John D. Dionne Biography
John D. Dionne ’86, H’10
John D. Dionne is a Senior Advisor to Blackstone and a Senior Lecturer of Business Administration in the Finance Unit at the Harvard Business School. Additionally, he is the Managing Partner of Franconia Capital, a multi-family investment office focused on alternative investments.
He currently teaches "Private Equity Projects and Ecosystems," a highly popular elective course that partners students with leading private equity firms on value-added projects, as well as an eleven-session lecture series on the Private Equity ecosystems. Mr. Dionne has also taught in the "Venture Capital and Private Equity" course as well as in the Executive Education program.
Mr. Dionne serves on the board of directors of Caesars Entertainment, Cengage Learning, Clear Channel Outdoor, Momentive Performance Materials, Pelmorex Media and additional privately-held companies. Until he retired from his position as a Senior Managing Director of Blackstone in 2013, he was most recently its Global Head of the Private Equity Business Development and Investor Relations Groups, and also served as a member of its Global Private Equity Investment and Valuation Committees. During his tenure in this position, Mr. Dionne led global fundraising efforts of over $25 billion for three new private equity investment vehicles in the period immediately following the financial crisis.
Mr. Dionne originally joined Blackstone in 2004 as the Founder and Chief Investment Officer of the Blackstone Distressed Securities Fund, the firm's initial entry into the single-manager hedge fund business, with peak assets under management of over $2 billion. During this period, he also served on the Investment Committees of Blackstone’s GSO and Kalix investment businesses.
Before joining Blackstone, Mr. Dionne was for several years a Partner and Portfolio Manager for Bennett Restructuring Funds, a multi-billion dollar hedge fund specializing in financially troubled companies, during which time he also served on several official and ad-hoc creditor committees.
Previously, Mr. Dionne was a Partner at Saugatuck Capital where he invested in middle-market buyouts and restructured troubled portfolio companies. From 1991 through 1996, he was Director of Corporate Development for a predecessor of Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc. He began his career at Price Waterhouse as a public accountant.
Mr. Dionne has served on the board of directors of many companies and not-for-profit institutions. He is a Chartered Financial Analyst and Certified Public Accountant (inactive).
Mr. Dionne received academic honors while earning an MBA from the Harvard Business School and was a magna cum laude graduate from The University of Scranton, where he is a past Chair of its Board of Trustees. He and his wife Jacquelyn, a member of the class of 1989, have three children and reside in Westport, CT.