Yellow Wood Partners: Kelly Downey Named As Operating Partner

By Amit Chowdhry • Jan 21, 2025

Yellow Wood Partners, a Boston-based private equity firm specializing in investments in consumer brands and companies, announced that Kelly Downey will be an Operating Partner at the firm. Downey brings decades of expertise in driving growth and transformation within the consumer-packaged goods (CPG) industry, having held executive leadership roles across prominent global organizations.

Kelly Downey’s career spans 30+ years with a demonstrated track record of developing innovative approaches that help deliver profitable growth and enhanced market share. And her leadership experience includes key roles at companies like Kraft Foods, Unilever, and Philips Personal Health, where she successfully built and executed strategies across sales, marketing, digital transformation, and category management.

More recently, Downey has spent over two years at Norseland, Inc., the exclusive sales & distribution company for Jarlsberg cheese, where she began and remains as an Independent Non-Executive Board Director after a short stint as their Interim President & CEO. Previously, she spent almost a decade at Unilever, where she had various senior-level roles in both Customer Development and Consumer Marketing across the total Unilever Personal Care, Foods, and Ice Cream portfolio. Most notably, Downey led sales strategy and total customer trade investment initiatives for all Unilever business units supporting field sales execution across US retailers.

Downey also spent 5 years as the Vice President of Digital and Marketing Operations at Philips Personal Health, leading the overall vision, strategy, and execution for Digital Excellence, Consumer Care, Media, Category Management, and Shopper Marketing, serving all Personal Health brands and customers for North America.

Downey started her career at Kraft Foods, entering as a sales representative and consistently moving into positions with increasing responsibility, including Senior Director of Category Sales Management and Senior Director of Consumer Promotion and Strategic Alliances. While there, she also served as Chairman of the Philip Morris/Altria Employee Fund.

Downey holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in English from Boston College, where she graduated summa cum laude and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. She has also completed the Kraft Executive Management Program at Northwestern University’s J.W. Kellogg School of Management.

KEY QUOTES:

“We are excited to have Kelly join our team.”

“Kelly’s career success reflects her ability to foster innovation and drive sustainable growth, consistently delivering strong business results across a number of companies. We look forward to utilizing her valuable expertise and insights to accelerate growth across our portfolio of leading consumer brands.”

  • Dana Schmaltz, Partner at Yellow Wood

“Yellow Wood’s tailored and analytical partnership model aligns closely with my management style and the expertise I’ve spent my career developing in the consumer sector. I look forward to working with Tad, Dana, and the rest of the Yellow Wood team to help the firm’s impressive portfolio of brands realize their full potential.”

  • Kelly Downey