Darren Thompson

Darren has more than 25 years of executive leadership experience in the financial services industry. He is currently the managing partner of RailField Partners LLC, a financial advisory and asset management firm, and a partner in RailField Realty Partners LLC. Previously, Darren was the chief financial officer for RevolutionMoney, a successful venture-backed financial technology company that was sold to American Express in 2010. Prior to Revolution, he was president of Avenue Mortgage Corp., the real estate investment subsidiary of Avenue Capital Group, a NY-based fixed-income hedge fund. Darren spent 15 years of his career with some of the leading financial institutions. He served for several years as senior vice president and head of the credit finance business for Fannie Mae. Prior to Fannie, he was a managing director at Goldman Sachs and a principal at Morgan Stanley. He currently serves as a trustee and Audit Committee chairman for Avenue Capital Group’s public credit mutual funds (ACP, ACS). He is a trustee and Audit Committee chairman for Boulevard Acquisition Corp. (BLVD), a publicly traded, special-purpose acquisition company. He is also honored to serve the White House Fellows Program as a regional judge. He is a former member of the governing board of the Robert Toigo Foundation (the leading organization in promoting diversity in the financial services industry Originally from Vestal, New York, Darren attended Harvard University with the goals of becoming a lacrosse star and a doctor, neither of which came true. He did, however, room for four years with a Sidwell Friends graduate and was introduced, through this friend, to the unique advantages of a Quaker education, and indirectly to the woman who would become his wife—Elizabeth Howell, MD, MPP. He graduated from Harvard with honors in biochemistry and has an MBA from Harvard Business School. He and Elizabeth live in Bethesda, Maryland, with their daughters, Claire Thompson ’15 and Sofia Thompson ’17.