James Hexter

James Hexter is a Global Executive, Investor, Board Member and Senior Advisor with over 30 years of experience working across a range of industries, geographies and functions. He has deep experience in consumer goods, consumer electronics, retail, B2B and industrial products and services, financial services, real estate and construction, He has worked extensively with companies and executive teams across North America, Asia, Europe, South America and Australia on domestic and global issues including strategy, operational performance and improvement, organization design, sales and marketing, growth and M&A. Mr. Hexter spent over 20 years living in Asia including significant time in Beijing, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore and has spent the last seven years in the United States. He is fluent in Mandarin Chinese.
Mr. Hexter is a Professor of the Practice and the Philip Van Horn Gerdine Professor in Global Business at Boston University’s Questrom School of Business.
Mr. Hexter is currently a Partner with Paxion Capital Partners, a growth oriented, entrepreneurial multifamily office with a range of investment activities, operations and holdings. Mr. Hexter joined Paxion in 2017 and is involved in the Firm’s investment activities, the strategy and operations of portfolio companies and creating and building new businesses for the Firm.
From 2014 to 2017, Mr. Hexter was a Managing Partner at LCatterton, a leading global consumer-focused private equity firm with over $15 billion in assets and activities across five continents. Mr. Hexter built and led the Firm’s global portfolio operations team. In this role he worked with companies across North and South America, Asia Europe and Australia on domestic and international strategy, operations and performance improvement, organization design and change, growth and sales and marketing. Mr. Hexter also co-led the diligence efforts for many of the Firm’s investments. He was a member of several of the Firm’s investment committees and served on the boards of a number portfolio companies including Peloton, Steiner Leisure, John Hardy and others.
Prior to joining LCatterton, Mr. Hexter was a Senior Partner with McKinsey & Co. where he worked for over 20 years. Mr. Hexter joined McKinsey in 1990 in the Firm’s Greater China office where he was based until 2012 and from 2012 to 2013 he was in the Firm’s Washington DC office. While at McKinsey, James held a number of leadership roles.
Mr. Hexter co-led the Firm’s Global Operations Practice from 2005-2010, was Chairman of the Beijing Office from 2007-2012 and Chaired the Finance Committee of the Greater China Office from 2010-2012. His final leadership role was to found and lead the Global Construction, Infrastructure and Real Estate practice. Mr. Hexter was also a member of the Firm’s committee that evaluated partner performance.
During his time at McKinsey, Mr. Hexter served numerous Multinational, Asian, Chinese and North American companies across a wide range industries including those in the consumer, retail, business-to-business, industrial and financial services sectors on issues of strategy, operational effectiveness and operational improvement, manufacturing performance, procurement and supply chain, organization, globalization, sales and marketing, investments, M&A and other important areas.
Mr. Hexter is the co-author of Operation China: From Strategy to Execution, published by Harvard Business School Press in December, 2007. He has been published in the McKinsey Quarterly, the Asian Wall Street Journal, and other publications, and has been an invited speaker and panelist at such institutions as the Asia Society, the Council on Foreign Relations, the American Chamber of Commerce, the Young President’s Organization and other prestigious organizations. He has been also been a guest lecturer at The Harvard Business School.
Mr. Hexter is a member of The Council on Foreign Relations and a Trustee and Executive Committee Member of The American Ballet Theater. Additionally, James is a member of the Brown University Annual Fund Leadership Council. He was a past Vice Chair of the Brown University China Council and Asia Council, was on the jury for the Paulson Prize for Cities of the Future and was a Board Member of the National Committee on US China Relations. James is a graduate of Brown University and of the Harvard Business School, where he was a Baker Scholar and received the Thomas A. Wolfe and Henry Ford Awards.

Education

• Harvard Business School - MBA 1992 - 1994
• Brown University - Bachelor of Arts (B.A.), Mathematical Economics 1984 - 1988