Anita Stephens-Graham

Anita Stephens-Graham

Associate Dean
General Partner
Opportunity Capital Partners

Anita Stephens Graham is a co-founder and managing director of Graham & Associates, a company formed to provide financial advisory services to lower middle and middle market companies, with a particular focus on women and minority owned businesses. Graham & Associates has assembled a network of professionals with experience in assisting management teams in developing short and long term financial and operational objectives, identifying the appropriate source of capital to support the management team’s goals, and performing internal operational and financial audits to insure that the goals are being met. Graham & Associates is experienced in private equity, mergers and acquisitions, management buyouts and senior/mezzanine debt financing.

Anita Stephens Graham serves as a general partner of Opportunity Capital Partners (OCP), a private equity firm with $135 million of capital under management that focuses on providing later stage growth equity to companies primarily in the telecommunications, media, industrial services and healthcare industries. OCP is a family of four funds including Opportunity Capital Corp. (SSBIC); OCP II (SBIC); OCP III and OCP IV. As a private equity investor with over 20 years of experience, Graham has made direct investments in an array of sectors, including wireless broadband services, fixed wireless systems, publishing systems and services, multimedia content providers, enterprise software, radio and television broadcasting and medical devices – leading transactions that total in excess of $100 million. She has also invested in consumer products and industrial services. In her capacity as a partner, Graham did fundraising for OCP IV, sourced transactions, structured and negotiated term sheets, and actively oversaw the investments until a liquidity event. Prior to joining OCP, Graham served as the president of Renaissance Capital Corporation, a specialized small business investment company that provided equity to small middle market companies in diversified industries. She also formerly held banking and management positions at Manufacturers Hanover Trust, Benton & Bowles and Prudential Insurance Company.

Graham has served on the board of directors of several of OCP’s portfolio companies. She is the former chairman of the National Association of Investment Companies, the trade association of minority fund managers and funds that targets the emerging domestic markets, who collectively manage over $13 billion of capital. She also served on the advisory board and was a founding board member of Pacific Community Ventures, a fund with over $40 million of capital under management that targets markets primarily in California. Graham currently serves on the FCC Diversity Committee. She is also actively involved in a project that is developing mezzanine and equity funding for businesses in Africa and serves on the advisory board of the African Media Initiative, which was formed to expand media opportunities in Africa. Graham is a frequent speaker on panels involving capital raising for businesses in the media and telecommunications sectors including Minority Media Telecommunications Council, National Association of Black Owned Broadcasters and the Federal Communications Commission’s Office of Communications Business Opportunities. She serves as a dean and speaker for the NAB Leadership Foundation’s Broadcast Leadership Training Program.

Graham has a B.A. in Economics from Cornell University and an Executive MBA from Golden Gate University.