Dwight Poler ’87, P’19, was appointed to the Board of Trustees in July 2015. Following roles at Morgan Stanley and Bain & Company, Dwight joined Bain Capital in 1994 and was named managing director in 1999. Dwight moved to London in 2000 to open Bain Capital’s European private equity business, which he managed for 18 years through four funds, successfully investing over $10 billion in equity. He retired at the end of 2017 and remains a Senior Advisor to Bain Capital.
Since 2018, Dwight has shifted his focus and investing activities to address three core areas: climate change mitigation, toward which he established and manages AccelR8 Funds investing in mitigation and sequestration technologies; income and opportunity inequality, on which he works actively through The Boston Foundation; and Representative Democracy, which he supports through a number of organizations.
Dwight is a Harvard University Advanced Leadership Fellow ’19 and served as an adjunct professor at London Business School, where he taught private equity courses for more than a decade. He also devotes time to charitable activities, and sits on or has sat on the boards of trustees of The Boston Foundation, the MIT MediaLab Advisory Council, Alta Advisors, The Private Equity Foundation in London, The American School in London, Right To Play UK and the Camp Dudley Foundation.
Dwight received an MBA, with distinction, from the Amos Tuck School at Dartmouth College, where he was a Tuck Scholar. At Amherst, he majored in history and completed the Five College Certificate Program in International Relations. Dwight met his wife, Kirsten ’88, at Amherst. They have three children, including a daughter who graduated from Amherst in 2019.