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Josh Rafner is an investment banker and venture investor with more than 30 years of experience advising and financing high-growth technology companies in the U.S. and Europe. He is the founder and CEO of Ridgecrest Capital Partners, a boutique advisory firm providing merger and acquisition and fundraising advisory services for technology and other growth companies globally. Prior to founding Ridgecrest, Mr. Rafner was a Senior Managing Director at Bear Stearns with primary responsibility for that firm’s global mobile internet and wireless software banking effort. Josh also spent nine years at Hambrecht & Quist, where he was head of International Investment Banking. While at H & Q, Mr. Rafner opened that firm’s London office, founded a Paris-based investment bank known as Hambrecht & Quist Euromarkets and served as its CEO, and co-founded the firm’s Tel Aviv strategic alliance, Tamir Fishman. Mr. Rafner has advised on innumerable public and private M&A transactions and has managed dozens of IPOs and follow-on financings for technology companies, including offerings on the European markets. Mr. Rafner has been an investor in technology companies and venture funds, and has been a director or advisory board member of many companies. Mr. Rafner is also an attorney, and practiced for 7 years with the international firm of O’Melveny & Myers, where his work included mergers and acquisitions, securities law and restructurings. Mr. Rafner served as a law clerk to Chief U.S. District Judge Frank A. Kaufman in Baltimore, Maryland.

Mr. Rafner graduated from Princeton University, where he was awarded the Pyne Prize, Princeton’s highest undergraduate distinction, and earned his degree from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. He is also a graduate of Stanford Law School, where he was an editor of the Stanford Law Review. In addition, Mr. Rafner pursued graduate studies at Stockholm University, Sweden as a Fulbright Scholar, and at Oxford University, England.

Among Mr. Rafner’s community and non-profit activities, he currently serves as a Trustee of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, a Trustee of the Marin Symphony, and a board member of the Marin Cultural Association. He is also the Founder and President of the Ralston White Retreat Foundation in Mill Valley, California, and is a co-founder and past board member of the Kentfield-Greenbrae Historical Society. He is a past President of the Kent Woodlands Property Owners Association. Mr. Rafner is also the current president of the Marin Rowing Association.