Engaged Capital

Glenn Welling

Glenn Welling is the founder and chief investment officer of Engaged Capital, an activist shop he launched in 2012 out of Newport Beach, California. He came to the work through a long apprenticeship: after earning a B.S. in economics from the Wharton School in 1992, he advised companies at A.T. Kearney, Marakon Associates, and then Credit Suisse, where he ran the advisory business before the bank absorbed HOLT Value Associates, where Welling had been a partner. The schooling that shaped his investing, though, happened at Relational Investors, where he spent four years as a principal and managing director running the consumer, healthcare, and utility portfolios under the activist Ralph Whitworth, who is often called a governance godfather. Welling is frequently described as a Whitworth protégé. Engaged Capital started in 2012 with an $85 million seed investment from Grosvenor Capital Management, which backed the firm as part of its program for nurturing emerging managers. Welling calls the firm's approach "constructive activism": he buys into small and mid-cap public companies and presses management and boards for strategic, operational, or governance changes, typically working alongside companies rather than waging hostile proxy fights. The firm holds seats on many of the boards it engages, and Welling has served on the boards of NCR Corporation, The Hain Celestial Group, TiVo, Medifast, and Jamba, often chairing compensation committees. He also teaches executive education at his alma mater, Wharton, and the National Association of Corporate Directors named him one of the 100 most influential directors in 2018.