Based in Highland's Geneva office, Fergal is a General Partner with primary areas of interest in e-commerce, software and business services companies with a particular emphasis on emerging growth opportunities in Europe. He currently represents Highland on the boards of Autoquake, Glasses Direct, PhotoBox, Privalia and Spartoo.com, and is a former director of Coremetrics (acquired by IBM), Eleven Technologies (acquired by Trimble), M7 (acquired by BEA) and VistaPrint (NASDAQ:VPRT).    
 
Background
Previously, Fergal served as a founding Partner of RSA Ventures, the corporate venture fund of RSA Security, Inc., where he led the European and Boston deal coverage. Prior to joining RSA Ventures, Fergal was a Senior Vice President of Cambridge Technology Partners in Europe and a member of the Executive Committee of the firm worldwide. As head of the sales and marketing functions for Europe, he was responsible for developing and executing a marketing and sales strategy across 14 offices in 11 countries. As a founding member of the firm, during his eleven-year tenure Fergal played a leading role in growing the business from start-up to profitability and over $600M in revenue establishing a global footprint with 56 offices worldwide. He was directly responsible for several country-based start-ups and the challenging turn-around of an acquired firm. In 1997, Fergal initiated and launched Cambridge Capital I, a $25M venture fund established to invest in leading enterprise software firms. To date, the fund has returned approximately $200M to investors. Fergal honed his deal skills while heading the corporate business development function at Cambridge and subsequently during his tenure at RSA Ventures. He also spent a summer working at Morgan Stanley in the M&A group based in London.
 
Education
Brown University, B.S., Electrical Engineering, B.A., Business Economics
Harvard Business School, M.B.A.
 
Interests
Fergal serves on the Board of Trustees of Ecole Internationale de Boston and is a member of the North American Board of the UCD Smurfit School of Business. His interests include running, golf, traditional Irish violin, reading and skiing. A native of Dublin, Ireland, Fergal now lives in Geneva with his wife, Jane, and four children.