John Avirett

A venture capitalist concentrating on fund, direct and secondary investments, John Avirett graduated from Johns Hopkins University with a bachelor of arts in political science and a minor in economics and was a member of the college's football team. After beginning his career as an associate at Zurich Financial Services, he joined Greenspring Associates in 2005, a venture capital and growth equity investment firm that amassed $17 billion in assets under management, primarily in the information technology, telecommunications, and healthcare sectors. John served as General Partner at Greenspring when StepStone Group purchased Greenspring in 2021 for more than $725 million and John Avirett joined the new firm as a Partner. During his time at Greenspring, John Avirett played a meaningful investment role in NYSE- and NASDAQ-traded businesses, including Chewy, WalkMe, Nutanix, Cloudflare, and Roblox. He continues to lead investment opportunities at StepStone, most recently playing a key role in closing a $3.3 billion secondaries fund, which is the largest of its kind to date. The fund, which is StepStone's sixth secondaries fund, is 27 percent larger than StepStone VC Secondaries V, and was backed by existing investors and several new limited partners. Beyond facilitating investments at StepStone, John Avirett serves on the boards of several firms, including Volition Capital, Elephant, Meritech Capital, and Columbia Capital. He is also a board observer at Creatio, Salsify, Outdoorsy, Demandbase, Aviatrix Systems, Transcend, Duplocloud, Trullion, and Lyka. John Avirett is passionate about giving back to those institutions that have helped him get to where he is in his career and, to that end, is a donor to Johns Hopkins and serves on the board of trustees at Gilman School. In particular, he helps to fund the FastForward U Innovation & Entrepreneurship Challenge at Johns Hopkins. He is also a member of the board of trustees at Baltimore Chesapeake Bay Outward Bound School.