Helen Chiang: Women in PE, class of 2024

Helen Chiang doesn’t just fondly remember her favorite teacher. She can list off the top of her head a number of educators who shaped her life – including one grade-school instructor focused on penmanship.

“While old-fashioned, she would not let me move on to the next level until I could properly write a thank you letter in impeccable cursive,” Chiang recounts.

Chiang, a dealmaker at American Securities, did not have an easy time through school. Her parents immigrated to America when she was a child, and she did not speak English. But she found support from teachers throughout her student career, culminating in her attending Yale for her bachelor’s degree and then an MBA from Stanford University.

“My family moved to the US because they believed that everyone could determine their own future. My father really stressed that we had a choice. But then I was so lucky that I had so many teachers who were able to shape me,” Chiang says.

These experiences helped lay a foundation on which she started to build career in private equity, where today she works as a managing director at American Securities.

“Private equity focuses on outcomes, and how to get them efficiently. We can scale those impacts”

She started at the firm in 2012 focusing on consumer-focused companies, eventually shifting to the education industry.

“I loved consumer businesses. But then I took a step back and took the premise of what makes a great consumer company, which is providing access, consistency and equality. You can apply that formula to education, which at its core is a service whose consumer is a student,” Chiang says.

Chiang adds that private equity should continue to play a badly needed role in America’s education system – a system not known for adjusting quickly to new developments. “Private equity focuses on outcomes, and how to get them efficiently. We can scale those impacts. If we want to do something, we can do it fast,” she says.

Chiang says American Securities also practices what it preaches at its portfolio companies, especially through its focus on mentorship.

“I have always believed in the value of diversity across all measures. But diversity efforts also have to be executed successfully. Since I joined the firm, we’ve always spent time thinking about how not just to make the firm more diverse, but how to grow and better ourselves once we achieve that,” Chiang says.