John D. Dionne

John D. Dionne has been a Senior Lecturer of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School since 2014 and is a recently retired Senior Managing Director and Senior Advisor to Blackstone. He is also Managing Partner of Franconia Capital, a multi-family office focused on alternative investments.

He currently teaches “Private Equity Projects and Ecosystems,” a highly rated elective course that partners students with leading private equity firms on value-added projects, and an eleven-session lecture series on the private equity ecosystems. Mr. Dionne has also taught in the “Venture Capital and Private Equity,” “Starting Your own Private Equity Firm” SIP, and Executive Education programs.

Mr. Dionne is also on the Boards of Directors of Cengage Learning, Clear Channel Outdoors, and Pelmorex. He previously served as a member of the Boards of Directors of Caesars Entertainment, Cineworld Group, Momentive Performance Materials, Sequential Brands, and several other companies and not-for-profit organizations.

Until he retired as a Senior Managing Director from Blackstone, John was most recently its Global Head of the Private Equity Business Development and Investor Relations Groups. He served as a member of its Global Private Equity Investment and Valuation Committees and GSO (credit) Investment Committee. During his tenure in this position, Mr. Dionne led global fundraising efforts of over $17 billion for Blackstone’s flagship Private Equity fund immediately following the financial crisis. He later helped establish Blackstone's Tactical Opportunities and Energy investment funds, which have grown to assets under management of over $50 billion. He also assisted in the formation and scaling of the firm's retail investor platform.

Mr. Dionne joined Blackstone in 2004 as the Founder and Chief Investment Officer of the Blackstone Distressed Securities Fund, the firm's initial entry into the single-manager hedge fund business, with peak assets under management of over $2 billion. During this period, he also served on the Investment Committees of several of its alternative investment funds. Before joining Blackstone, Mr. Dionne was a Partner and Portfolio Manager for Bennett Restructuring Funds, a multi-billion-dollar hedge fund specializing in financially troubled companies.

Previously, Mr. Dionne was a Partner at Saugatuck Capital, where he invested in middle-market buyouts and restructured troubled portfolio companies. From 1991 through 1996, he was Director of Corporate Development for a predecessor of Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc. Mr. Dionne began his career at Price Waterhouse as a public accountant.

He is a Chartered Financial Analyst and Certified Public Accountant (inactive).

A native of New Hampshire, John received academic honors while earning an M.B.A. from the Harvard Business School and a Bachelor of Science degree, magna cum laude, from the University of Scranton, where he is a past Chair of its Board of Trustees.