Mr. Karangelen has more than 35 years of experience across private equity, private lending, corporate finance, investment banking and board governance with leading global institutions. He has co-founded and led private equity and lending platforms, held senior operating roles and advised many companies as an active board member. His private equity career spans more than three decades and includes platform acquisitions, corporate carve-outs, multi-year build-ups, operational transformations, distressed-to-control strategies and secondary strategic equity investments. Over his career, he has executed transactions across the business services, consumer, manufacturing, retail, communications/media and financial services sectors.

Prior to joining Star Mountain, Mr. Karangelen served as CEO of Investindustrial North America, where he built and led the firm’s U.S. investment business from inception. He recruited and developed a fully integrated organization encompassing investment professionals, portfolio support, investor relations and back-office functions. He architected and executed the firm’s U.S. strategy, overseeing platform acquisitions, add-on investments and cross-border transactions. As a member of Investindustrial’s global Investment Committee, he participated in the oversight of approximately $11 billion of assets under management, working with investors across the U.S., Europe and Asia. He also supported Investindustrial’s European portfolio companies as they expanded into the U.S., driving growth through add-on acquisitions, organic initiatives, strategic partnerships and the development of U.S.-based operating teams.

Prior to Investindustrial, Mr. Karangelen was a Managing Director at TowerBrook Capital Partners, where he focused on middle-market control and structured minority private equity investments within a global private equity platform managing approximately $9 billion of assets under management. Earlier, he was a Partner at Brera Capital Partners, founded by the former President of Clayton, Dubilier & Rice, and a member of the team that, in 1999, raised what was, at the time, one of the largest first-time private equity funds. He also served as a senior investor at Stolberg Partners, a lower middle-market investment firm, where he led control private equity investments and multi-year build-up strategies in founder and family-owned businesses. Across these firms, he has executed more than twenty platform investments and value-creation-driven add-on acquisitions.

Mr. Karangelen also brings substantial operating experience. He served as interim Chief Financial Officer and co-founder of Ladder Capital (NYSE: LADR), a commercial real estate lending and finance company with approximately $1.5 billion in market capitalization. He previously served as Chief Financial Officer of GAB Robins, a business services company with approximately $500 million in annual revenues, and as Head of Business Development at Eschelon Telecom, a communications services company. At Eschelon, he led the sourcing, execution and integration of multiple add-on acquisitions and helped create meaningful value, scaling the company into a larger communications enterprise which resulted in a successful sale to a large financial sponsor.

Earlier in his career, Mr. Karangelen was an investment banker at Goldman Sachs in New York and S.G. Warburg in London, advising clients on mergers and acquisitions and corporate finance transactions.

In addition to his professional career, Mr. Karangelen has been deeply involved in volunteer leadership and philanthropy. He has been an active Cornell University alumnus for more than 35 years and has served as a Trustee (now emeritus) of the Student Agencies Foundation since 1988, including 12 years as its President. The foundation owns Student Agencies, Inc., the oldest student-run company in the United States, founded in 1894. He founded, designed and led the capital campaign for the Cornell eLab Accelerator, supporting student entrepreneurship. He is a member of the Advisory Board of the Stanford Center on Longevity and was one of the initial Trustees of The Bedford Playhouse, serving during the period in which the board conceived, designed, constructed and raised capital for the creation of the theater as a cultural and community institution. He has also served as a Trustee of Public Prep, a network of public charter schools.