S. Gerard Benford is a Partner of Veronis Suhler Stevenson and a Managing Member of the General Partner of the Fund. He was actively involved in all aspects of each of the Equity Funds' investments from 1990 until September 2000 with particular emphasis on Birch Telecom, Triax Midwest Associates Triax Southeast Associates, Yellow Book USA, Rifkin & Associates, Solucient, User Friendly Phone Book and Hughes Broadcasting Partners. From September 2000 until July 2002 he provided part-time consulting services to the Equity Funds and in August 2002 he rejoined the Equity Funds on a full-time basis. He currently serves as a director of Pepcom, Solucient, Birch Telecommunications and User Friendly.
Prior to joining VSS, Mr. Benford served for several years as a director and chief financial officer of HiShear Industries, a New York Stock Exchange listed company. Before working for HiShear, Mr. Benford was the corporate vice president of Warner Communications, where he specialized in mergers, acquisitions, divestitures, and other corporate development activities. During his seventeen year career at Warner, Mr. Benford was involved in the acquisitions of Warner Brothers, Franklin Mint Corporation, The Garden State National Bank, numerous cable television businesses, the formation of the Warner-Amex cable joint-venture and many other Media-related businesses as well as the start-up phase of many new business enterprises. He was also responsible for overseeing and monitoring Warner's venture capital investment portfolio. In addition, Mr. Benford was involved in the divestiture of all of Warner's non-entertainment businesses, including Warner's interests in National Kinney Corporation, the Eastern Mountain Sports retail business, and Uris Buildings Corporation, a New York City commercial real estate business, which was sold to Olympia & York Ltd. Before joining Warner, he was a principal at Arthur Young & Company.
Mr. Benford holds a BBA from St. Francis College and is a Certified Public Accountant. Since 1964, he has been a member of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants.
