Paul Kwan’s parents came to America from Hong Kong in the late 1960s after the passage of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, which ended de facto discrimination against immigrants from Southern Europe, Eastern Europe and Asia. His father  became a professor of astrophysics at UMass-Amherst, which is where he grew up. Paul’s mother and her two sisters became computer programmers after college in the 1970s, and his mother worked as a programmer for over 30 years. His mother’s appreciation for tech is what led Paul to study computer science at Stanford.

Paul started his career on Wall Street as the Internet we know today was taking shape. Just a few years later, he had the opportunity to join Morgan Stanley’s Menlo Park office and thrived there for 22 years, including six years running the bank’s global internet and software business and six years leading the West Coast team. That continuity became a great asset, because it took time to learn the craft of advising companies on their most important strategic and financial objectives. That continuity also allowed Paul to see firsthand what world-class tech companies do to create enduring value whether it was strategic, financial, operational or cultural.

At GC, Paul leads the Global Resilience team, which focuses on modernizing our most critical societal systems including defense and intelligence, industrial and energy. Paul looks for mission-driven, software-enabled companies that are category-defining in their own unique way. He has led investments in Anduril, Helsing, Vannevar Labs, Samsara, Charm Industrial, Re:Build, AwardCo, Neko Health, and Rakuten Medical.

Paul is an adjunct lecturer at Stanford and for many years, taught a class at Haas School of Business on tech IPOs and M&A. He and his wife are supporters of pioneering neuropsychiatric research at Stanford University's Pasca Lab to better understand autism, psychiatric disorders and orphan genetic diseases like 22q11. Paul is also vice chair of the Lucille Packard Foundation for Children's Health.