President and Co-Founder of K2 Global Partners

TRIUM Global Executive MBA, Class of 2008
Diploma, Master of Business Administration

Georgetown University
Diploma, Bachelor of Arts

From Intrapreneur to Entrepreneur

Jeremy Kroll comes from an entrepreneurial family. His father, Jules Kroll, founded Kroll, Inc., which grew to become one of the world’s leading investigative and risk consulting firms. Jeremy joined his father’s company early on in his career and helped bring Kroll into new areas as an ““intrapreneur”, incubating nascent businesses within the company. He recently earned his MBA from TRIUM, where he honed his entrepreneurial skills, and has since launched a new venture with his father, called K2 Global Partners.

Kroll, Inc. was started in 1972, and over the next four decades, revolutionized the world of investigations. In an unprecedented move for the industry, Kroll hired talent from a variety of fields, ranging from law enforcement to academia. The firm achieved tremendous success through the use of progressive techniques in uncovering facts for individuals, corporations, and countries looking to mitigate risk.

Starting off as an investigator, Jeremy was involved with cases ranging from high-level business litigation suits to missing persons cases. Jeremy found his investigative and intelligence work fascinating, and appreciated the value of collaborating with colleagues of different backgrounds in order to find solutions to sophisticated issues. One such assignment came in 2001, when Kroll was hired by the United Nations to investigate the funneling of money by separatists out of the banking system. Kroll’s team came under attack and was taken hostage by Croats. Several of his staff was injured in the assault, fortunately, Jeremy was not with the initial team. Later that year, Jeremy returned with his team to finish the assignment. They seized equipment and gathered the evidence they needed to retrieve the U.N.’s stolen funds.

“It was a pretty dramatic life experience…. I got exposure to what makes human beings tick and what makes organizations tick, especially under the most extreme conditions imaginable.”

Moving into a different area of the business as Kroll’s Global Head of Marketing and Sales, Jeremy oversaw Kroll’s market repositioning from a corporate investigations company into a full service global risk management and technology firm. During his nearly 11 years at Kroll, the company grew from 300 to 4,000 employees and from $65 million to $1 billion in annual sales.

Kroll was acquired by Marsh & McLennan Companies in 2004. Both father and son stayed on for a few years, Jeremy heading up business development for Kroll’s global investigative and intelligence consulting group as well as the firm’s integration efforts within the new larger company. The following year, he was promoted to Managing Director.

In 2007, Jeremy began the TRIUM Executive MBA Program as he looked to transition “from an intrapreneur to an entrepreneur”.

“It was the right time for me to get back into the classroom. I had enough work experience to know what I was already strong in and what I needed to spend time developing. I knew that there were areas in my own professional development to work on, such as expanding my professional network.”

“The program was being offered by three top schools with complementary strengths. As a new entrepreneur, the format and focus was appealing to me.”

Jeremy studied in New York, London, Paris, Shanghai and Delhi. He appreciated the “unique aspects between content and environment” of each module, as well as the “seniority and experience” of his cohort. Jeremy felt that TRIUM put him in position to take the next step as an entrepreneur.

“[TRIUM] reinforced the most important elements of business: communications, understanding different cultures, the ability to work in a team environment with strong personalities, and to get the best out of talented people that you work with as classmates. Lastly, it was a boost of confidence to go through and do well in the program.”

In 2009, Jeremy teamed back up with his father to found a new business, K2 Global Partners, a risk consulting and advisory firm that addresses financial, legal, and technological risks for corporations, nations, and individuals. The company focuses on creating new solutions in investigative and due diligence.

With offices in New York, Washington, D.C., London, Madrid, and Bahrain, Kroll is actively hiring in a tough economy. On the hiring front, Kroll is looking for talent in some surprising places drawing from journalism, technology services and even urban design. The skills Jeremy gained through TRIUM fine-tuned his ability to lead as an entrepreneur in a global start-up environment. His experience at TRIUM particularly ingrained in him “…the importance of the global nature of business, understanding how to tap into and leverage a professional network of expertise, and understanding how to product manage from initiation to execution…. My responsibilities [at K2] span strategic development, investment analysis, conducting deals, and on a more tactical level, finding office space, hiring people, and setting up computer systems.”

In the face of the recent Senate investigations of the credit rating agencies, K2 Global Partners has announced it will launch a new credit rating agency, Kroll Bond Ratings, Inc., which will have a heavy emphasis on due diligence melded with buy-side quantitative smarts. This new company will launch in the 3rd quarter, 2010.

As Jeremy and Jules begin the next phase of their entrepreneurial careers together, Jeremy says, “My number one accomplishment at Kroll was my relationship with my father. We can start a new business together…and have a lot of fun doing it. We’re at a point where we’re learning from each other. I’ve been very fortunate professionally and personally.”

Outside of the office, Jeremy lives in New York City with his wife and three children. He is on the board of directors for Egis Capital Partners, Security Growth Partners, and The Challenge Fund. He is also a trustee and divisional board treasurer of The Jewish Lifecare System, the largest nonprofit geriatric care system in New York State. Jeremy’s next endeavor will be getting back into the art studio to see what he can create outside of the business world on the canvas.