Before moving into private equity, Jamal Cherry worked as a drilling and reservoir engineer for ConocoPhillips on Alaska’s North Slope, building on a Stanford petroleum engineering degree, earlier Schlumberger fieldwork, and a Ghana internship where seeing unequal access to electricity pushed him toward working on energy systems directly—experience that now shows up in his board roles at companies like OEG Energy Group, Freedom Alternative Fuel Infrastructure, and Hydria Gas Technologies. Outside of investing, he was also a standout basketball player, earning a McDonald’s All-American nomination and team captain honors in high school before playing varsity basketball at Cornell.