A well-rounded team serving as your growth engine
Investing In More Than Just Businesses
Rook Partners has been a certified Community Development Entity (CDE) committed to breaking down challenges undercapitalized, minority-led businesses have to accessing equity and quasi-equity capital markets since 2013.
Our fundamental belief is that financial return and social return need not be mutually exclusive. Accordingly, Rook Partners invests in growth-oriented neighborhood businesses that prove such development can be both a sound financial proposition and an effective way to build stronger communities, while providing quality goods and services.
Rook Partners’ mission is to empower business owners in distressed urban areas and minority business owners by instituting efficient operating systems that enable them to effectively manage their growth-positioned operations. In addition to operations support, Rook Partners supplies business development resources that expand local market sales and penetration into regional and national markets. Fundamentally, Rook Partners supplies the resources needed to accelerate growth and expand market share for portfolio companies in their respective markets while adding value to the local communities in which they operate.
“We invest in people by partnering with entrepreneurs who have the drive and the passion to build successful companies. We seek out businesses that can solve market deficiencies and/or create efficiencies through innovative community solutions, product development, logistics and management services. By implementing prudent capital structures and business expansion initiatives through Rook Partners and its affiliates, we help our partners deliver consistent and predictable cash flow.”
Our team
Rook Partners has assembled a unique combination of operating and investment professionals who create value by consistently bringing proven expertise to each stage of the investment process. In contrast to the conventional private equity firm, in which a single partner is often responsible for the entire investment and company-building process on a transaction-by-transaction basis, Rook Partners utilizes a team approach in which all professionals participate in discrete aspects of a transaction based upon their individual area of expertise.
The firm’s Operating Partners, each of whom is a successful entrepreneur and experienced operating executive, provide critical operational and strategic assistance to portfolio company management throughout the investment and serve as the firm’s representative on the company’s Board of Directors. One Operating Partner and a Vice President are assigned to each individual portfolio company. Rook Partners provides additional management support through its team of investment professionals, who provide critical strategic planning, legal structuring, finance, sales and marketing, operations, and other functional support.
MANAGING DIRECTOR
Myron Mims, Esq.
Myron E. Mims founded Rook Partners, Ltd. in 2006 after a decades long career advising small to medium sized businesses and during his leadership tenure of local government boards overseeing downtown Dallas' revitalization initiatives.
The law firm Mims co-founded - Nixon Mims, LLP, developed a niche advising a diverse clientele of small to medium sized businesses, including federal and state regulated businesses. Mims served as general counsel and oversaw compliance for many of the firm's clients. He experienced the challenges facing these businesses' sustainability firsthand.
Thru civic service Mims acquired a working knowledge of the challenges of financing commercial real estate redevelopments in distressed urban areas. From 2002 - 2010 Mims served as a board member of Dallas' Center City & Uptown Connector Tax Increment Financing (TIF) Districts. In 2004 Mims received the mayoral appointments of Chairman of Dallas' Center City & Uptown Connector TIFs and became Chairman of Dallas' first local government corporation (the Downtown Dallas Development Authority) which funded major projects such as Dallas' Klyde Warren Park. Mims served in these capacities from 2004 – 2010 when the city-center saw substantial increases in rental and for sale residential housing, hotel rooms and corporate relocations.
MANAGING DIRECTOR
Megan Johnson
Megan Johnson is a seasoned executive with a successful management track record in real estate, consumer-packaged goods, financial services, nonprofit, and retail franchises. She is also a serial entrepreneur that excels at strategy, brand marketing, operational execution, business process implementation and back-office administration. She brings her knack for the client experience and empathic leadership style to client relations and portfolio management for Rook Partners. Megan Johnson holds an MBA in Marketing, Strategy and Entrepreneurship from Southern Methodist University and a B.S. in Business Administration from the University of Southern California. Megan is an adored wife and mother of two. She is a licensed real estate broker in the state of Texas.
In addition to the firms’ Managing Directors, Rook Partners has a full roster of talented, seasoned executives that support fund operations and governance, investor relations and portfolio management.