About
Pascal Levensohn’s 42-year career spans active investing in both public and private companies and management consulting to highly sophisticated international family offices and institutions. As a professional director, Pascal specializes in team building and the implementation of governance best practices in companies ranging from early-stage startups and global single-family offices to publicly traded companies. He is an expert in negotiation, conflict resolution, and addressing complex management challenges associated with private investments.
A 1981 graduate of Harvard University, Pascal began his career in finance in New York at age 20, completing the management training program at the Bankers Trust Company and achieving early recognition as an airlines and aerospace industry analyst. His Wall Street career began at age 22, when he became a risk arbitrageur at the First Boston Corporation (New York) in 1983.
After seven years investing in merger arbitrage, he moved to San Francisco in 1990 to join Blum Capital as a partner, where he focused on long-term active public and private company investing.
Pascal became an entrepreneur himself in 1994, choosing the path that led him to found both Levensohn Venture Partners LLC (LVP) and the predecessor entities to Levensohn Global LLC (LG). Pascal has held both positions continuously since 1996.
Since LVP’s inception in 1996, he has invested over $500 million in venture capital startups. LG’s expertise includes leading successful private lawsuits on behalf of victims of financial fraud (notably Tyco 2004–2008); restructuring several closely held operating companies in industries ranging from commercial farming to geothermal water; and guiding twelve different single-family offices in comprehensive management and governance reorganizations.
From 1996–2012, LVP concentrated on early and commercialization stage venture capital investments in Silicon Valley technology companies, principally in semiconductors, physical and cyber security, digital media, and enterprise software.
Since 2014, Pascal has practiced a diversified global strategy, investing in seed and early-stage startups in the following sectors: Aerospace, Augmented Reality, Advanced Digital Signal Processing, Artificial Intelligence, Robotics, Bio Informatics, Quantum Computing, and Neurodegeneration.
Levensohn is affiliated with Dolby Family Ventures (San Francisco, California), Susman Ventures (Houston, Texas), Arden Road Investments (New York, New York) and the Gideon Hixon Fund (Santa Barbara, California).
Areas of personal expertise include: empowering, training, and mentoring the next generation of fiduciaries in family organizations; training professional venture capitalists; chairing investment committees; overall board governance process implementation and board construction; annual board CEO review and 360 degree board peer review; competitive strategy analysis; closing new business with early adopter IT customers; independent public company director; provider of professional fiduciary services as board member or trustee.
Pascal holds an AB in Government, cum laude, from Harvard University and is a graduate of the Lawrenceville School (1977, with Academic Distinction). Pascal is of French-Canadian, Romanian, and Austrian descent. He was born in San Juan, Puerto Rico, where he was raised and lived for over 14 years. He is fluent in French and Spanish. He is married to the German author, Melanie Levensohn.