Ray Leach is preparing to hand over the reins to JumpStart Inc., the Cleveland venture development organization he helped start two decades ago to address Northeast Ohio's declining economy, job losses and lack of entrepreneurial growth.
JumpStart recently hired Russell Reynolds Associates to conduct a national search to replace Leach, who "intends to join The Ohio Fund (TOF) as a co-founding partner once TOF's fundraising goals are achieved," the organization's board chair, Jeanne Coughlin, said on Thursday.
"Between now and then, Leach will continue to serve as JumpStart’s CEO, while supporting fundraising for TOF in an advisory capacity," Coughlin said.
The Ohio Fund has been described as an "Ohio-focused private analog to a sovereign wealth fund" by unnamed sources of Columbus Business First, a sibling publication of Cleveland Business Journal.
A sovereign wealth fund usually is a state-owned investment fund that provides benefits for a country's economy and citizens, according to Investopedia.
Mark Kvamme, the former JobsOhio chief who recently stepped away from operations at Columbus, Ohio-based venture capital firm Drive Capital LLC, "started early discussions with high-net-worth individuals and some institutional 'investors interested in the future economic vitality of Ohio'" last fall, a source told Columbus Business First.
Kvamme's application to trademark "The O.H.I.O Fund" says that the fund will look for "environmentally focused and/or social-impact-focused investments."
Because Kvamme and Leach are raising capital for the fund, they are legally prohibited from discussing their plans.
"Given his intent to join TOF, Leach and the JumpStart board of directors agreed to begin transitioning to new leadership at JumpStart, and the board has established an ad hoc committee to begin the process," Coughlin said.
Leach was named JumpStart's founding CEO in 2004, a year after the venture developer was formed by former technology organization NorTech and Case Western Reserve University, according to the Encyclopedia of Cleveland History.
Leach has helped build JumpStart "into a nationally recognized economic development success," Coughlin said.
Since 2010, the startups and small businesses served by JumpStart and its partners have had more than $10 billion in economic impact by creating jobs and generating tax revenues, Coughlin said.
JumpStart's board also "is excited about the potential for TOF to dramatically elevate the capacity of Northern Ohio’s entrepreneurship and innovation ecosystem," she said.
