Our Team
Marshall Croft, Managing Director
Marshall Croft is a Co-Founder and Managing Director of Forge Growth Partners. Marshall has five years of operational experience and fifteen years of transactional M&A experience in a variety of sectors, including environmental, infrastructure, and commercial services, logistics, and specialty distribution, among others. As an operating executive for Tailwind Capital, Marshall helped lead the firm’s commercial services investing efforts and assisted portfolio companies with their add-on strategy.
Previously, Marshall was at Goldman Sachs and Harris Williams & Co., where he focused on mergers and acquisitions.
Marshall started his career as a Lieutenant in the Navy serving on a submarine.
Marshall has completed more than 50 M&A transactions valued at $10 billion in total enterprise value. Marshall has worked extensively with family-owned and founder-run businesses helping multiple generations successfully navigate new partnerships.
Marshall earned an M.B.A. from the Darden at the University of Virginia and a B.S. in Economics, with Honors, from the US Naval Academy.
Marshall lives with his wife and three children in Richmond, VA.
John Drennan, Managing Director
John Drennan is a Co-Founder and Managing Director of Forge Growth Partners.
John has been head of corporate development and an investor in four private equity-backed companies, in industries ranging from professional consulting to auto parts. His duties have included strategic planning, sourcing/executing acquisitions, post-close integration management, and overall executive leadership. Each of these companies has generated 3x-4x realized shareholder return during his tenure.
Previously, John spent nine years in the private equity and mezzanine finance groups at American Capital, a former S&P 500 publicly-traded alternative asset management firm with $17 billion in assets under management.
John started his career as a CPA in the audit department of Ernst & Young.
During his career, John has invested over $1.6 billion of institutional capital, including 40+ add-on acquisitions on behalf of platform companies, 8 control buyouts as a lead investor, and 17 mezzanine investment transactions as a lead investor.
John earned an MBA in Finance from Southern Methodist University and a BBA in accounting from the University of Oklahoma.
John lives with his wife Alyson and two children, Jack and Estelle, in Highland Park, Texas.