JDP Leadership

PORTFOLIO MANAGER | I launched JDP in October 2011 with personal capital and the backing of two families. A fascination with business goes as far back as I can remember, but it wasn’t until my early 20s that I discovered a passion for value investing. JDP began as a fundless private equity sponsor focused on orphaned corporate divestitures during the economic crisis.

Later JDP evolved to a hedge fund making passive investments because the quality of ideas in the public universe was so much better, especially with a multi-year time horizon. 

My journey to becoming a money manager was non-traditional; I did not work on Wall Street or for another fund prior to launching JDP.  I spent the first decade of my career in the electronic home security and energy management industries—first at Honeywell, and then at a start-up called Secure Wireless that was sold to a subsidiary of Thomas H. Lee Partners. Before that I was a co-founder of Energy Eye, a company that made hotel energy management equipment that was sold to French public company.

Today JDP is a vehicle for like-minded families to invest alongside our firm’s capital in a co-mingled structure where incentives are uniquely aligned.

After high school I joined the US Air Force Academy to become a fighter pilot. But later when medical complications would not let me fly I transferred to the University of Colorado where I reconnected with my passion for capital markets and investing. My finance career began in 2007 at Merrill Lynch where I spent four years on both an Institutional Investor Ranked research team, and in investment banking.

From 2011 to 2015 I worked at Citi as a transportation sell-side analyst.  The experience exposed me to a wide variety of investment managers who were our clients. This birds-eye view was fortunate because I was able to observe many different strategies and the drivers of market inefficiencies. I was also fortunate enough to work with some of the largest value funds which took large, concentrated positions in undervalued companies they wanted to own for many years. Approaching stocks like private investing resonated with me led to pursuing a transition to investment management.