Susan Woods
Principal of Chartworth

Susan has over twenty years of corporate finance, mergers and acquisitions and venture capital experience. Her industry experience was acquired in companies spanning insurance, reinsurance, healthcare, direct marketing and technology. Susan serves on the Board of Directors of Delta Dental of Plan of New Hampshire and serves on the Tri-State Finance and Long-Range Planning Committes of Northeast Delta Dental. She also serves on the board of the NHHTC Entrepreneur Forum, Speed Venture Summit™, and the Financial Management Association of NH.

Before joining Chartworth, Susan was Senior Vice President of Corporate Development at Folksamerica Reinsurance, a New York City based subsidiary of White Mountains Insurance Group where she worked on the creation of a new holding company to consolidate the operations of several reinsurance companies, including a newly acquired European acquisition. Previously she had been Vice President of Corporate Development at another White Mountains Insurance Group subsidiary, One Beacon Insurance, located in Boston, MA where she worked on strategic projects related to company structure and capitalization, financial and management reporting, executive development as well as serving as interim Vice President of Employee Benefits.

Before joining the White Mountains Insurance Group companies, Susan was VP of Development at PC Connection in Merrimack, NH where she started an acquisition program and completed two acquisitions. In addition she built a department of project managers and business analysts to work on strategic systems projects, developed corporate strategy and structure to deal with sales tax issues and led the contracting activities for several sole source vendor contracts. She was Previously VP of Development at Healthsource, Inc. of Hooksett, NH (now Cigna). She ran the firm's acquisition program and also worked on the start-up of several HMO's. She also led national contracting activities for specialized services.

Susan's background includes ten years of venture capital experience, 7 of which was as General Partner of North Atlantic Venture Capital where she opened their Manchester NH office and 3 years with Grace Ventures, of Cupertino, CA, a captive venture capital subsidiary of W.R. Grace & Co. With both venture capital groups, Susan identified investment opportunities, made and monitored investments and served on the companies boards of directors. Susan started her business career at W.R. Grace & Co. in the New York City headquarters as a financial analyst.

Susan has an MBA from The Amos Tuck School of Business Administration at Dartmouth College and a BA from Colby College. Residing in Manchester with her husband, a custom furniture builder, who also coaches cross country skiing at the Derryfield School, has a son studying at Middlebury College and a daughter in her senior year at Manchester Central High School. Susan enjoys cross country skiing, gardening, and hiking.