James Harpel (Co-chair)

James W. Harpel invests in and helps build small and medium sized companies on a private equity basis. He is the senior partner of Palm Beach Capital Partners, LLC, a firm that is engaged in private equity investments in small and medium sized companies. The firm is also involved in direct real estate transactions.

Mr. Harpel is also a founder and general partner of First Reserve Corporation, which acts as the general partner of a series of private equity funds totaling in excess of $12 billion, and which concentrates primarily in the energy and power industries. Among the leveraged buy-outs and private equity investments present and past that Mr. Harpel has been actively involved in are Progressive Employer Services, Insurance Technologies Inc., Maverick Tube Inc., Inter-Mountain Gas, and Congoleum Corp. In addition, Mr. Harpel is involved primarily as an individual in a series of ventures including Security First Corp. and Beanstalk Networks-a company of which he is both a founder and chairman. Beanstalk is a managed software developer, focusing on mortgage software.

For many years Mr. Harpel was involved in the marketable securities business and was the managing partner of Harpel Advisory Company, Inc., which was both a registered investment adviser and a hedge fund manager, and of Century Capital Corporation, a $2 billion registered investment adviser. Prior to that time, Mr. Harpel worked for investment banking firms and previously played a major operating role in the turnaround of an NYSE-listed manufacturing company.