James R. Irwin, Jr. founded Meridian in 1997 after a twelve year career on Wall St., which included institutional sales and trading, international corporate finance, and asset securitization.

In 1986, Mr. Irwin began his finance career at Drexel Burnham Lambert ("DBL"), initially in New York and subsequently in San Francisco, in an institutional sales and trading role. Mr. Irwin created and executed the single largest individual securities transaction at DBL, structuring and trading in excess of $600,000,000 of fixed income securities through a technique of portfolio rebalancing and optimization.

Subsequent to DBL, Mr. Irwin joined Xitech, a niche investment bank and in-house financing subsidiary of the Japanese trading company, Itohchu, where he created and implemented cross-border financings on large capital assets.

After his tenure at Xitech, Mr. Irwin joined Prudential Securities in New York and San Francisco in Prudential's Secondary Markets Group. In this role Mr. Irwin identified and analyzed undervalued securities classes as well as was instrumental in the development and structuring of new classes of asset securitizations, including healthcare assets.

In 1997 Mr. Irwin founded Meridian with the mission of providing working capital to small and middle market healthcare service providers and manufacturers who were underserved by traditional lenders, a mission to which Meridian adheres today.

Mr. Irwin holds a B.A. - Economics, with a Molecular Biology minor, from the University of Colorado, Boulder, and an M.B.A. - Finance from the University of California, Los Angeles.

Mr. Irwin resides in Pacific Beach, CA with his wife Dana, and their three sons, Jack, Conor and Jimmy.