John Fees is an entrepreneur, strategic marketing executive and business leader who serves as Managing Partner of Access

Venture Group, LLC. The company has been incorporated to purchase, invest in, and operate high growth companies that

provide innovative technology and marketing solutions to consumers. 

Currently, he is the Co-Founder and CEO of NGI Group LLC (www.nextgenins.com) a national sales and marketing firm

focused on speciality insurance markets including www.GradGuard.com, which is the nations first comprehensive and

integrated insurance solution specifically designed for the collegiate market.  GradGuard offers three proprietary and

nationally available products including the Student Protection Plan featuring tuition refund insurance, student health

insurance and renters insurance each of unique value to 18,000,000 college students, their parents and the

colleges/businesses that serve them.

From 1999-2006, Fees also served as the co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Y2M: Youth Media and Marketing Networks. Y2M owned and operated College Publisher, the nation’s largest online network of college newspapers serving more than 500 colleges and universities, over 2 million subscribers and 120 national advertisers. Fees led the successful media business thru August of 2006, when he completed the sale of Y2M to Viacom’s MTV Networks. Y2M was the first company in North America to create a national university media network with commercial rights to print, online and email editions. Y2M worked with a wide variety of clients including Ford Motor Company, Sony, Samsung, AT&T, GEICO, Education Lending Group, Chase, Monster, Goldman Sachs, AOL among others.  Today the business operates as the College Media Network.
 
During the same period, Fees also co-founded Members Connect which became a consumer finance marketing company that focused on marketing education credit products (student loans, graduate and post-graduate consolidation loans and student loans for parents of university students). The company emerged as the largest affinity / partnership marketing company in the North American education finance market and today has over 180 exclusive marketing agreements with trade, professional and alumni associations throughout the USA. The company also owned and operated Ed-Loans.com, eGrad.com and BrokeScholar.com three highly regarded web sites that help college students and their families pay for and manage the cost of a college education. The company was sold in 2004 to Collegiate Funding Services, a portfolio company of Lightyear Capital.
 
From 2004-2006, Fees served as an executive officer of Collegiate Funding Services prior to and thru its public listing as on NASDAQ (CFSI) based in Virginia, USA. Collegiate Funding Services markets, originates, finances and services education loans. Since 1998, Collegiate Funding Services facilitated the origination of more than $18 billion in education loans with $4.6 billion in loans being generated in 2005. The company was acquired in March of 2006 by JPMorgan Chase (JPM).
 
During 2006, Fees served as Executive Vice President of Chase Educational Finance where he served as an executive in one of the nations’ largest student loan companies. Fees led the partnership and internet marketing business units responsible for producing approximately one billion in student loan volume in 2006. Fees is credited for pioneering the successful use of innovative business strategies including affinity and online marketing of student loans.
 
Prior to building two successful start-ups through until their acquisition, Fees served as the Senior Vice President, First USA Partners (Affinity Partners International) where he was responsible for creating affinity credit card partnerships in the collegiate and affinity market. In addition to his experience in consumer finance organizations, he also served as Membership Marketing Vice President at Student Advantage, the nations’ largest student membership organization and also served three years as the Vice President / Chief Operating Officer of the Arizona State University Alumni Association.
 
Fees is a graduate of Arizona State University, where he received a bachelors of science degree in History and also a graduate of Harvard Business School where he completed a Masters in Business Administration.
 
John Fees lives in Phoenix, Arizona and is married to Melissa Soza Fees, Ph.D.. and is the father of five children.  Fees has a keen interest in media/current affairs, Arizona history, private equity investing, anything entrepreneurial. In addition, he enjoys cooking, photography and is an out-of-form tennis and golf player.  He is also a board member of The Foundation for Blind Children and  The Spitzer Center for Ethics.