Thirty-six years building a company. A decade investing in the next ones.
Jack Cassell founded Cassell Global Investments in 2013, after selling the audiovisual company he had run since 1977. CGI takes majority positions in operating businesses and holds them.
An operator’s approach to ownership.
Cassell serves as chairman or chief executive of the companies CGI acquires - services, security, communications, infrastructure. The thesis is operating experience rather than capital: these are businesses that need running, not funding.
CGI is not a fund and does not run an open pitch process. It looks at a small number of opportunities a year.
Investments
Visual Aids Electronics — Built from three offices and twenty-five employees to a national company serving the Office of the President, the State Department, the World Bank, the IMF, the United Nations and NATO. Sold to Presentation Services, then controlled by Goldman Sachs, November 2013.
Active Shooter Response, LLC — Chairman. Acquired by SOS Technologies, 2022.
Vortex Security Solutions — Chairman and chief executive. Led the sale to Guardian Security of Pennsylvania, 2024.
Current:
CGI Brasil — A 50% interest in Vertix Telcom and a 47% interest in Mac Audio, two communications companies serving Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo.
Real estate — Commercial and residential holdings in the United States and Brazil.
Cassell has served on the American University Board of Trustees since 2003 and was its chairman from 2015 to 2019. He is now chair emeritus. In 2019 he and his wife Denise gave three million dollars toward the university’s new athletics center, and named its volleyball court after Barry Goldberg, AU’s longtime volleyball coach and a friend of the family.
In January 2026 he was inducted into the Stafford H. “Pop” Cassell Hall of Fame, named for his father and endowed by the Cassell family.
Philanthropy
CGI In The Media
The Goldberg Standard
Jack and Denise Cassell funded the university’s new volleyball court and named it for Barry Goldberg, AU’s longtime coach and a friend of the family.
Four Inductees Join AU’s Cassell Hall of Fame
Jack Cassell was inducted as a lifetime contributor in January 2026, into the hall of fame named for his father and endowed by the family.
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