David Chandler entered the private equity business upon joining William Blair & Company from Morgan Stanley’s Investment Banking Division in 1987. At William Blair, he partnered with other team members to build the firm’s merchant banking capabilities, which were ultimately known as William Blair Capital Partners. Prior to graduate school, David was an analyst in the Mergers and Acquisitions Group at The First Boston Corp. (Credit Suisse) from 1980 to 1982.  

 

While at William Blair, David and his colleagues raised, invested and managed four private equity funds totaling $934 million in committed capital over a 17-year period. In 2004, the team leading William Blair Capital Partners established Chicago Growth Partners to pursue its growth-oriented buyout strategy on an independent basis. Since 2004, David has served as Managing Partner and Co-Founder of CGP.  In 2015, David and several other CGP team members established ParkerGale Capital, a private equity firm focused exclusively on investing in small, profitable, founder-owned technology services businesses. 

 

Over the past 30 years, David has served as a board member of more than 25 privately held companies, primarily in the education, healthcare and technology services markets. 

 

David received his MBA from the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College in 1984 and a BA in History from Princeton University in 1980.  

 

He is currently Immediate Past Board Chair of The Golden Apple Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to recruiting, developing, supporting and recognizing teachers and teaching excellence in schools of need throughout Illinois. He is also a board and executive committee member of the Academy for Urban School Leadership (AUSL) a Chicago non-profit organization that creates schools of excellence by developing highly effective teachers and transforming education outcomes in Chicago’s lowest performing schools.  AUSL manages 31 Chicago Public Schools serving nearly 18,000 students.  

 

David and his wife have four children and live in the Chicago suburbs