Distinguished Alumni Award - Business & Finance

Gustav H. Koven III ’65

Gus Koven ’65 has spent almost 30 years in the venture capital and corporate development communities. He has held high-level positions with investment firms and has extensive knowledge of strategic investments and acquisitions in the technology industries. Today, he is a founding partner and managing director of Brown Savano Direct Capital Partners.  In founding the company, Koven also pioneered a new kind of investment fund: The fund provides partial liquidity and asset diversification to individual shareholders in market-leading venture capital backed private companies. The partial liquidity is provided to company founders, angels, active or departed employees.

One look at his resume hammers home his impact on the investment world. For 10 years he was a partner in a number of Edison Venture Fund partnerships, and prior to that he was the president of Chase Manhattan Capital Corp. and Chase Manhattan Investment Holdings. Since 1999 he has served on the board of Authentec, a company that was purchased by Apple in 2012.

He remains nostalgic about Castle Point, a place even more special to him given his family legacy as three other Koven men are Stevens alumni, including his father, Gus Koven Jr. ’31.