IVCA Feature: New Member Profile of Gresham Partners

Throughout 2026, new member participants in the Illinois Venture Capital Association (IVCA) will keep it expanding. These new members also will give the current membership new opportunities for networking … in addition to optimizing advocacy and partnerships … which leads to guidance and new ideas for Venture Capital, Private Equity and the support industries.

The latest new member is investment management firm Gresham Partners, with services to maximize opportunities, and a commitment to anticipatory service which aims to deliver the highest levels of oversight, accountability and personalized attention.

The following is a Q&A profile with Gresham Partners, which explores the firm’s background and their expectations for interacting with the IVCA.

New Member: Gresham Partners
Representative: Leisa Storbeck, Partner & Chief Client Officer

IVCA: What is a brief history of and background of Gresham Partners?

Gresham Partners: Gresham Partners was founded in Chicago in 1997 and was purpose-built to serve ultra-high-net-worth families, many of whom were first-generation wealth creators. Approximately 25% of our clients are or were professional investors, primarily in the Private Equity, Venture Capital or other private investment field.
 
From the beginning, the firm recognized that families with significant, complex wealth needed more than investment management alone. They needed an advisor that could integrate investing, wealth planning and family office services around the family's broader goals and circumstances. Those capabilities have remained Gresham's sole business since its founding.

Nearly 30 years later, the basic principles on which Gresham was founded remain largely unchanged. We have grown organically, without acquisitions, and remain independent and 100% employee-owned, with no outside investors or Private Equity ownership. Ownership transitions internally among active professionals, a structure intended to preserve our independence and keep the firm focused on the families we serve.

Today, Gresham serves a select group of ultra-high-net-worth families across the country, bringing together investment management, sophisticated wealth planning and family office capabilities within an integrated advisory relationship. As of June 30, 2026, Gresham managed nearly $15 billion for over 125 client families.

IVCA: Why did the firm decide to join the Illinois Venture Capital Association?

Gresham: We joined IVCA because there is a natural connection between its community and the families Gresham has served for nearly 30 years. Many of our clients are entrepreneurs, business owners and professional investors who have spent their careers creating value and building significant wealth.

As a Chicago-based firm, we wanted to be more engaged in the local venture capital and private equity community. IVCA gives us the opportunity to build relationships, learn from its members and share insights drawn from our experience advising professional investors and wealth creators. We hope to contribute useful perspectives while becoming more closely connected to the people shaping Chicago’s business and investment community.

IVCA: As an Investment and wealth management Firm, what options are you offering your clients for maximizing their holdings and opportunities?

Gresham: Our objective is to help families maximize long-term, after-tax wealth, not simply investment returns. We begin with the family's full balance sheet, including operating businesses, concentrated stock positions and investments. We then build a portfolio around the family's objectives, liquidity needs, tax circumstances and existing exposures, with each investment intended to serve a defined role in the overall portfolio. Gresham's portfolio construction framework considers Growth, Risk Reduction and Economic Hedges, allowing investments to be evaluated by the purpose they serve rather than simply by traditional asset-class labels which are often used as a means of selling additional products.

In public equities, we combine a tax-managed core with actively managed “satellites,” bringing together two complementary sources of value: tax efficiency and investment skill. The core provides broad market exposure while seeking to generate tax losses that can offset gains elsewhere in the family's portfolio. Active strategies are used selectively where we believe differentiated managers and concentrated investment approaches provide attractive opportunities to generate excess returns. The objective is to preserve more of the value created by those investments after taxes.

IVCA: What about private investing?

Gresham: We complement public markets with private investments, including Private Equity, Venture Capital, and real assets for families and investing entities with the appropriate time horizon and liquidity. An important part of our approach is access: Gresham's Access Vehicles allow clients to invest collectively with highly selective, capacity-constrained managers whose strategies may not be widely available.

Tax efficiency also extends beyond individual investments to where assets are held across the family’s balance sheet. Different pools of capital, including personal accounts, dynasty trusts and charitable assets, can have different tax characteristics, investment horizons and liquidity needs. We consider those differences when determining where investments are most effectively located, while coordinating with the family’s estate planning and tax advisors so that portfolio decisions support broader wealth-transfer, charitable and tax objectives. The goal is to optimize not only what the family owns, but how those assets work together to preserve and compound wealth across generations.

Ultimately, we are not trying to maximize any single investment. We are seeking to maximize the effectiveness of the family’s entire balance sheet, coordinating investment opportunity, tax efficiency, liquidity and risk to compound wealth over generations.

IVCA: The firm has four areas of expertise ... Investment Management, Wealth Management, Family Office Services and Trust Solutions ... what are the common purposes within those areas?

Gresham: The common purpose across all four areas is to help families make thoughtful, coordinated decisions about their wealth. Significant wealth creates interconnected responsibilities, and decisions about investments, taxes, estate planning, liquidity, philanthropy, trusts and family needs are most effective when they are considered together rather than in isolation.

Each area contributes a different piece of that picture. Investment Management puts capital to work in portfolios aligned with the family's objectives. Wealth Management connects those resources to the family's broader priorities, including wealth transfer, tax considerations, philanthropy and family needs. Family Office Services helps execute and administer the plan through areas such as cash and liquidity coordination, private investment administration, reporting and coordination with outside providers. Trust Solutions helps families address fiduciary selection and trust administration while coordinating those responsibilities with the family's broader wealth strategy.

IVCA: How do the different categories exist to help the other categories?

Gresham: The value comes from how those capabilities work together. Consider a family preparing to sell a business. Before the transaction, wealth planning can identify potential wealth-transfer and philanthropic strategies in coordination with the family's legal and tax advisors. Investment planning can consider how the anticipated proceeds, continuing business exposure, spending needs and taxes affect the family's portfolio and liquidity needs. Family Office Services can help coordinate the financial and administrative details, while trust considerations can be incorporated where appropriate.

Our client service team brings these disciplines together. We coordinate Gresham's specialists and the family’s outside advisors, help establish priorities, and follow decisions through implementation. The result is not four separate services, but one coordinated approach that helps the family move from advice to action and adapt the plan as its circumstances evolve.

IVCA: With wealth an issue in every family, how do you transaction the different priorities of different people in those families, to keep to a minimum the conflicts of interests and needs?

Gresham: We begin by understanding what wealth means to the people involved. Family members may share core values while having different spending needs, ambitions, responsibilities and comfort with investment risk. Recognizing those differences creates a constructive basis for planning.

Family meetings and education help people articulate intentions and understand their choices. Wealth-transfer policies and letters of wishes can clarify expectations. Education for the rising generation may range from financial literacy and investment principles to preparation for managing family wealth.

Those conversations inform financial arrangements. Assets supporting a parent’s spending may warrant a different portfolio from a trust for grandchildren or a charitable entity. We consider each pool’s purpose, tax characteristics and liquidity needs while coordinating exposures and obligations across the family. The goal is to support informed choices, reduce misunderstandings and allow the plan to evolve as circumstances change.

IVCA:  The firm lists three ways of being 'different' ... Continuity, Preferred Partnerships and Creative Solutions. How were those distinctive characteristics developed as client management has evolved?

Gresham: These characteristics describe Gresham’s Trust Solutions offering and address recurring needs as wealth moves across generations.

Continuity means planning for who will carry out fiduciary responsibilities over time. A family may prefer individual trustees while naming a corporate successor. Preferred Partnerships means working with independent corporate fiduciaries, allowing trust administration to be selected separately from investment management. This avoids the conflict of interest that might arise were we to form our own trust company. Creative Solutions means accommodating complex holdings such as closely held businesses and concentrated stock positions.

Gresham assists with fiduciary selection, succession planning and coordination, while the selected fiduciaries provide trust administration. This gives families flexibility in organizing responsibilities while supporting continuity as trustees, beneficiaries and assets change.

IVCA: What does Gresham Partners hope to achieve in their interaction with the VC/PE community within the IVCA?

Gresham: We hope to be an educational resource to the IVCA community, drawing on Gresham’s extensive experience advising entrepreneurs, professional investors and other wealth creators. These individuals often spend their careers focused on building businesses, investing capital and creating value, but significant wealth can introduce a new set of interconnected decisions for themselves and their families.

We hope to share practical insights on issues that frequently accompany wealth creation, including planning before and after a liquidity event, managing concentrated wealth, tax-efficient investing, estate and wealth-transfer planning, philanthropy, family governance and preparing the next generation for the responsibilities of wealth.

Just as importantly, we want to learn from IVCA members and better understand the issues they are facing. By exchanging ideas and sharing lessons from our experience working with families confronting similar decisions, we hope to become a trusted educational resource to IVCA members and their families.

For the website of Gresham Partners click here.

The 2026 IVCA Awards Dinner is Monday, December 7th, 2026, at the Four Seasons Hotel in Chicago. For more information, click here.