Lami Ajibesin, CPA, is Managing Director of Anchin’s Transaction Advisory Services practice. She has a passion for deals and has spent the last 15 years mastering various aspects of the deal continuum, including buy- and sell-side mergers and acquisitions, infrastructure finance and private equity transactions.

She has advised on over $10 billion worth of private equity, strategic investments and secondary transactions including both LP-focused and GP-led mandates. Lami received her MBA in finance from the University of Texas at Austin’s McCombs School of Business and her B.S. in accounting from the University of Lagos, Nigeria.

Ms. Arvedlund is CEO and Managing Partner of Turning Rock Partners. Prior to founding Turning Rock Partners, Ms. Arvedlund was a Managing Director at Fortress Investment Group where she spent eight years. Fortress Investment Group is a global investment firm. While at Fortress, Ms. Arvedlund was responsible for private equity and debt investments for the Fortress Partners Fund, a multistrategy vehicle which invested across asset classes and capital structures. During her tenure at Fortress, Ms. Arvedlund served on the Investment Committee from 2010-2015. Prior to joining Fortress, Ms. Arvedlund worked at Hall Capital Partners where she held roles in the portfolio management and research divisions. Hall Capital Partners is a privately held registered investment advisory firm.

Prior to Hall Capital Partners, Ms. Arvedlund held a number of senior operating roles in several privately held businesses. Ms. Arvedlund received a BS with Honors from Vanderbilt University in Economics and an MBA in Finance from NYU’s Stern School of Business. Ms. Arvedlund serves on several non-profit boards including Summer Search New York City and is a founding memberof the NYU Stern PrivateEquity Advisory Board.

Jeff focuses his practice on advising private equity funds, venture capital funds and other institutional investors and strategic acquirers in connection with mergers and acquisitions, early- and late-stage investments, leveraged buyouts, recapitalizations, management buyouts and secondary transactions.

Jeff also provides outside general counsel to private companies, assisting with their debt and equity financings, commercial agreements, corporate governance and compliance, and employment and equity incentive matters. Jeff handles transactions in a variety of industries, including financial services, software, healthcare, retail, manufacturing, energy and aerospace. Prior to joining McGuireWoods, Jeff was an associate at large law firms in Boston and New York. While working at a previous firm, Jeff also completed a secondment in the in-house legal department at Goldman, Sachs & Co. in New York.

Brendan is a Managing Director focused on private equity sponsor coverage and a member of Capstone Partners’ Management team. In that capacity, he oversees the sourcing and execution of transactions amongst Capstone Partners’ investment banking teams.

Brendan joined the analyst program at Headwaters MB (now Capstone Partners) in 2004, immediately engaging on transaction teams working across different industries on many types of deals. He has held several roles at the firm including the management of the firm’s business development, marketing, recruiting and public relations efforts. In 2012, he was awarded 40 UNDER 40 by the M&A Advisor, an organization that recognizes and connects the world’s leading M&A professionals.

Education: Pomona College – BA – Politics, Philosophy, Economics

Claudine is a managing principal and leader of CohnReznick’s Transactions & Turnaround Advisory Practice. With more than 25 years of business experience, Claudine has developed an expertise in providing transactional advisory services, serving as an adviser to public and private companies, both domestically and internationally. She works with private equity investors, family offices alternative investment funds, lenders, family offices, and strategic investors.

Claudine’s specific advisory activities include: strategic advisory, quality of earnings analyses, identifying revenue sources and profitability drivers, examining operating cost structure and sustainability factors, investigating business models including cash flow and financial projections, reviewing quality and realization of assets and liabilities, identifying working capital requirements and negotiating positions, post-close working capital verification, and adjustment mechanisms. Claudine has advised on a number of different buy- and sell-side transactions, including standalone platforms; carve-out of business segments, product line, or facility; bankruptcy auction processes; mergers; and industry consolidations.

Prior to joining CohnReznick, Claudine served as a transactional advisory services principal at a national accounting, tax and advisory firm where she led the transactional advisory services healthcare industry group working across many sub-sectors in healthcare. Her experience includes working with hospitals, physician practices, ambulatory and outpatient clinics, healthcare service businesses, medical devices, laboratories, CROs, etc. At CohnReznick, Claudine leads the healthcare efforts for transactional advisory services.

As a private equity and M&A attorney with over 25 years of experience, Dom provides strategic and legal advice to a diverse client base for a variety of strategic transactions and corporate matters. In his role as Chair of Winston’s Transactions Department, Dom is responsible for overseeing the growth, productivity and profitability goals of the global practice. Dom is also a member of the firm’s Executive Committee.

With a diverse client base, including public and private companies, Dom DeChiara’s practice focuses on private equity, mergers & acquisitions, corporate finance and general corporate matters. As a private equity and M&A attorney with more than 25 years in practice and substantial knowledge of the middle market, he is able to develop strategies and achieve successful outcomes for a wide range of clients.

Dom represents private equity funds, family offices, and other alternative asset managers. He provides strategic and legal advice for a variety of corporate transactions, including: the structuring, negotiation, and execution of leveraged buyouts; control and non-control investments; business combinations; growth financings; joint ventures; and other strategic transactions. Dom also advises private equity investors in the management of their portfolio companies, including: follow-on acquisitions; restructurings; management incentive plans; corporate governance matters; and the implementation of exit strategies such as divestitures, public offerings, and recapitalizations.

He advises publicly held corporations in connection with a variety of transactions, including: mergers & acquisitions (both hostile and friendly takeovers); going-private transactions; tender offers; cross-border transactions; special committee matters; PIPE transactions, corporate reorganizations; corporate governance; shareholder rights plans (“poison pill”); and Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) reporting obligations and compliance matters.

Michelle Diamond, CEO of Elevate Diamond Strategy, a growth strategy and execution advisory and interim executive firm recognized by Entrepreneur Magazine, Authority Magazine, Thrive Global, CEO Journal, CFO Magazine, Philadelphia Business Journal, and the Interim Association, has 25+ years’ strategy, general management, marketing, finance, go-to-market, audit, M&A, and operations experience.

She has strong expertise in helping high growth companies scale, scenario planning, and in developing, evaluating, and implementing diverse, yet innovative growth strategies, strategic plans, and go-to-market initiatives for acceleration and long-term value creation, leading mergers and acquisitions (pre and post), identifying where to invest and then capitalizing on market opportunities through competitive advantage and differentiation, and in turnarounds/restructuring to optimize costs and overall profitability, for both domestic and global organizations.

Baran brings more than 15 years of experience in strategy development, M&A, strategic investments, and partnerships to his role at Nintex. He holds both bachelor and master degrees in computer science from North Carolina State University.

Matthew Evans, Managing Director and Head of Healthcare Finance. Mr. Evans is a Managing Director and Head of Healthcare Finance of Monroe Capital. He is responsible for relationship sourcing and the origination of new business opportunities within the healthcare industry. Mr. Evans has over 20 years of experience in healthcare finance. Prior to Monroe, he was at Principal at Beverly Capital, a healthcare focused private equity firm. He was formerly a Vice President in the Healthcare Leveraged Finance group at Madison Capital where he originated, structured and underwrote debt financing for private equity sponsored transactions. Prior to Madison Capital, Mr. Evans worked in Merrill Lynch Capital Healthcare Finance’s leveraged lending group. He earned his M.B.A. from the Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management and his B.A. in Economics from the University of Michigan.

Jan founded Arboretum Ventures on the premise that innovation is key to delivering value in healthcare, a principle she developed working in the medical device industry for over two decades. Her investments focus on promising medical technologies that enable meaningful healthcare system savings while maintaining great clinical outcomes. Jan has led and held board seats in more than a dozen investments across five funds including notable exits with HandyLab, Esperion (Nasdaq: ESPR), CardioMEMS, nVision, NxThera and NeuMoDx.

Prior to co-founding Arboretum, Jan spent 20 years in entrepreneurial healthcare companies. She was previously President & Founder of Strategic Marketing Consultants advising healthcare start-ups and major medical device companies. Jan also held key management roles in marketing, clinical research, and sales for two successful medical device start-ups, Advanced Cardiovascular Systems and Devices for Vascular Intervention. Each of these companies was acquired by Eli Lilly and became the foundation for Guidant Corporation. Earlier in her career, Jan was an engineer and product manager for Procter & Gamble.

Jan served on the National Venture Capital Association’s (NVCA) Board of Directors from 2015-2020 and in her last year, was Board Chair. During her chair term, she prioritized VC industry diversity initiatives and was instrumental in driving small business access to CARES Act financial assistance programs early in the COVID pandemic. Jan was selected to the MichBusiness Women Leaders Hall of Fame (2020), as one of Crain’s Most Influential Women (2016), and as Crain’s Newsmaker of the Year (2015). She earned a BS in Bioengineering from the University of California at Berkeley and an MBA from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.

Pat has more than 30 years of experience in the human resources industry. Before joining Asure Software, he was president and CEO of Fidelity Investment’s HR Services Division; President and CEO of Advantec; and Executive Vice President at Ceridian.

As CEO of Asure, Pat drives the company’s strong commitment to its mission of nurturing growth, which include the growth of its employees, the customer, community relationships, and their shareholders. Pat serves on the boards of SafeGuard World International and Clearfield, and as the CEO of APPD Investments.

When Pat is not building world-class companies, you’ll find him catching a Green Bay Packers game or enjoying the sunshine with his wife and sons at his Florida vacation home.

Brett Hickey has been structuring, analyzing and managing private equity, mezzanine and U.S. Government sponsored investment funds for over a decade. Prior to launching Star Mountain Capital, Mr. Hickey was the Co-Founder and President of a multi-manager platform including 4 U.S. state sponsored small business investment funds. Mr. Hickey has extensive experience performing due diligence on, selecting and building small business fund managers and has helped structure over a dozen larger funds representing a few billion dollars in assets.

Mr. Hickey formerly worked as an Investment Banker at Citigroup Global Markets in New York City (fka Salomon Smith Barney) where he covered global Asset Managers and Financial Institutions. In that role he worked on over $8 billion in completed debt and equity capital raising and restructuring transactions for leading financial institutions including BlackRock, Franklin Templeton, Neuberger-Berman, Nuveen Investments and Eaton Vance. He also served as Senior Analyst on the $16.1 billion public merger of the St. Paul Companies, Inc. and Travelers Property Casualty Corp.

Priya Cherian Huskins is a partner at Woodruff Sawyer, a full-service insurance brokerage that services clients worldwide. She is a recognized expert in D&O liability risk and its mitigation. In addition to consulting on D&O insurance matters, she counsels clients on corporate governance, including ways to reduce their exposure to shareholder lawsuits and regulatory investigations.

Priya is a frequent speaker on D&O issues. She has appeared on CNBC and been quoted in publications ranging from the Wall Street Journal to the Financial Times. She is also the author of the D&O Notebook, a blog that analyzes and summarizes issues as they arise in the areas of D&O liability, insurance, and corporate governance.

Priya serves on the board of directors of Realty Income Corporation (NYSE: O), NMI Holdings, Inc. (Nasdaq: NMIH), and Anzu SPAC (Nasdaq: ANZUU). Priya also serves on the board of Woodruff-Sawyer & Company.

Priya is a member of the advisory board of the Stanford Rock Center for Corporate Governance and is an active participant in their programs.

Prior to joining Woodruff Sawyer, Priya practiced corporate and securities law at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati. Priya has worked with both public and private technology companies through all stages of their development, including IPOs and M&A transactions.

Priya was awarded her juris doctorate with honors from the Law School at the University of Chicago. She earned her undergraduate degree with high honors from Harvard University. Priya is a member of the California Bar.

John is a partner and chair of the Health Care Transactions and Regulatory Practices of the Health Sciences Department of Troutman Pepper. Additionally, he chairs the firm’s Acute Care and Hospitals and Health Systems Practice, Group Purchasing and Buying Cooperative Practice, Long-Term Care Organizations and Pharmacy Industry practices, and is a member of the White Collar and Corporate Investigations Practice Group. John focuses his practice in corporate and health care matters. He represents financial sponsors, health care providers and suppliers throughout the supply chain on a wide range of corporate, M&A and regulatory, structural governance matters, and compliance issues.

John worked as a law clerk and as a health policy intern during law school at the Pennsylvania Department of Health, where he co wrote “Department of Health – Powers and Duties under Pennsylvania Law” (rev. 1996).

John is a contributing editor to Physicians News Digest, a regular contributor AHLA’s Health Law Digest, a contributing author to Guide to Medical Privacy and HIPAA (Thomas Publishing Group, 2002) and to The Health Laws of Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania Bar Institute (2000).

He is a member of the adjunct faculty at Drexel University Kline School of Law and teaches the Health Law Practicum in the Health Law Concentration to upper-level students. He also is a member of the Health Law Concentration’s Board of Advisors. He also has served as a faculty member of the Pennsylvania Bar Institute, the Health Law Institute, Medical Education Services, the Medical Records Institute and Lorman Education Services for programs on HIPAA privacy and security.

Robert Koven is the Managing Director of Leonis Partners, one of New York City’s top financial firms with a focus on Mergers & Acquisitions and equity capital transactions. After working for investment banks like JPMorgan and Lazard Freres, Robert Koven and his team at Leonis took techniques they learned at those large financial institutions and applied them to growing technology businesses. They found much interest in the middle market where, historically, access to premier M&A and capital advice was limited. From its founding, Leonis has grown quickly and emerged as a leader in technology M&A and capital raising.

Robert Koven continues to grow Leonis Partners, preparing a West Coast expansion to complement the company’s New York, Washington, DC, and Atlanta locations.

Kristin is a Managing Director, our National D&O and Fiduciary Product/Practice Leader and is the Head of Strategy and Sales within the Financial Services Group.

Kristin works directly with the senior legal and underwriting leadership with our insurer partners on manuscript policy language and Aon exclusive contract terms. She is directly involved with the brokering/[policy negotiation of many of our Fortune 100 D&O clients. Her D&O liability experience also includes extensive experience advising clients on IPO placements and risks. She leads our Pubic Transitions teams, including leading strategy on IPOs, direct listings, SPACs, DeSPAC, Spins and Divestitures. She serves as a senior legal resource advocating for our client on complex corporate claims. Kristin spearheads our business strategy and sales initiatives for FSG which drives our innovative solutions we are bringing to clients. Kristin also is the national leader on the exclusive endorsement of Aon as the Biotechnology Industry Organization’s (“Bio”) broker offering an executive liability business solution for Bio and it’s state affiliates’’ member base.

John has been a partner at KPMG for over 10 years providing assurance and advisory services to a global client base. He has extensive experience with cross border transactions, IPOs, acquisitions, and divestitures.

Since joining the Accounting Advisory Services Group within Deal Advisory, he has provided technical accounting advisory services to various clients on a range of technical accounting topics, including the new revenue recognition standard ASC 606 and leasing ASC 842.

Josh Moses leads Vaquero’s Chicago effort, and focuses on vertical SaaS, IoT, industrial/ transportation software and HCIT. Josh joined Vaquero with over 18 years of finance experience, most recently as a Managing Director at First Analysis Securities Corporation, where he was a lead sourcing and execution banker in the technology and health care sectors.

Prior to FASC, Josh worked at Lincoln International and William Blair working in a number of sectors, including health care, automotive and consumer. Josh graduated from the University of Chicago with a degree in History, and received an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.

As the National Leader of the Firm’s Private Equity (“PE”) Services group, Scott has spent more than 20 years working closely with clients in private equity, venture capital, investment banking, and financing industries. In this role, he coordinates the delivery of compliance and transaction advisory; IT & cybersecurity due diligence; transaction tax due diligence and structuring, valuation and specialty tax services to private equity clients and their portfolio companies. Additionally, Scott provides assistance with post-acquisition strategy, implementation and execution services.

Throughout his career, Scott has participated in more than 1,000 transaction advisory assignments. Financial and strategic clients have benefited from his guidance in all areas of mergers, acquisitions, and divestitures. Over this time, he has successfully advised clients on transactions with values ranging from less than $10 million to over $700 million. Cumulatively, Scott has participated in M&A deals with transaction values in excess of $4 billion. He also specializes in accounting for business combinations, and is a sought-after speaker and author on all aspects of M&A activities.

Scott works closely with our PE team to design and implement new service offerings focused on meeting the unique challenges and issues facing private equity and venture capital firms.

In addition to Scott’s responsibilities at Cherry Bekaert, he also serves as the Global Private Equity Industry Leader for Baker Tilly International, a global association of independent accounting and consulting firms, where provides strategic direction, guidance and collaboration on all services for private equity firms across the world.

Ms. Muller is Co-Head of Houlihan Lokey’s Special Committee and Fairness Opinion practices. She has served as a Vice Chair of the American Bar Association’s Mergers & Acquisitions Committee and as Co-Chair of the ABA’s Women in M&A Subcommittee and currently serves as a board member of the University of Pennsylvania Institute for Law and Economics. Ms. Muller is experienced in fairness opinions, related party transactions, business valuations and corporate governance. Her clients have included Google, Broadcom, NVIDIA, Liberty Media, Dropbox, and Dell.

Ms. Muller speaks frequently on corporate finance and the role of the financial advisor in M&A transactions. She has spoken at the National Institute on Negotiating Business Acquisitions, University of Pennsylvania Law School, the American Bar Association, Harvard Law School, UC Berkeley School of Law, University of Southern California and Columbia Law School. Ms. Muller also speaks regularly about increasing the participation of women in M&A and received the ABA’s Inaugural Women in M&A Leadership Award in 2021.

Raphael “Ray” Newman is a managing director and leader of the Transaction Advisory Services practice, based in the New York office. He leverages over 30 years of transaction experience advising private equity, hedge funds and strategic buyers.

Prior to joining Duff & Phelps, Ray served as a partner in Arthur

Andersen’s Transaction Advisory Services practice. Before that, he held the title of director of worldwide accounting and finance for Home Box Office. Earlier in his career he was a manager at Viacom and he started his career at Deloitte & Touche.

Ray has led numerous transactions with an aggregate value of more than $100 billion. He advises his clients in a wide array of industries, including manufacturing, distribution, transportation, retail, healthcare, technology, printing, publishing, automotive, logistics media and entertainment services. Ray has also acted as an advisor to his clients on U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) matters, provided expert witness testimony on technical accounting matters and has been an arbitrator on purchase price and other accounting disputes.

Ray received an MBA in finance and international business with a sub-concentration in marketing from New York University’s Stern School of Business. He also holds a B.S. in accounting from Yeshiva University’s Syms School of Business. He is a Certified Public Accountant licensed in New York. Ray is a member of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants and the New York State Society of Certified Public Accountants. He also holds FINRA Series 63 and 79 licenses.

Mitch Nussbaum is the vice chair of Loeb & Loeb and serves as co-chair of the firm’s Capital Markets and Corporate Department. His practice focuses on representing emerging growth companies and investment banks in initial public offerings of operating companies and SPACs, follow-on public offerings, shelf takedowns, registered direct placements, PIPEs and other private placements (144A, Reg D, Reg A, Reg S, etc.). Mitch also regularly represents public companies regarding their SEC and NYSE or Nasdaq listing compliance and has acted as outside general counsel, including corporate, securities, M&A litigation and business counseling, to hundreds of private and public companies as well as their officers and directors.

He also negotiates and documents acquisitions, mergers, going-private transactions, reverse mergers, proxy contests, tender offers, control contests, fund formations and secured lending financings and has represented issuers and underwriters in hundreds of SPAC public offerings and business combinations for over 20 years. Mitch was responsible for developing the groundbreaking IPAC, which features many of the benefits of the SPAC, but offers increased flexibility on pricing and deal structure, along with a more rapid transaction cycle.

Kison Patel is the Founder and CEO of Agile M&A, a project management framework for M&A. With a decade of experience as an M&A advisor, Kison devotes his time realizing and building solutions for more innovative, efficient and people-driven M&A.

Through developing technology, educational content and industry training, Kison aims to bring better project management to an industry with growing market pressures, transaction values, and competition.

Nancy A. Peterman is Chair of the Chicago Restructuring & Bankruptcy Practice. She focuses her practice on complex corporate restructurings and M&A transactions involving special situations and distressed companies, whether implemented in court or out of court. Nancy has represented private equity funds, debtors, sellers, purchasers, investor groups, and creditors in these matters. Nancy has experience in numerous industries, including manufacturing, real estate, retail, and gaming, with a particular focus on health care.

Anne is a Principal on the Private Equity and Junior Capital team at Churchill Asset Management. Her responsibilities include origination and portfolio management activities for private equity funds, mezzanine capital and direct equity co-investments. Previously, Anne was a Senior Director on the Private Equity and Junior Capital team at Nuveen. Ms. Philpott joined TIAA in 2005 and began her career as an Associate in the Private Placements group. As part of the Private Placements team she acted as a lead originator and portfolio manager for a variety of domestic and international high grade corporate debt investments.

Anne holds a B.S. in Economics from the University of Pennsylvania, and is a CFA charter holder and member of the CFA Institute.

Chris Rasmussen is a partner and business lawyer with Foley & Lardner LLP. He represents clients in transactional matters throughout all stages of the corporate life cycle, with a focus on mergers and acquisitions (M&A), joint ventures, securities, finance, corporate governance (including tax-exempt not-forprofit organizations), and general commercial transactions. Mr. Rasmussen represents clients across a range of industries, including financial services; insurance; sports, media and entertainment; food and beverage; technology; construction; health care; and manufacturing. He is a member of the firm’s Manufacturing, Sports, International, and Food & Beverage Industry Teams.

Eklavya Saraf is Nasdaq’s Global Head of SPAC listings and a Managing Director of new listings. In his role, he advises companies on the process and benefits of listing on Nasdaq. Eklavya coaches early stage companies to leverage Nasdaq’s resources, and optimize financing opportunities and brand visibility. Eklavya helps develop Nasdaq’s relationships with investors, law firms, and other capital markets constituents. Some of Eklavya’s recent transactions include Warner Music Group, Tradeweb, Vroom and Peloton.

Scott is CEO of DC Advisory US, with more than 35 years’ experience in investment banking, M&A divestitures and corporate restructurings.

Scott was the Founder of Signal Hill in 2002, which was acquired by Daiwa (DC Advisory’s parent company) in 2018. Prior to that, he led Alex.Brown – one of the premier media and communications practices on Wall Street in the 1990s. He holds a BA from Boston College and an MBA from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, and serves as a trustee of The Sheridan Foundation and The Committee for Economic Development.

Scott says: “What better calling in life than to advise growth economy clients that change the world. We deliver and make a difference.”