Kelly Ann Winget emanates power and persuasion. The first millennial, openly LGBTQ+ woman to launch a private equity firm focused on alternative assets, Winget endeavors to break the “old boys club” model that has dominated the world of investing for decades.
Winget has raised nearly $1 billion in private capital for startups, oil and gas, renewable energy, real estate, infrastructure and manufacturing and emerging markets. Her firm, Alternative Wealth Partners, aims to break the mold of private equity.
Winget has been a competitive force in sales since she was 15. She leverages decades of experience and innovation to relate to and empower a diversity of clients.
Her private equity investments fuel companies like lesbian-owned Dapper Boi, a gender-and-body-inclusive online apparel line, as she strives to connect women and LGBTQ+ founders with the resources they need to thrive.
High earner at an early age
Winget’s parents drilled into her at an early age that her lifestyle was outside the norm. But it wasn’t because she was gay and the daughter of a multigenerational oil and gas family in the conservative state of Texas. Instead, her parents’ message was that the affluence of Winget’s upbringing was atypical.
“My mother was very adamant about making sure that we understood that our lives weren’t normal. Like this was not everybody’s experience and that the real world is different,” she says.
Winget points to that early lesson, and her parents being entrepreneurs and investors as the inspiration for her pursuits in accessible investment. “We talked about [money] constantly,” she said.
Despite the family’s wealth, Winget went to work at a car wash at age 15 to earn the money to buy a $300 pair of jeans. It was the launch of her career. “I learned how to make a lot of money very young,” she said. Soon Winget was raking in $60,000 a year selling car-wash packages. Her earnings were so high that her employer had to modify the commission program three times.
After graduating high school, Winget went to college. But she struggled to find meaning in her coursework when she found she could score 100 percent on tests without needing to attend class. She realized: “I’m actively losing money being in school. So I just went to work.”
Pivoting to investor education
Over the next decade, Winget launched head first into exploring new industries, from health care to construction. But she was ready to pivot and raise capital.
“I wanted to focus more on the investor education side. How do investors find opportunities in alternative spaces? I had worked on everything from oil and gas to cannabis deals to medical devices and tech startups. And the one thing that I learned from talking to the other investors is that there is a lot of interest, but they don’t know how to do due diligence,” Winget said.
Winget worked for a family office in oil and gas looking to change focus and bring in new investors. But when she realized she was the smartest person in the room – “which was really terrifying because they were managing a lot of money,” she added – Winget decided it was time to branch out on her own.
At 30 years old, she launched Alternative Wealth Partners. It was August 2020 and the COVID-19 pandemic was raging. But the firm had a clear goal: Make private equity understandable and accessible to Main Street investors.
That same summer, Winget met her now-wife. She said in the past she was never open about being gay, dodging comments over client dinners like: “You should meet my son.” But that all changed in her relationship with Sarah Matteson, a social worker and mom of two kids. “Because I’m so confident in my relationship now, I talk about it more openly,” she explained.
Being an openly LGBTQ+ woman in the world of investment can be a challenge. But Winget said her being a young woman professional has always been the greatest hurdle to overcome, not her sexual orientation.
“I have to sometimes remind people, especially men, I’m like: ‘Think about when you were 35 and where you were in your career. You were probably reaching the peak of it … that is me. That you just can’t see yourself in me doesn’t mean I don’t have the same experience that you have. I started at 15,’” Winget said.
Where did her confidence come from at such an early age? Winget credits her entrepreneurial parents. She said they encouraged her to try new things and provided strong emotional support.
“We were allowed to fail in a way that wasn’t devastating. When bad things happened, it was like, you just pivot. You don’t give up.”
Pursuing purpose before returns
Winget founded Alternative Wealth Partner with a vision of creating the family office experience for retail investors who don’t have full-time investment staff. She describes the firm as “industry agnostic” and driven by results that are a win-win for the firm and its clients. “The fact that I take greed out of it helps,” Winget said.
“It’s really about following what’s going on at a global scale and finding the different opportunities that are being overlooked,” she added.
Some of the firm’s early investments were based on an awareness of the lack of infrastructure to support innovative technology like artificial intelligence and electric vehicles. You need adequate data storage to support AI, and sustainable energy to power EVs, Winget explained.
When it comes to balancing positive social impact with a return on investment, Winget is confident that the two go hand in hand. “I think that if you are doing things with the right purpose and intention that the returns come with it. I don’t think you have to forfeit one for the other,” she said.
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