Kenneth Chenault

Kenneth Chenault currently serves as the chairman and managing director of General Catalyst, an American venture capital firm headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts. While his official title involves him overseeing all business operations, Chenault believes that his actual purpose is to invest in positive change and “do good things in the world.”

And there’s no better place to see this than in his work, both previous and current. Before leading General Catalyst, Chenault was the CEO of American Express, where his 30-year career started by seeing the company revenue grow from $150M to $500M. As vice-chairman of the company in 1995, he showed compassion by insisting that the 16,000 employees they had to lay off were given 18 months of notice beforehand.

Chenault was always present with his staff in different ways, going as far as to travel to different Amdx offices to hold brown-bag lunches with his employees. He was known to respond personally to any question sent his way and mentor his employees himself. He also served on multiple boards and numerous non-profit organizations and has even spoken out about the faults of the previous American administration. 

Today, as a leader in the venture capital industry, Chenault has led General Catalyst in various social causes, such as revolutionizing diabetes management via an AI-powered feedback loop solution between its service, the patient and its healthcare team. The company has also helped launch multiple businesses, like Airbnb, HubSpot, and GitLab.

Chenault started his career at Goldman Sachs and earned his M.B.A. from Harvard. During his free time, Chenault works on his golf game. As an amateur boxer, he is also a junior board member of Haymakers for Hope, a boxing charity that organizes events to raise cancer research funds.