Ann Lamont is the wife of Connecticut gubernatorial candidate Ned Lamont and a highly successful venture capital investor in the health and financial technology sectors. Ann is a longtime managing partner at Oak Investment Partners, a multi-billion-dollar venture capital fund that invests in hundreds of companies, according to CrunchBase. In 2014, Ann launched Oak HC/FT, a venture capital firm that invests in early-stage tech firms focused on healthcare and financial services. She also sits on the board of more than a dozen companies.
Ann has been married to Ned since 1983. The pair has three children and lives in a $7 million home in Greenwich, according to The Hartford Courant. Ann came from humble beginnings in a large family of six children while Ned was raised in a wealthy family, with a great-grandfather who was the chairman of J.P. Morgan and a great-uncle who headed was a director of the American Civil Liberties Union and a two-time Senate candidate. Ann told The New York Times that her father was a real estate agent who made $25,000 in his best years.
Ann and Ned Lamont have amassed a sizeable fortune, estimated to be worth between $90 million and $332 million in 2006. The New York Times reported that between $54 million and $193 million of those assets came from Ann’s career at Oak. The Lamonts have used more than $30 million of their own money to fund Ned’s political campaigns. He unsuccessfully ran for the US Senate in 2006 against Sen. Joe Lieberman and lost the Democratic gubernatorial primary in 2010 to Connecticut Governor Dannel Malloy. The couple is funding Ned’s current gubernatorial run with their own money as well.
Here’s what you need to know:
1. Ann Lamont Is The Primary Breadwinner in The Family
Ann Lamont during Ned’s 2006 Senate campaign.
Ned Lamont is an entrepreneur who founded his own cable company and comes from a wealthy family. According to his tax returns, he earned $18 million in the past five years, including more than $5 million in 2017, The Connecticut Mirror reported. But Ann is by far the family’s primary breadwinner thanks to more than three decades as a successful venture capital investor. Between $54 million and $193 million of the couple’s estimated wealth came from Ann’s work, while about $1 million to $5 million of their assets came from Lamont’s cable company. About 10 percent of their assets came from Ned’s inheritance.
In a 2006 New York Times profile, Ann was estimated to earn at least $15 million per year from management fees. It’s unclear how much she earns at her new job at the head of Oak HC/FT. According to the company’s website, Oak HC/FT has $1.1 billion in assets under management. Ann started the company with fellow Oak veterans Patricia Kemp and Andrew Adams.
2. Ann Lamont Is One of The Most Successful Women in The History of Venture Capital
GettyAnn Lamont at TechCrunch Disrupt alongside Managing Partner of RRE Ventures Stuart Ellman in 2017.
In a 2006 profile, The New York Times described Ann Lamont as “one of the most successful women ever in the lofty realm of venture capital” and in 2009 Forbes similarly dubbed her “one of the most successful women in venture history.” She was ranked the top healthcare and financial tech investor on the Forbes Midas List and was the first-ever recipient of the award for Excellence in Healthcare Innovation by the National Venture Capital Association, according to CrunchBase.
She currently sits on the board of Acculynk, Aspire Health, Benefitfocus, Candescent Health, Castlight Health, Freshbooks, Hometeam, Independent Living Systems, Poynt, Precision Medicine Group, Quartet Health, VillageMD and xG Health Solutions. Forbes reported that her companies’ recent exits include Castlight Health, which went public in 2014, Benefitfocus, which went public in 2013, NetSpend, which went public in 2010 before it was purchased for $1.4 billion, and PharMEDium Healthcare, which was sold for $900 million. Earlier in her career, she developed a number of successful biotech firms like Cephalon, Esperion, and ViroPharma.
Lamont also serves on the board of HCA Holdings and The Advisory Council for the Financial Solutions Lab, which works with JP Morgan Chase to create platforms that support data-driven solutions to promote financial health.
3. Ann Married Ned, The Son of Wealthy Family, At a Wedding Catered By Martha Stewart
GettyAnn Lamont kisses Ned Lamont after his concession speech in the 2006 Senate race.
Ann grew up in Whitefish Bay, Wisconsin, where friends nicknamed her “the bashful nobody,” she told The New York Times. She was the youngest of six kids in a household where she said everyone was expected to “wash Glad bags 10 times” and “carefully unwrap presents” so the paper could be reused. Her father struggled to pay for her $6,000 annual tuition at Stanford and later got sick, forcing the family to cash in a life insurance policy to pay for the rest of her tuition. After college, Lamont got a job at the venture capital firm Hambrecht & Quist and later at Oak, which sent her to work in Connecticut, where she met Ned.
Ann Lamont “joked to friends that she was a Nancy Drew fan who always dreamed of marrying a guy named Ned who drove a convertible,” The Times wrote in the 2006 profile.
Ned came from a well-to-do family, The New York Times reported in an extensive profile. His great-grandfather, Thomas Lamont, was a chairman at J.P. Morgan and an advisor to Presidents Woodrow Wilson, Herbert Hoover, and Franklin D. Roosevelt. His great-uncle Corliss Lamont headed the American Civil Liberties Union and ran twice for the Senate in New York. His father, Ted, worked in the Department of Housing and Urban Development under President Richard Nixon. His mother, Camile, worked for Tennessee Senator Estes Kefauver, a Democrat who ran for president in the 1950s.
The couple was soon married at Ned’s parents’ home on Long Island, at a wedding catered by a friend Ann Lamont made at her gym: Martha Stewart. At the wedding, a former classmate of Ann’s recalled to The Times, “the Lamonts left the party after a few hours so older guests would feel comfortable heading home, then circled back to continue the party with their peers.”
4. Ann and Ned Lamont Have 3 Children & A Massive Home
GettyNed Lamont with (R-L) son Teddy, wife Annie, and daughters Emily and Lindsay.
Ann and Ned Lamont have three adult children who they raised in a 16-room home that was valued at $9.8 million in 2006, according to The Times, on a five-acre plot they bought for less than $1 million in 1992. The family home in Greenwich recently came under fire when fellow Democrat Joe Ganim questioned why his primary opponent needed eight bathrooms. “Any time you’re going against a multimillionaire who lives in a house with eight bathrooms, you wonder what that life is like,” Ganim told WTNH in June.
According to The Hartford Courant, the 8,337-square foot home has six bedrooms and eight bathrooms. It was listed at $6.8 million earlier this year. The Connecticut Post adds that the couple bought an additional two adjoining acres for $1.6 million for “privacy.” The family also docks its 22-foot power boat nearby at the Long Island Sound. The couple also bought two large lots at $2.2 million apiece in 2005 near Lake Lillinonah.
The Observer reported in 2012 that the couple also bought a Manhattan condominium for $4.6 million. The two-bedroom 52nd-floor apartment overlooks Central Park.
5. Ann’s Husband Ned Has Self-Funded 3 Campaigns
Ned and Ann Lamont after defeating Joe Lieberman in the 2006 Democratic Senate primary.
With money to spend, the Lamonts have largely self-funded Ned’s unsuccessful Senate and gubernatorial runs, as well as his election race this year.
In 2006, Lamont successfully defeated incumbent Democratic Senator Joe Lieberman in the primaries before losing the general election after Lieberman mounted a third-party bid. Lamont put $17 million of his own money into his campaign in that race, The Connecticut Mirror reported.
Lamont made another bid for office in 2010, challenging then-Stamford Mayor Dannel Malloy in the Democratic gubernatorial primary. Lamont lost once again despite putting up $9 million of his own money.
Lamont has contributed $12.1 million into his gubernatorial race this cycle, nearly matching the what Republican Tom Foley gave his own campaign during his unsuccessful 2010 gubernatorial bid. Both Lamont and Foley pale in comparison to the $100 million WWE mogul Linda McMahon gave her two losing Senate campaigns, in 2010 and 2012, before she was tabbed as President Donald Trump’s head of the Small Business Administration.
Lamont has a slight edge of Republican candidate Bob Stefanowski, who is also partially self-funding his own campaign, in polls published in October.
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