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Mission meets
MARKETS
Clearlake’ s Josh Robinson draws on military experience to navigate complexity across private markets
Josh Robinson’ s business and legal instincts developed far from Clearlake Capital Group’ s ocean facing boardrooms.
Four days after graduating high school in Redondo Beach, California, Josh traded a red cap and gown for a gray cadet uniform at the United States Military Academy in West Point, New York. Two decades later, as Vice President & Associate General Counsel at Clearlake, he applies military style structure, problem solving, and leadership to a $ 185 billion global investment firm spanning private equity, credit, infrastructure, secondaries, and co-investment strategies. Josh’ s responsibilities touch fund formation, finance, mergers and acquisitions, compliance, governance, ESG matters, and general firm operations; a mix that draws equally on legal analysis, commercial judgment, negotiation, and coordination.
After commissioning from West Point as an Infantry Officer in 2009 and graduating from Ranger School- the US Army’ s elite small-unit tactics and leadership course – Josh served over six years on active duty, including a year-long combat deployment to Kandahar Province, Afghanistan as the leader of a 47-man Stryker Platoon. That experience still shapes how he solves problems today.“ The Army’ s leadership training isn’ t just about weapons and tactics. It really comes down to learning to manage time, break an operation into smaller parts, communicate a clear plan, and execute,” Josh says.“ All of this happens while you’ re trying to accomplish a mission that’ s inherently dangerous in as safe a manner as possible.” That maps well onto transactional law, especially in-house, where the job involves understanding a transaction, its decision points and legal risks, then recommending ways to manage those risks.
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