integrated Products, one of the world’s leading producers of analog semiconductors; Stifel Financial, a major brokerage and asset management firm which acquired Thomas Weisel Partners Group in 2010; and the Jackson Hole Mountain Resort.

Personal background

Robert Grady grew up in Livingston, New Jersey and graduated with honors from Harvard University where he was an editor of The Harvard Crimson and a student leader in the movement to get Harvard to divest from apartheid-era South Africa. Grady continued his advocacy of the divestment cause in advising the former Governor of New Jersey, Thomas Kean, to sign a bill requiring New Jersey’s pension fund to divest stocks of companies doing business in South Africa. This led the New York Times, in a profile of the then 27-year-old speechwriter, to comment that Grady was a “wordsmith who drew from his own deep well” in crafting a speech “ringing with conviction” that not only echoed Kean’s sentiments but represented his own “declaration of faith” on the issue of divestment. Grady earned a Master of Business Administration from the Stanford Graduate School of Business, where he later served as a faculty member and lecturer on public management from 1994–2004. A venture capital industry leader and growth company expert, he has published numerous articles and appeared in the Wall Street Journal, TIME magazine, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Chronicle and others. He is described in Jeffrey Birnbaum’s The Money Men as a “highly successful” investment banker. Grady is a frequent and popular commentator, appearing on ABC’s Nightline, CNBC’s Squawk Box and Street Signs, the CBS Evening News, CNN’s Crossfire and Moneyline, PBS, Fox Business News and other major media outlets. as a spokesman for growth-oriented economic policies, market-based environmental regulation, and generally conservative fiscal positions.

In the non-profit world, Grady serves on the board of the St. John's Hospital Foundation in his home of Jackson, Wyoming, the Investment Committee of the Community Foundation of Jackson Hole, and the Steering Committee of the Wyoming Business Alliance. He was a long-time trustee of the Jackson Hole Land Trust and the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), was on the Board of Governors of the Pardee RAND Graduate School and the International Advisory Board of the Harvard Center for Environmental Economics, and was Chairman of the Board of Resources for the Future (“RFF”). He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Political background

Grady began his career as legislative assistant and then chief of staff for the late New Jersey Congresswoman Millicent Fenwick. He went on to serve as communications director for former New Jersey Governor Thomas Kean. Grady was a speechwriter and policy adviser for George H.W. Bush during the 1988 Presidential campaign, and served in the White House for Bush as Associate Director of the Office of Management and Budget (“OMB”) for Natural Resources, Energy and Science (1989–1991); Executive Associate Director of OMB; and as Deputy Assistant to the President (1991–1993). He was widely known for advising Bush in the crafting of the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990, and helping to shepherd that legislation through Congress.

Since then, Grady has served as a part-time adviser to a number of political figures. In 2001, President George W. Bush appointed Grady to be a member of the Advisory Committee on Trade and Policy Negotiations (ACTPN) and he was appointed by the Administrator of NASA during the George W. Bush administration to be a member of the NASA Advisory Council’s Task Force on the Cost and Management of the International Space Station.

Noted early on by Newsweek as “one of three thirty-somethings to watch” (along with Condoleezza Rice and Robert Zoellick) and as OMB Director Richard Darman’s “polished No. 2” in George H.W. Bush’s White House, Grady has emerged in recent years as an adviser to various leading Republican candidates and public officials. He served as co-chairman of George W. Bush’s campaign in California in both 2000 and 2004, and as an architect of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s environmental and economic policies during the 2003 California gubernatorial recall election and member of Schwarzenegger’s transition team. He has also been increasingly active in Wyoming, as a frequent speaker, mentor to start-up companies, and as a member of the Steering Committee of the Wyoming Business Alliance.

Christie Administration

Grady has been cited in numerous press accounts as a close advisor to New Jersey Governor Chris Christie. Grady served as co-chairman and member of the Transition Task Force on Budget and Taxes immediately after Governor Christie's election to the Governorship in 2009. Press reports have also cited Grady as the author of Governor Christie's Inaugural Addresses and his annual state-of-the-state budget addresses to Joint Sessions of the New Jersey Legislature. Grady has been cited as assisting Governor Christie in organizing trips to Mexico and Canada, and as the author of detailed policy speeches on trade and energy Christie has given on those visits.

For almost five years, Grady chaired the New Jersey State Investment Council, which oversees the state's $80 billion pension plan. The state's Treasurer, Andrew Eristoff, praised Grady for posting gains over the four years from FY 2011-2014 of over $36 billion, some $13 billion above the pension fund's actuarily-assumed rate of return. Grady stepped down from the position after the Council's last 2014 meeting on November 19, 2014, and after four and one-half years of volunteer service.