Murray Hennessy is Chief Executive Officer at Great Wolf Resorts Inc., an affiliate of Blackstone Group LP. Murray and our management team are focused on accelerating the growth of the Great Wolf Lodge brand and expanding into new markets throughout the United States and the world.

Murray Hennessy has worked extensively in customer-facing industries and has significant experience with online businesses. Murray was the former CEO of buy.com UK, an online retailer of technology products, which was acquired by the John Lewis Partnership in 2001. Between 2001 and 2004, he was the commercial director of John Lewis Department Stores where he pioneered the store’s online presence, johnlewis.com. Following this, from 2004 to 2008, Murray was the CEO of Avis Europe plc.  From 2008 until 2014 he was the CEO of thetrainline.com, the online train ticket retailer.

His previous experience includes executive appointments with Tricon Global restaurants (now Yum Brands), initially as CFO for Europe and latterly as VP and General Manager for Europe.  He also spent five years with Bain and Company as a management consultant.

Murray holds an MBA from Harvard Business School, a BA from Williams College in Massachusetts and a diploma from L’Institut d’études de Paris.

Steve King has led successful corporate expansion initiativesthroughout his career. He is Chairman of Kennet IV portfoliocompanies Nuxeo and ThinkHR, and served as CEO of KennetIII portfolio company Recommind before its sale to OpenTextin 2016. Previously, he served as President and CEO of DocuSign and prior to that as President and CEO of ZANTAZuntil its acquisition by Autonomy Group. Steve also heldexecutive positions at E*TRADE, helping increase revenuesfrom $100 million to over $1 billion. A recipient of the Ernst& Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award, Steve holds a B.S.in business administration and an M.B.A. from Thomas EdisonState University where he serves on the board of the TESUFoundation.

Ben Barokas is an Entrepreneur and Angel Investor in high growth technology companies developing, transforming, and disrupting global business models.

Until recently, Ben was General Manager of Google’s Global Marketplace Development team. Prior to Google, Ben was the founding CEO of Admeld. As at June 2014, this was Google’s 10th largest acquisition. Prior to the Admeld/Google transaction, Ben ran business, sales and operation globally.

Before founding Admeld, Ben was Vice President, Advertising at JumpTV, where he created a multi-cultural IPTV video ad network. He also spent 6 years at AOL running ad product development and operations for AOL’s audience advertising business.

Bob Tennant is the former CEO of Recommind (a Kennet III portfolio company), a high growth provider of predictive information management software.

Bob was the only investor in Recommind prior to Kennet and has been CEO from the early formation of the business in 2001. Prior to Recommind, Bob was the co-founder and CEO of Beduin Communication, a developer of web browsers for smart phones that was acquired by Sun Microsystems in 1998. At Sun, he held senior positions in the Java Software division, where he led the marketing of the Java platform into consumer electronics. Bob is a board member of several young companies and a graduate of the University of Victoria, the University of California at Berkeley, and Columbia University, from which he has an MBA.

Michael Laven was the Chairman of FRS Global (a Kennet II portfolio company) which was acquired by Wolters Kluwer in September 2010. Most recently he became the CEO of The Currency Cloud, a London based start-up whose mission is to transform the world of cross-border payments.

Michael has had an extensive career in building and leading successful venture-backed software companies in Silicon Valley and London. For seven years he was the COO of Traiana, a financial network company, based in San Francisco and London. Traiana was backed by Sequoia and acquired by ICAP, a UK brokerage, in 2008. He has been the CEO of venture backed companies in London (Iris Financial, KWI) and Silicon Valley (Cohera, Infinity Financial & Coronet).

Michael has also assisted a number of technology companies as a Board member or Advisor including Almonde (Paris), EasySoft (Lisbon) & and Fog City Capital (San Francisco).

In his early career, Michael spent six years in Asia working for the United Nations and aid organizations. He has a B.A. in Anthropology from Wesleyan University, a M.A. in International Affairs from The School for International Training and a M.Ed. from Harvard University.

Kevin Hickey is the CEO at Beyond Trust, a provider of powerful Privileged Account Management & Vulnerability Management Software Solutions.

Kevin has a history of successful software exits with an emphasis on sales and marketing leadership and operations. Kevin joined BeyondTrust by way of the company’s acquisition of eEye Digital Security, where he served as CEO and Chairman. Prior to joining eEye, Kevin was CEO of NetPro (a Kennet II Portfolio company), a leading vendor of Microsoft infrastructure optimization software. NetPro had struggled for a number of years in the $5 million revenue range. Kevin along with his team of executives assumed leadership of NetPro and grew revenues to $30 million, prior to selling the company to Quest Software for $79 million in 2008. Kennet’s investment in 2005 was part of a shareholder recapitalization and the team achieved the exit to Quest without raising outside capital. Kevin also served as the president and CEO of Homebid.com, where he secured funding and eventually sold the business to industry leader HomeStore.com. Earlier, Kevin spent seven years as president and COO at Viasoft, where he led the company through a successful initial public offering prior to its sale. Kevin started his IT career at IBM, serving in several key marketing and executive business management roles. Kevin has a BSc from Niagara University.