Ken Kencel

Ken is the President and CEO of Churchill Asset Management, an affiliate of Nuveen, the asset manager of TIAA, a Fortune 500 financial services company. He also serves as Chairman of the Board, President and CEO of Nuveen Churchill Direct Lending Corp. (NYSE: NCDL) and Nuveen Churchill Private Capital Income Fund (PCAP). Additionally, Ken is Chairman of Churchill’s Executive Committee and a member of the Senior Lending Investment Committee.

Throughout his over 35-year career in the investment industry, he has accrued a broad range of experience in leading private credit investment businesses. Previously, Ken served as a Managing Director of The Carlyle Group, where he also served as President and a Director of Carlyle Secured Lending, Inc. (Carlyle’s publicly traded business development company). Prior to that he founded and was President and CEO of Churchill Financial Group, served as Head of Leveraged Finance for Royal Bank of Canada and was Head of Indosuez Capital, a leading middle market merchant banking and asset management business in partnership with Credit Agricole Group. Ken was also a founder of the high yield finance business at Chase Securities (now JP Morgan Chase). He began his career in the Mergers & Acquisitions Group at Drexel Burnham Lambert. He regularly appears as a guest commentator on private credit markets on Bloomberg, CNBC, The Wall Street Journal and The Financial Times. In 2023, Ken was named by Private Debt Investor as “One of the 30 ChangeMakers” who helped shape the private debt industry over the past decade.

Ken graduated with a B.S. in Business Administration, magna cum laude, from Georgetown University and a J.D. from Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law.