Yale School of Management - Alumni Leaders

"My years at Yale SOM provided an essential foundation both for my business career and for my nonprofit interests. In our firm, we are constantly seeking companies where value is not easily recognized by others, and then collaborating with the operating managers to build their businesses. At Yale, I learned a set of approaches to thinking about complex business, management and financing problems that I rely on every day. Equally valuable to me, Yale SOM helped encourage a conviction that contributing to society is an important complement to business accomplishment, and provided the groundwork for a number of not-for-profit involvements that have been wonderfully rewarding."

Michael Eisenson is the chief executive officer of Charlesbank Capital Partners, a Boston-based private equity firm making investments in established middle-market and growth companies as well as US real estate. Prior to co-founding Charlesbank in July 1998, Michael was the president of Harvard Private Capital Group, the private equity and real estate investment unit of Harvard Management Company. Before joining Harvard Management in 1986, Michael was with The Boston Consulting Group, a corporate-strategy consulting firm.

Charlesbank currently manages over $2 billion in assets for more than forty institutional investors. Michael is actively involved in the firm’s private equity investment activity and also chairs the investment committee for the real estate group. To date, Charlesbank’s private equity team has invested more than $2 billion in companies across a variety of industries. Michael serves on the boards of several public and private portfolio companies.

He is a member of the board of trustees of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, the Berklee College of Music and a founding member of Horizons for Homeless Children, a non-profit organization serving the needs of homeless children in Boston. Michael is a summa cum laude graduate of Williams College, with a BA in economics. He also holds an MBA from the Yale School of Management and a JD from Yale Law.