Lee building a deal infrastructure for venture capital

Brightwood Management Partners
Brightwood Management Partners
Vernon Lee Jr. is managing partner and co-chair of the VCAP for NAIC.

WASHINGTON -- Building large-scale technology companies requires an infrastructure of investment and professional support which has typically not been available to African-American innovators.

  Vernon Lee Jr.'s mission is to open those doors.

Lee is currently a co-chair of the Venture Capital Access Program (VCAP) which is a partnership between the National Association of Investment Companies (NAIC) and the Harvard Business School Alumni Angels of Greater New York (HBSAANY).  

He is among the 13th annual 50 Most Important African-Americans in Technology and discusses VCAP during a First in Venture Capital, Private Equity and Crowd Funding Salon during Innovation & Equity 2013: Keeping America First in Technology: Public Innovation & Supplier Diversity Jan. 15 at B. Smith Union Station in Washington, D.C. at 4 p.m. in the Colonnade Room.

Lee is a trusted business and investment advisor to several middle market companies, institutional investors, and entrepreneurs.  Areas of expertise include strategic partnerships, business operation improvement and new business development.  As Managing Partner of Brightwood Management Partners, LLC his business involvement also includes deals with partners based in China, Africa, and Middle East.

The U.S. Air Force served as a launchpad for his career.   Lee was an Air Force acquisition officer in the Satellite Communications Program Office and Aeronautical Systems Center where he provided program management, research & development and financial management expertise.

One of the objectives of Innovation & Equity is to help African-American technology suppliers to federal civilian and defense agencies make a transition to opportunities in such fields as finance, energy, technology manufacturing and health IT.

From the service, Lee moved to Price Waterhouse Coopers where he served as PwC’s relationship manager for minority venture capital and private equity initiatives. He was also responsible for leading the implementation of program management solutions and methodologies for PwC’s Global Risk Management Solutions - InfoComm group.  While in this position, Mr. Lee led the global deployment (U.S., UK, Japan, France, and Germany) of an Internet Protocol (IP) Virtual Private Network (VPN).

Prior to his current role, he was a partner with The Pembroke Group, LLC (TPG) and focused on due diligence efforts and maintained proprietary deal flow for the firm and the TPG SBI Broadband Fund. Other responsibilities included exploring development relationships with entertainment partners to best leverage new and existing content across telecom and new media platforms.

In college, he took a global approach to business, receiving his MA in International Affairs from University of Dayton and BBA in Management from Howard University.

Lee has previously served as the U.S. planning committee chair for the U.S./France Private Equity and Venture Capital Summit in Paris, France.  The U.S. delegation, representing over $500 billion (US) in assets under management included various institutional private equity investors. Event sponsors included The Senate of the Republic of France, The Greater Paris Investment Agency, and The French Venture Capital Association.

The venture capital leader was a member of a delegation of senior U.S. business leaders that participated in the Committee of 100’s Greater China business conference in Beijing. In addition, meetings were held with high level China business executives such as, Dr Gao Xiqing, Vice-Chairman, China Investment Corporation to explore potential deal opportunities.