Peter Barris

Chairman, Washington DC

Peter joined NEA in 1992 and was the firm’s Managing General Partner from 1999-2017. After retiring in 2019, Peter now serves as Chairman. During his 18 years at the helm, NEA's assets under management grew from $1B to over $20B and the organization scaled its operations to become one of the world’s largest venture capital firms. Under Peter’s leadership, NEA invested in industry-transforming technology companies like CareerBuilder, Tableau, Groupon, Jet.com, Juniper Networks, Salesforce.com, TiVo, WebMD, and Workday. He has been named several times to the Forbes Midas List of top technology investors, to Washington Tech Council’s Hall of Fame, and to the Washington Business Hall of Fame. Peter has personally led investments in over three dozen technology companies that have successfully completed public offerings or mergers. He serves on the board of public companies Berkshire Grey (BGRY), Groupon (GRPN) NextNav (NN), and Sprout Social (SPT) and is currently director of several private companies including Catalytic, Tamr, Tempus, ThreatQuotient, and ZeroFox.

Prior to joining NEA, Peter was President of LEGENT Corporation (LGNT) and Senior Vice President of the Systems Software Division of UCCEL Corporation (UCE). Both companies were ultimately acquired at valuations that were record breaking for their time. Earlier, Peter spent almost a decade at General Electric Company in a variety of management positions, including Vice President and General Manager at GE Information Services. He is Vice-Chair of the Northwestern University Board of Trustees and serves on the boards of the Brookings Institution, P33, and In-Q-Tel. Peter previously served on the Executive Committee of the Board of the National Venture Capital Association, the Tuck School Board of Overseers, and was a founding member of Venture Philanthropy Partners, a philanthropic organization in the Washington D.C. area. Peter received his BSEE from Northwestern University and his MBA from the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth.