Eric Kriss

Eric Kriss joined the Mercy University faculty in 2024. Previously he taught public policy, entrepreneurship, and finance in both undergraduate and graduate programs at the University of Miami Herbert Business School.

His varied background spans government, private equity, consulting, health care, music, and entrepreneurship. He co-founded Bain Capital, one of the world's leading private equity firms, and was the founding CEO of MediVision (#35 on the 1989 INC 500), an eye surgery network.

He has led various turnarounds, including MediQual, a healthcare data analysis firm, and the financial rehabilitation of two Massachusetts cities -- Chelsea and Springfield – as well as the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority.

As the chief secretary in Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney's cabinet, Kriss had overall responsibility for the Commonwealth's $25 billion operating and $2 billion capital budgets, and directed information technology, tax collection, employee relations including oversight of all collective bargaining, state purchasing, construction and real estate management, and related operations for state government. Kriss pioneered the adoption of information technology open standards in government and was the first U.S. public official to link the concept of sovereignty to the protection of public records. He introduced an entrepreneurial budgeting approach that emphasized economic analysis of public programs which successfully navigated a recovery from the 2001-02 recession. Kriss also served as the state's CFO in the William Weld administration from 1991 to 1993.

In 1984 Kriss and two other partners from the consulting firm Bain & Company founded Bain Capital. Originally conceived as a combination early-stage and leveraged buyout investment fund, Bain Capital today manages over $185 billion in assets; it is the fifth largest private equity firm in the United States. Prior to co-founding Bain Capital, Kriss was a consulting partner at Bain & Company, the global management consulting firm.

Kriss produced and performed on the guitarist Mike Bloomfield's 1976 Grammy-nominated album If You Love These Blues. He launched the instructional book and record division of Guitar Player Magazine and also co-founded Inner City Records, voted the Record Label of the Year in the 1979 International Jazz Critics Poll. An acknowledged authority on blues piano, Kriss has authored four books on music performance as well as numerous articles and reviews for Down Beat, Living Blues, Keyboard, and other publications.

Kriss was previously a director of Best Doctors, an innovative healthcare insurer and quality management firm. He has advised many businesses including Legal Sea Foods (an iconic New England restaurant chain), Bread & Circus (now incorporated into Whole Foods Markets, the world's largest retailer of natural and organic foods) and INC Magazine (a magazine for entrepreneurs).