Leader named for new health care investment association

HCPEA is designed to be primary resource, advocate for 40 corporate members and their privately held health care businesses.

Karen Kajmo is the new executive director of the Healthcare Private Equity Association, a group setting out to support members of the growing health care private equity industry. 

She joins the group, which she helped organize earlier this year, from the Harvard Business School Health Industry Alumni Association, where she retains the position of executive director. 

Kajmo said she first learned of the new trade group in November 2009, at a Boston event held by the alumni association. There she spoke with HCPEA founder and President Brian Miller after a few years of “[knowing] him through email and reputation.”

Kajmo, who earned a master’s degree in  information systems from Boston University’s School of Management, said HCPEA was formed to act as a networking forum and means of support for its 40 members, which include private equity firms such as industry giants TPG Capital, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. and Bain Capital. Kajmo said all members are significantly engaged in health care private equity and leveraged buyouts and typically have a minimum of three health care-related companies in their portfolios.

“[One of our goals is to] increase awareness that private equity is a vital and positive component of our health care economy, and an attractive area for investment,” she said. “The more investors appreciate and understand this, the more they will, in turn, invest in these firms or companies.”

She said another goal of the group is to serve as an education resource for the industry. Currently, HCPEA is managed virtually, with no central office and with Boston-based Kajmo as its only staffer.

Earlier, Kajmo had been director of Worldwide Technical Marketing for IBM and had also been a management consultant for PricewaterhouseCoopers. 

“This is a really good fit for me,” she said. “Being a consultant has really prepared me for working off site, managing clients [and] managing client expectations.”