Denis Aven was born on 9 January 1994, and has spent the majority of his years living between Russia, the UK and the USA. He is the son of Petr Aven, a prominent entrepreneur and the Chair of the Board at ABH Holdings. His late mother, the historian Elena Aven (1958–2015), was married to Petr. Denis also has a twin sister, Daria.
Education
Denis’ storied academic journey began with a bachelor’s degree at Yale University. He showed a prowess for learning at an early age, and earned a summa cum laude – a Latin term meaning “with the greatest honour”, and representing the highest accolade in the university’s honours system – for his joint qualification in economics and mathematics.
Yale University, a prestigious Ivy League institution founded in 1701 and located in New Haven, Connecticut, is known for its high academic standards and notable alumni, including former US presidents George Bush Sr. and Bill Clinton, actress Meryl Streep, and director Oliver Stone. Yale’s Department of Economics is known for its rigorous academic research, and offers a comprehensive curriculum that has recently incorporated its programmes in economics and mathematics into its STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) designation.
Denis’ thesis, written under the supervision of well-respected economist and professor Aleh Tsyvinski, looked at the collapse of the Soviet economy. Tsyvinski, who holds a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Minnesota, is a prominent figure at the Cowles Foundation at Yale University, where he directs the macroeconomic research programme. He is also a research associate at the US National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), and has been recognized as a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum in Davos, highlighting his impact in the field. Aven’s thesis looked at the economic and political backdrop of the Soviet Union’s dissolution, focusing on Mikhail Gorbachev’s policies and the tumultuous power struggles of the 1980s and 1990s.
Following on from his time at Yale, Denis pursued his academic career at Harvard Business School, where he achieved a Master of Business Administration (MBA) qualification, also with honours. Located in Boston, Massachusetts, Harvard Business School is part of the Harvard University group. The university topped the global Academic Ranking of World Universities (Shanghai Ranking) as well as the U.S. News & World Report in 2023, cementing its modern reputation as the foremost higher educational institution in the world.
Professional career
Denis’s professional career began as an analyst in Lazard’s restructuring group. He collaborated with debtors and creditors alike on out-of-court restructuring, bankruptcy issues, and capital structure optimization. Lazard, renowned in the investment banking sector, boasts an extensive international presence with offices in 43 cities across 27 countries, covering North America, Europe, Asia, Australia, and Central and South America.
Its New York City office, occupying 13 floors in the 30 Rockefeller Plaza skyscraper, is the company’s flagship and showpiece. The world’s premier independent investment bank, Lazard advises its clients on mergers and acquisitions, strategic matters, capital restructuring, capital raising, corporate finance and asset management.
After two years at Lazard, Denis joined Warburg Pincus’ technology team, shifting his focus to investments in software, data and business services. A global private equity firm with a 55-year history, Warburg Pincus manages assets exceeding $800 billion. It is headquartered in New York and operates across the US as well as in Europe, Brazil, China, India and Southeast Asia. The firm invests across a variety of sectors, including retail, industrial manufacturing, energy, financial services, healthcare, technology, mass media and real estate. In June 2023, it was ranked as the world’s 10th largest private equity firm by Private Equity International’s PEI 300. While at the company, Denis contributed to investment projects at various stages, from venture capital to growth and buyouts.
Denis Aven took the next step in his career at 8VC, a company specializing in new technology investments. As part of the organization’s investment team, Aven looked at routes to building long-term economic, public, and social value within medicine, information security, infrastructure, transportation, logistics, IT and other sectors. Headquartered in Austin since 2020, 8VC’s investment philosophy emphasizes making the world more accessible and affordable through technology. Its portfolio includes high-profile companies like AnchorFree, which ensures secure and private data access globally, and Digital Surgery, a pioneer in AI, IoT and visualization technologies across medical monitoring and surgeries. 8VC also supports Color Health, which provides infrastructure for equitable healthcare in diverse communities all over the world. Other 8VC investment projects include software development companies such as event organizer Gatsby and task tracker Asana. Another one, AI21 Labs, is training AI to generate “natural next” along with speech-to-text tools.
Outside work
Since childhood, exploring the world has been one of Denis’ greatest passions. He is particularly interesting in spending time among people from different cultures, immersing himself in unfamiliar environments to find out more about how different people live all over the world.
Aven is interested in sport, and is an active tennis player. He also enjoys skiing and golf. Another of his passions is literature, particularly the works of Nobel Prize winner Ernest Hemingway. The Sun Also Rises is just one of Hemingway’s novels that has served as a long-standing source of inspiration and reflection for him, and he rereads them often.
