Ross P. Barrett is the managing General Partner of multiple investment funds, most recently closing the Cancer Focus Fund, LP which develops Phase I oncology therapeutics through an exclusive partnership with the MD Anderson Cancer Center, Ochsner Health System and LSU Feist-Weiller Cancer Center. His firm has offices in New York, Houston and Austin, Texas and Shreveport, Louisiana.
Formerly, he managed a venture capital partnership charged with commercializing early-stage technologies from the Pennington Biomedical Research Center, an affiliate of the Louisiana State University system and one of the largest diabetes and chronic disease research centers in the world. He is a co-founder of Lagniappe Labs, LLC creator of the Prime Unicorn Index, an Index that tracks the market cap’s for privately held Unicorn Companies based in the United States.
Previously, Ross worked on Capitol Hill as a legislative aide to senior U.S. Senator, J. Bennett Johnston, where he specialized in federal scientific appropriations, energy tax policy, risk assessment and regulatory reform. He has been an adviser to or investor in over fifteen early-stage privately and publicly traded companies.
He was appointed as Commissioner of to the Louisiana Airport Authority from 2005-2008. In 2007, he was named to Governor Bobby Jindal’s Small Business and Entrepreneurship transition team. Mr. Barrett is a past President (2016) of the Shreveport-Bossier Committee of 100. Since 2017, he has been a Trustee of Centenary College of Louisiana where he chaired the Football Feasibility program and the Financial Integrity Committee.
Ross holds a LLM. Degree in Taxation from the New York University School of Law, a J.D. from Louisiana State University School of Law, and a B.A. in Political Science from Southern Methodist University.
His publications include: Advanced Private Equity: Series A Documents and Term Sheets (Editor–AmLaw Media 2004-2014); Executive Compensation Structures for Venture-Backed Companies (Editor–Aspatore 2003); The New Markets Tax Credit: Good Opportunity but Needs Tweaking (Author–Venture Capital Journal Oct. 2003).
Mr. Barrett’s board and observation seats include Kahr Medical (Israel), ImmunoGenesis (Houston), Nectin Therapeutics (Israel), March BioSystems (Houston), Esperance Pharmaceuticals (Houston), A28 Therapeutics (San Diego), specialty pharma company Embera Neurotherapeutics (Shreveport) and Lagniappe Labs (Shreveport)
Personal and charitable interests include Hope for New York and the Foundation for Evangelism. Mr. Barrett and his wife are active at First Methodist Church of Shreveport Louisiana and are the parents of four daughters.