Kenneth A. Hersh is chairman of his family investment office, HFI Capital Management, which invests across the economy with an emphasis on the industrial, financial, energy, real estate and technology sectors.
From 2016 to 2025, he served as President and CEO of the George W. Bush Presidential Center, a Dallas based non-partisan institution which houses the George W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum and the George W. Bush Institute. Under his leadership, the Bush Center implemented its long-term strategic plan, enhanced the influence and reach of the Bush Institute, expanded its public programming, assumed operations of the Bush Museum from the National Archives, and ensured long-term sustainability by increasing its endowment seven-fold to over $420 million. He remains on the Bush Center’s Board of Directors. In 2025, he received D CEO magazine’s highest honor, its Corporate Citizenship Legacy Award for his civic leadership.
He made his mark in the private sector dating back to 1988 as the Co-Founder and CEO of NGP Energy Capital Management, one of the nation’s largest natural resources private equity investment firms, which pioneered private equity investing in the sector. The firm has managed over $20.0 billion of cumulative committed capital since inception. Under his leadership from 1988 until 2016, NGP invested over $12 billion and achieved a 27-year annual rate of return of 30%, making it one of the nation’s leading investment firms. In 2023, the Oil and Gas Investor magazine inducted him into its Hart Energy Hall of Fame as one of the top 50 “who have shaped energy over the last half century.”
During 2012 through 2023, he was a Strategic Advisor to the Carlyle Group where he served at different times on the firm’s Management Committee and investment committees of its natural resources platforms.
Among other recognition, in 2024 he was inducted into the Horatio Alger Association of Distinguished Americans honoring his perseverance and achievement. In 2023, he received the Ernest C. Arbuckle Award — Stanford’s Graduate School of Business highest honor recognizing excellence in management leadership.
Ken is also involved in the nonprofit arena personally and through the efforts of the Hersh Foundation. He sits on the boards of the Global War on Terrorism Memorial Foundation, the Texas Rangers Baseball Club, and numerous other civic organizations. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
In addition, Ken serves on the Executive Committee of Hoover Institution’s Board of Overseers and the Dean’s Advisory Council of Stanford’s Graduate School of Business.
In 2023, he became the inaugural Distinguished Executive in Residence at SMU’s Cox School of Business. In 2023, he released his book, The Fastest Tortoise: Winning in Industries I Knew Nothing About, which chronicles his life’s lessons evolving from his many business and personal experiences.
Ken began his career at Morgan Stanley & Co. where he was a member of the firm’s energy investment banking group. He graduated Princeton University, magna cum laude, with a degree in Politics in 1985. In 1989, he earned his M.B.A. from Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business, graduating as an Arjay Miller Scholar.