Michael Chen New Canaan

Since 2000, Michael Chen has been general partner and CEO of Chen & Associates in New Canaan, Connecticut, a tier-one consulting firm specific to the aviation, financial services, food, and mass media industries. As an independent business professional for the past 14 years, Mr. Chen has served as an executive advisor, interim executive, and project-specific executive at Fortune 500 companies in the northeastern United States.

Until 2011, he served as the president and CEO of the Media, Communications, and Entertainment division of GE Capital, the financial services unit of General Electric. While there, he established the Peacock Equity fund for venture capital investments made exclusively through the coordinated efforts of NBCUniversal and GE Capital, earning a 40 percent return over the life of the fund. From 2011 to 2012, Mr. Chen directed the business operations and development of NBCUniversal’s Education Nation and NBC Learn programming, serving as the CEO of NBC’s Strategic Initiatives Group. Most recently, Michael Chen served as a strategic partner and committee advisor at Bridgewater Associates, an investment services provider for institutional investors such as central bank, pension fund, endowment, and foundation managers.

A graduate of the University of Rochester with a degree in electrical engineering, Michael Chen later earned an MBA in finance from Cornell University, graduating in 1985. Throughout the 1990s, he worked as a financial manager for IBM’s investments division and for GE Capital.