For 10 years, Lacey Hunter Wismer ’95 served as managing director at her father’s firm, Hunter Trust, in Minneapolis. But “extra thinking time” during COVID-19 motivated her to take her career in a new direction.

      “I invest with entrepreneurs and partner with them, and I’m always inspired by their stories of what motivates them,” she says. “I decided I wanted to do something more entrepreneurial myself. I think that bug was inside me, but it was dormant for a while while I was raising my kids and pretty happy at a family office position.”

      So what did something more entrepreneurial look like for her? It meant starting a fund, Wismer says. She launched Hunter Search Capital in August 2020, “the first female-founded investment fund to invest in the lower middle market through search funds and other entrepreneurship through acquisition (ETA) vehicles.” Women are the company’s target market.

      “We’ve seen a lot of change in the last four years,” Wismer says. “In our space, typically women have only represented 5–10% of those who pursue this form of entrepreneurship, but that number just shot above 10% for the first time in 2024. So it’s slow, slow changes, but our goal was definitely to hit gender parity.”

      Having a primary focus on women was a carefully constructed strategy based on Wismer’s deep knowledge of women’s strong interpersonal leadership skills.

      “Women are really good at this form of entrepreneurship,” she says. “They form very good connections with the people selling their businesses. They’re good at motivating their management team and employees to buy into their vision.”

      The most exciting part of Wismer’s work is watching women flourish, step by step, as first-time CEOs, she says. “It takes a while, there are bumps in the road, and it’s not for the faint of heart for sure. But when they have a little success and there’s total buy-in to what they’re doing,” it’s extremely gratifying for both Wismer and her clients.

      “One woman runs a pediatric therapy business that does autism, speech, and occupational therapies for kids,” she says. “They had turned a nonverbal patient into being able to speak some, and she listened as he said to his parents for the first time, ‘I love you.’ There’s a lot of different reasons why they might light up as an entrepreneur and get really excited, but those are the best moments for sure.”

      Moreover, women who succeed in this space will serve as examples, galvanizing other women to take a similar direction.

      “It’s important to tell someone, anyone—I have two daughters—that you can do anything you want to do,” Wismer says. “There’s no reason you can’t do something you see other people doing, even if they don’t look like you. We believe really deeply in that and want women to understand that this is a path they can choose.”

      With her story, Wismer hopes to inspire Taft’s young women to orient themselves toward business school entrepreneurship and finance classes, and that they can begin to set those plans in motion right now.

      “I want women to understand that they can work towards this path as young as high school—that’s where we want to see women making those decisions for themselves—and to know that entrepreneurship means more than just starting a company,” she says. “There’s tremendous value to be had in buying and running a company—not just self-fulfillment, but financial gain and leadership skills and so many great things that come along with it.”