Thomas Swartwood
Mr. Swartwood is a Managing Director of Swartwood Hesse Inc., a New York-based investment banking firm that specializes in financing entrepreneurial businesses. He is also the founder of The Pointer Group LLC, a Des Moines-based small business advisory firm. He is the Assistant Director of the Entrepreneurship Program at Drake University and an adjunct professor of entrepreneurship. He also teaches business law and other management and finance courses at other local colleges.
Raised in New Jersey (and still a Jersey guy) he graduated from Dartmouth College; after college he worked in the coal mining industry in Kentucky before returning to New York to work with investment banker Ken Langone, a founding director of Home Depot and an advisor to Ross Perot. He earned his law degree from Georgetown University Law Center and practiced corporate law in New York before joining Swartwood, Hesse inc., an investment banking firm on Wall Street. He came to Des Moines in 1994 in connection with the acquisition of R.G. Dickinson &Co., where he served as president. He later earned an MBA from Drake University.
He has worked with dozens of innovative entrepreneurial companies throughout North America, Europe and China. His clients have included an artisanal bakery, a plastic recycling business, a bio-pharmaceutical company developing a blood substitute, and a custom motorcycle builder. He has served on numerous public and private company boards of directors. He serves on the Business Development Committee for the Technology Association of Iowa and mentors TAI members on developing their business models and raising money. He is the past Chairman of the National Investment Bankers Association and he was a founding member of the Public Library of Des Moines Foundation.
