Jeff Jones
Managing Partner

Following a successful seven year run with Ascend Learning as head of corporate development and strategy, Jeff Jones created ChartNorth to provide strategic advisory services to education & edtech investors and their portfolio companies. Leveraging Jeff’s extensive experience, ChartNorth focuses on growth strategy, operations, M&A, diligence, and product strategy.

Jeff joined Ascend Learning in January 2015 as the senior vice president of corporate development & strategy and was responsible for partnering with Ascend’s brand leaders to drive Ascend’s growth objectives including researching the competitive landscape and identifying industry and customer trends; sourcing and developing acquisition and partnership opportunities; and providing direction and oversight to the product management process across Ascend. His focus on organic development and partnerships helped develop Ascend as a well-known tech-enabled services company focused on customer and student success. He built Ascend’s corporate development team from scratch, bringing in highly talented and experienced individuals who ultimately helped Ascend successfully acquire companies that not only expanded Ascend’s growth trajectory, revenue, EBITDA, and TAM, but also improved Ascend’s capabilities in innovation across assessment, learning content, simulation, and student retention.

Additionally, Jeff served as the executive sponsor for product management across Ascend, helping the company develop more innovative product and marketing capabilities across its brands, enabling the organization to understand its markets better, and listening closely to customers to identify and solve critical problems. Jeff also served as a board member of Ascend’s UK business, Premier Training International.

During Jeff’s tenure at Ascend, Providence Equity successfully sold the company to Blackstone and CPPIB in 2017. Through several dividend-recaps the entire basis of that investment was returned to the sponsors by 2021.

Prior to his time at Ascend, Jeff served as senior vice president, University Partnerships, for Academic Partnerships, where he was responsible for developing new and managing ongoing college and university partnerships to help each partner build and grow successful online programs. Prior to joining Academic Partnerships in 2013, Jeff was vice president of product management and strategy for Ellucian (formerly SunGard Higher Education) where he led the Advancement, Financial Management, and Human Capital Management divisions, three of the five software segments of the company. Jeff set the direction for all the solutions in his portfolio by working closely with customers, partners, and his team to grow the businesses and improve customer satisfaction.

Jeff has held executive leadership positions in post-secondary education, healthcare, and financial services industries, from venture-backed startups through private equity sponsored mid-cap growth companies.