Yellow Wood Partners Adds Kelly Downey as Operating Partner

BOSTON, Jan. 14, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- Yellow Wood Partners, a Boston-based private equity firm specializing in investments in consumer brands and companies, is pleased to announce that Kelly Downey will be collaborating with the firm as an Operating Partner. Kelly brings decades of expertise in driving growth and transformation within the consumer-packaged goods (CPG) industry, having held executive leadership roles across prominent global organizations.

"We are excited to have Kelly join our team," said Dana Schmaltz, Partner at Yellow Wood. "Kelly's career success reflects her ability to foster innovation and drive sustainable growth, consistently delivering strong business results across a number of companies. We look forward to utilizing her valuable expertise and insights to accelerate growth across our portfolio of leading consumer brands."

"Yellow Wood's tailored and analytical partnership model aligns closely with my management style and the expertise I've spent my career developing in the consumer sector," said Kelly Downey. "I look forward to working with Tad, Dana and the rest of the Yellow Wood team to help the firm's impressive portfolio of brands realize their full potential."

Kelly Downey's career spans over 30 years with a demonstrated track record of developing innovative approaches that help deliver profitable growth and enhanced market share. Her leadership experience includes key roles at companies like Kraft Foods, Unilever, and Philips Personal Health, where she successfully built and executed strategies across sales, marketing, digital transformation, and category management.

Most recently, Kelly has spent over two years at Norseland, Inc., the exclusive sales & distribution company for Jarlsberg cheese, where she began and remains as an Independent Non-Executive Board Director after a short stint as their Interim President & CEO. Previously, she spent almost a decade at Unilever, where she held a variety of senior level roles in both Customer Development and Consumer Marketing across the total Unilever Personal Care, Foods and Ice Cream portfolio. Most notably, Kelly led sales strategy and total customer trade investment initiatives for all Unilever business units supporting field sales execution across US retailers.

Kelly also spent five years as the Vice President of Digital and Marketing Operations at Philips Personal Health, leading the overall vision, strategy, and execution for Digital Excellence, Consumer Care, Media, Category Management, and Shopper Marketing serving all Personal Health brands and customers for North America.

Kelly began her career at Kraft Foods, entering as a sales representative and consistently moving into positions with increasing responsibility including Senior Director of Category Sales Management and Senior Director of Consumer Promotion and Strategic Alliances. While there, she also served as Chairman of the Philip Morris/Altria Employee Fund.

Kelly holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in English from Boston College, where she graduated summa cum laude and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. She has also completed the Kraft Executive Management Program at Northwestern University's J.W. Kellogg School of Management.

See here for Kelly's full bio. 

About Yellow Wood Partners

Yellow Wood Partners is a Boston-based private investment firm that invests exclusively in the consumer industry in the middle market. The firm seeks to acquire branded consumer products that sell into a variety of consumer channels, including mass, drug, food, specialty, value, club, and e-commerce. Yellow Wood's Consumer Operating DNA® investment and operating strategy is based on utilizing the firm's functional operating resources to help maximize brand performance by driving organic growth to increase operating efficiencies. The firm further seeks to acquire additional brands to accelerate growth in its limited number of platform companies. For more information, please visit www.yellowwoodpartners.com.

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SOURCE Yellow Wood Partners