Thirty years ago, a young Ph.D. student named Dr. Geoff Smart was grinding through his dissertation, deep in the data trenches with one of private equity’s heaviest hitters, KKR. Fast-forward to July 16, 2025, and the loop just closed. KKR’s Ascendant Fund has made a significant minority investment in ghSMART, the very firm that Dr. Geoff Smart built from that original research. That’s not just full circle. That’s legacy looping back like a masterstroke.
ghSMART isn’t your average advisory shop. This Chicago-based firm has been quietly advising the loudest boardrooms for three decades. No hype, no noise, just 30,000 leadership assessments, 5,000+ C-suite engagements, and a 98% client satisfaction rate. Their product is precision: CEO succession, board effectiveness, executive team optimization, measured, analyzed, delivered. And the kicker? It’s all built on a proprietary data engine with 17,000+ executive profiles and 9 million data points. No crystal balls, just real data that drives better leadership decisions.
This isn’t just about capital. KKR’s involvement, led by Chris Harrington through the Ascendant Fund, is strategic. It signals that the leadership advisory market isn’t niche anymore. It’s $50 billion deep and growing, because in a world drowning in AI hype and vision statements, execution lives and dies by the humans in charge. And ghSMART, led by CEO Jeff McLean and Founder Dr. Geoff Smart, has become the industry’s most trusted human performance partner.
Jeff McLean isn’t some recycled suit with buzzwords. He’s a Naval Academy grad, a fighter pilot turned White House Fellow turned CEO. He’s bringing elite operational rigor to a firm already obsessed with excellence. Add CFO Kevin Feinblum, Chief People Officer Barney Hamilton, Chief Product Officer Pundir, and Vice Chairman Randy Street, and you’ve got a leadership team that knows the terrain, because they built the damn map.
KKR didn’t just see a firm, they saw a category leader with no real peer. They also saw potential: expanding digital tools, AI-powered leadership analytics, and scaling access to ghSMART’s methodologies across sectors. And maybe most important, KKR’s investment will help scale employee ownership across ghSMART’s 173-strong team. That’s alignment money can’t always buy.
