Marc Sandroff
Chair, Board of Directors
Marc Sandroff has a distinguished, 40-year career guiding businesses and real estate development ventures as an investor, board chair and/or board director. An organization builder with keen management skills and insights, Sandroff has worked with more than 80 companies that have revolutionized the markets they served and became public companies or were successfully sold.
Prior to co-founding NexMetro Communities in 2012, Sandroff had invested in more than 150 different real estate development ventures, primarily single-family and multifamily housing. He has also been an investor, board member and CEO advisor to several real estate construction companies that were profitably operated and later sold to private equity firms.
Sandroff has long been a student of the key drivers of successful entrepreneurial companies. A practical business leader, he recognizes the need to develop common-sense strategies and the importance of building and supporting talented management teams. He has raised more than $1.5 billion in institutional risk capital for entrepreneurial businesses. Sandroff also served as a general partner/managing director of six blind-pool private equity funds. In this capacity, he provided growth capital and partnered with executive management to drive growth in their enterprises.
In his first entrepreneurial venture—a health services firm he co-founded in his early 20s—Sandroff served as executive vice president, overseeing the company’s rapid growth and eventual successful sale. Later, he served as president of a specialty pharmaceutical company, which experienced revenue growth of more than 500% in approximately two years prior to being acquired by a major public company.
From the age of 12, Sandroff studied classical guitar, and in his teens he won several music performance scholarships at university music programs and music conservatories. In 2008, these studies inspired him to co-found Lead Guitar, a nonprofit music education provider that seeks to motivate economically disadvantaged youths to graduate high school and pursue post-secondary studies. Lead Guitar grew from two classrooms, and today serves almost 300 middle and high school classrooms in major metropolitan markets throughout the country. Sandroff remains president of the Lead Guitar Board.
Sandroff holds an A.B. magna cum laude in social sciences from Washington University in St. Louis, MO. He also holds a master’s degree and has completed doctoral coursework; all studies were in Strategic Management and Policy at the University of Chicago.