Sedge Dienst, Partner
sedge@kcapartners.com
Sedge Dienst
is the co-founding Partner of KCA Partners, Ltd. Over KCA’s history of building platform companies, he has been in the CEO role for periods of time as necessary in companies across consumer products, plastic injection molding, and suppliers to industrial OEM manufacturing. He has taken active board roles in others, across a range of industries over the past 25 years. The firm’s focus on improving performance leads him to spend much of his time in portfolio companies helping build teams, optimize global supplier networks, and forging sales partnerships.
His early career was in consumer products marketing with Carnation Company and Nestle, and management consulting at Booz, Allen & Hamilton. He later became CEO of aerospace components manufacturer Western Sky Industries, for which he built an international base of customers in commercial and military aircraft and satellites.
He is a board member, and formerly Board President, of Episcopal Community Services of San Francisco, the innovative provider of homeless shelter, supportive housing, senior and family services, as one of the largest non-profit agencies in San Francisco. He is a former Trustee of World Affairs in San Francisco, a neutral forum for public education and discourse, and remains involved, as he does with a number of schools and non-profits on whose boards he has served. He holds a BS with honors in Agricultural and Managerial Economics from UC Davis, and an MBA with distinction from the Harvard Business School.
PJ Nora, Partner
pj@kcapartners.com
PJ Nora co-founded KCA in 1993 with Sedge Dienst. Mr. Nora focuses his efforts on strategy development, finance and acquisitions. Mr. Nora currently sits on the board of Equator Coffees and Teas, LLC, Memorang, Inc., Estate Cheese Group, LLC (Sonoma Creamery) and Silicon Valley Colocation, LLC. He is also a managing member of an affiliate of KCA Partners which makes non-control investments in a variety of private companies.
Prior to founding KCA, Mr. Nora held positions at Smith Barney Shearson and Drexel Burnham Lambert where he structured and negotiated transactions including exchange offers, pre-packaged bankruptcies and specialized M&A. Previously, Mr. Nora was a senior consultant with Arthur Anderson (now Accenture) in their financial industries group. He is a member of the board of directors of the DAPER Fund at Stanford University and the Advisory Board for the Nora Institute for Surgical Patient Safety.
Mr. Nora earned an MBA from the Harvard Business School and a BA in Human Biology from Stanford University.
