David Grain’s private equity firm, Grain Management, employs 27 people here and he’s raised more than $100 million to support its operations. But he’s managed to keep a low Sarasota profile—which will be harder now that he’s been appointed to President Obama’s National Infrastructure Advisory Council. Grain is the wireless communications expert on the council. (He came to Sarasota originally to rebuild troubled cell tower firm Pinnacle Towers, turning it into Global Signal, which eventually sold for $5.7 billion.) Grain says the council’s task is to work with Homeland Security to identify and prevent threats to the nation’s physical and cyberspace infrastructure. "It’s really the intersection between business and politics," he says.

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