Kevin L. Passarello

Kevin L. Passarello is a Shareholder at Buchanan Ingersoll & Rooney.  Kevin also served from 2019 to 2024 as the Director of Translational Research and Development at the Biocomplexity Institute at the University of Virginia—among the world’s leading extreme scale computing and “AI” research centers, which uses an “information biology” approach to predict and explain and predict the behavior of adaptive, massively interacting systems in fields as varied as molecular science, transportation and logistics, and public policy.

At the Firm, Kevin focuses his practice on corporate finance and emerging technology companies.  Kevin leads university technology transfer initiatives, and co-chairs its Advanced Technology Group.  In addition to his legal experience, Kevin is a serial entrepreneur with a proven global operations and management record.  Kevin has been an entrepreneur-in-residence at the University of Virginia, Virginia Tech University, and Virginia Commonwealth University, as well as a director of the VCU Commercialization Fund and at Virginia Tech Intellectual Properties.  He also served for three years as the Innovation Fellow at Virginia Tech.  Kevin received his B.A. as valedictorian of St. Vincent College in 1983, where he studied philosophy and classical languages.  He earned his J.D. from Georgetown University Law Center in 1986, and then served as law clerk to the (Late) Hon. Carol Los Mansmann of the US Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.                                                             

After practicing at large law firms, Kevin went into business in 1999.  He co-founded venture-backed technology companies in the areas of enterprise software and mobile hardware with successful exits, and between them co-founded a private equity buyout fund.  Kevin served in various capacities in its portfolio companies, including as a director, President, and COO:  experiences that uniquely inform his work on behalf of Firm clients.  During his business ventures, Kevin raised capital from preeminent funds domestically and abroad, including Sequoia Capital, Hg Capital, and L Catterton, as well as from Microsoft and other corporate partners.  He co-founded and served as CEO of yet another company in 2014 focused on predictive analytics and artificial intelligence in health care, which Nihon Kohden acquired in 2021.  Kevin has hands-on international business experience in Belgium, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Mexico, the Netherlands, Singapore, Sweden, Switzerland and the UK.

Kevin’s experience encompasses emerging companies and technology transactions; corporate finance; venture capital and private equity; university technology transfer; autonomous vehicles and “agents”; intellectual property and licensing; and mergers and acquisitions.  Kevin is past President of the Windy Hill Development Corporation, which has built over 300 affordable “workforce” and elderly housing units throughout northern Virginia.  Kevin is an operating advisor to FUS Partners, the translational research arm of the Focused Ultrasound Foundation that aims to improve the lives of millions of people with series medical disorders by accelerating the development and adoption of non-invasive focused ultrasound therapies and has helped to raise over $1 billion in the last 3 years for these initiatives.  Kevin was also a director, Chairman of the Academic Affairs Committee, and member of the Executive Committee at Saint Vincent College.  He and his wife actively support the Boys & Girls Club of Central Virginia and other charities, and live on an antebellum farm in Orange County, Virginia.