John MacWilliams

John J. MacWilliams is a Founding Partner and a member of the Investment Committee of Northampton Capital Partners where he focuses primarily on investments in the energy area. He has three decades of experience as an investor, spanning his tenure at Goldman Sachs in Structured Finance, The Beacon Group, JP Morgan, Tremont Energy Partners and Apollo Global Management.

Mr. MacWilliams began his career as an attorney at Davis Polk & Wardwell in New York. He then spent five years at Goldman Sachs where he was the head of the international structured finance group. In 1992, Mr. MacWilliams co-founded The Beacon Group, a private investment and merger advisory firm with approximately $2 billion of investment capital, where he co-headed the Beacon Energy Investment Funds, a portfolio of over 30 private investments in the energy industry. Following the sale of Beacon to JP Morgan, Mr. MacWilliams served as a Partner in JP Morgan Partners and Vice Chairman of the Investment Bank. He later co-founded Tremont Energy Partners, an investment firm focused on the energy sector.

Mr. MacWilliams joined Apollo Global Management in 2018 where he worked until 2021 as an operating partner focused on sustainability and investments related to the transition to clean energy for the firm’s infrastructure business. During his tenure at Apollo, Mr. MacWilliams worked closely with Northampton CEO Geoff Strong, as well as Corinne Still, Jeff Hunter, and Rich DiMichele.

Mr. MacWilliams has also served in multiple government and policy roles during his career. Prior to joining Apollo, he served as Associate Deputy Secretary and Chief Risk Officer of the U.S. Department of Energy from 2013 to 2017. More recently, following his tenure at Apollo and prior to joining Northampton, Mr. MacWilliams served as Special Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs and Special Advisor to the President’s Homeland Security Advisor in the Biden Administration.

Mr. MacWilliams also serves as a senior advisor to the Director at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and was a Senior Fellow at the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University, and a senior advisor at the Boston Consulting Group. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Mr. MacWilliams holds a B.A. from Stanford University, an M.S. from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and a J.D. from Harvard Law School.