Board of Directors

Chairman of the Board, Gunnar Bjørkavåg, born 1960, is B. Sc. from BI, Norway, MBA from Henley Collecge/Oxford and AMP from Harvard Business School. Bjørkavåg is former CEO of Comma Dataservice, Managing Director of Telenor Plus and Country Manager of Compaq Computers.

Bjørkavåg has since year 2000 been CEO of NHST Media Group - owner of among others Dagens Næringsliv, a leading financial newspaper seated in Oslo.

Member, Nic Humphries is Chief Executive of HgCapital. He has 20 years experience of the private equity and venture capital industry, and joined HgCapital in 2001.  He was previously with Geocapital Partners, a TMT-focuwsed growth equity investor, where, as general partner, he founded its European business and, prior to that, was head of Barclays Private Equity’s IT and telecoms team. He started his career at 3i plc.

Humphries' investment experience has focused on the TMT sector.  His lead investments have included Visma, IRIS Software & CS Group plc, Rolfe & Nolan, Geneva Technology and NextGenTel. He co-led investments in Addison Software and SiTel Semiconductor. 
He was also involved in the flotations of Autologic plc and of Stepstone.com. Humphries holds a First Class degree in Electronic Engineering and was an IEEE and National Engineering Council Scholar.

Member, Mateusz (Mati) M. Szeszkowski, joined KKR in 2007. He has been directly involved with investments in Visma, Northgate and BMG and serves on the boards of Visma, Northgate, and Van Gansewinkel. Prior to joining KKR, Szeszkowski was a Vice President at Goldman Sachs in London in the Investment Banking Division where he was engaged in merger advisory and execution of financing transactions for TMT clients.

Prior to that, Szeszkowski was a Principal at Orange Ventures in London, Boston and San Francisco where he made venture capital investments in the TMT sector. He was also a consultant at The Boston Consulting Group. Szeszkowski holds a B.A. in Economics from the University of British Columbia and an M.B.A. from the Harvard Business School.

Member, Herald Y. Chen rejoined KKR in 2007, having previously worked for the Firm from 1995 to 1997, and has been directly involved with the investments in Kodak, Sun Microsystems, Kindercare Learning Centers and Walter Industries.  He is a member of the Technology industry team and serves on the boards of Kodak and Accel-KKR.

Prior to joining KKR, Chen was a Managing Director with Fox Paine & Company focusing on management buyouts including ACMI Corporation, where he also served as CEO.  Before joining Fox Paine, he was Chief Financial Officer and Co-Founder of Jamcracker, Inc., a software-as-a-service solutions company. Prior to completing his M.B.A, Chen was employed by KKR and Goldman, Sachs & Co.  He holds a B.S., cum laude, from The Wharton School, a B.S.E., cum laude, from the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, University of Pennsylvania, and an M.B.A. from Stanford University Graduate School of Business.

Member, Jacques Garaïalde has been a Partner and Managing
Director at Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. since 2003.
Prior to joining KKR & Co., Garaïalde was a partner at Carlyle, in charge of Europe Venture Partners Fund. From 1982 to 2000, Garaïalde worked at the Boston Consulting Group where he was the Managing Partner in charge of Belgium (1992-1995), then in charge of France and Belgium (1995-2000). Between 1979 and 1981, he held various positions at Esso France.

Garaïalde also serves as Chairman of PagesJaunes Group, Member of the Supervisory Board of Tarkett and a Director on the boards of Nexans, Société d’Investissement Familiale (SIF), Legrand, Médiannuaire Holding and Visma. Garaïalde received his MBA from INSEAD (Fontainebleau) and is a graduate of Ecole Polytechnique in Paris.