Scott Anderson

Partner
Womble Bond Dickinson

Scott is a business-focused attorney who delivers practical solutions for his clients. Scott listens to his clients’ goals and starts with those in mind. A strategic thinker, he regularly works with private equity principals, business owners and management teams to help them chart efficient paths through transactions, commercial negotiations and board-level decisions. Scott leads executives and deal teams on major transactions and advises businesses as general outside counsel on a daily basis. He has particular depth in technology-enabled business services, education, financial technology, engineering and other professional services. As a former management consultant in the payment systems industry, Scott also regularly works with Queen City FinTech and the Charlotte FinTech Hub.

Jim Benedict

Senior Wealth Strategist, Private Business Strategist, and Senior Vice President
PNC Wealth Management

Jim in in his 30th year working in wealth planning, corporate strategy, and taxation. He provides advice on a wide range of matters related to high-net-worth families, closely held businesses and complex estates. Jim is focused on estate planning, charitable strategies, taxation, equity compensation, retirement planning, and wealth transfer issues. He also works with business owners to integrate exit strategy into the owner’s business, personal and financial goals. Jim is particularly interested in helping families manage the non-financial dynamics associated with wealth. Jim holds an active license in North Carolina as a Certified Public Accountant, and he is a Certified Financial Planner™ professional. He also holds the Certified Exit Planning Advisor designation. Jim earned a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration with concentrations in Accounting and Managerial Law from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Jon Bostock

Operating Partner & CEO in Residence
Gridiron Capital

My wild ride (aka career) started as a fresh-faced MBA in GE's Executive Leadership Program. What I thought would be a quick resume and experience booster turned into a 11-year journey, spanning roles at GE Plastics, Water and Appliances before ultimately "settling down" with a corporate gig in Consumer Ventures at 30 Rock.

Serendipitously, this last stop at GE led me to an innovative but little-known startup in the heart of Kentucky, Big Ass Fans. After joining the company as COO and taking it to new heights over the next two years, I led a landmark sale of the business for $500 million to a private equity firm. Big Ass Fans, big-ass sale.

Inspired by the success of Big Ass Fans and motivated to create something impactful, I co-founded a disruptive cleaning start-up, Truman's, with fellow Big Ass Fans alum Alex Reed. The technology-driven company was recognized as a World Changing Idea by Fast Company, and received coverage from dozens of major outlets and publications such as Forbes, Inc, Cheddar, Good Housekeeping and many more. Nearly three years after the inception of Truman's, its game-changing technology was acquired by a multinational company.

I joined Gridiron Capital as an Operating Partner and CEO in Residence in 2021.

Throughout this exciting career, I've also become the father of two, an accomplished abstract artist and a best-selling author.

Tony Brindisi

Managing Partner
RTC Partners

Tony Brindisi is a Co-Founder and Managing Partner at RTC Partners. RTC is a private investment firm that specializes in building middle market growth platforms. Together with management partners, we build market leading companies through a combination of acquisitive and organic growth, while establishing highly professionalized corporate infrastructures that are capable of scaling organizations to the next level. Our buy-and-build strategies focus on high-growth niches of professional, business and healthcare services industries.

Scott Buschmann

Partner
Kian Capital Partners

Scott Buschmann is a Parnter at Kian Capital and is active in all aspects of Kian's investment origination, structuring, diligence and portfolio monitoring efforts. Prior to Kian, Scott was a Director in the U.S. Private Equity Group of Arcapita Inc., a global investment firm with total equity invested of approximately $9 billion, where he was responsible for sourcing, executing and managing middle-market companies. Prior to Arcapita, Scott was a Senior Analyst in the Corporate Finance group at The Robinson-Humphrey Company, a leading middle-market investment bank based in Atlanta. Scott earned a B.A. in Economics from Duke University and an M.B.A. from the Goizueta Business School at Emory University.

Jeff Chilton

CEO
Abatemaster

Expertise as a private equity partner CEO, with a core strength in business development. Always interested in creating a winning culture, while growing a sustainable business.

Tim Clepper

President & CEO
Kaulig Companies Limited

Tim is the President and Chief Executive Officer of Kaulig Companies Limited, the Single Member Family Office for Matt Kaulig and his direct family. For more than 20 years, Tim has excelled in the financial management business and holds all of his professional asset management licenses including the Series 65. Throughout his career, Tim has been responsible for the management of significant financial assets for both high net worth individuals and businesses.

Julie Dargani

Executive Vice President, Head of Mid Atlantic Corporate Banking
Woodforest National Bank

 Julie is a corporate banking and leveraged finance banking executive with a diverse background in syndicated facilities, private equity/sponsored transactions, capital markets strategies, and direct credits to middle market companies. Julie has been in finance for over 20 years, including 15 years serving the Mid Atlantic Region.  

 Julie is responsible for leading the Bank’s growth initiative in the Corporate Banking space, namely serving the Mid Atlantic region. She earned her B.A. in Marketing Communications from the University of Houston and her International Business Law degree from King’s College in London, England.

 Julie is committed to the local community and has served on several non-profit boards and committees including Girls Scouts Hornets’ Nest Council’s Advancement Committee, Young Athletes Special Olympics of North Carolina, LIFESPAN, and the British American Business Council.  She is also an active member of the Association of Corporate Growth –Charlotte Chapter and the Charlotte Economics Club. In 2018, Julie was awarded Philanthropist of the Year by LIFESPAN, an organization focused on the special needs community.  In 2020, Julie was named one of Charlotte’s 50 Most Influential Women by the Mecklenburg Times publication and was awarded the top honor.

CJ Dietzman

Managing Director
Aon Cyber Solutions

CJ is a Managing Director at Aon’s Cyber Solutions, serving as a leader and expert in the areas of Cyber Risk Management, Architecture, Security, Incident Response, and Controls.

CJ has over 20 years of experience working with enterprise clients across various industry sectors, including Financial Services, Retail, Manufacturing, Healthcare, High-Tech, Transportation, Higher Education, Private Equity, and others.

CJ led and drove the growth of the Aon’s Cyber Solutions Security Advisory Practice, in addition to leading various strategic client accounts and engagements.

Greg Draddy

Carolinas Growth Leader
Aon

Greg is responsible for growth across the Carolinas for Aon, which includes helping companies make better decisions across Risk, Health and Wealth. Greg has a diverse leadership background in the insurance industry having led teams on both the brokerage and underwriting sides of the industry.

Emir Dukic

Co-founder & CEO
Rabbu, Inc.

Emir is the CEO of Rabbu where he turned a spare bedroom above his detached garage into the genesis for a new asset class within Real Estate. Prior to founding Rabbu, Emir was a Senior Product Manager at NBC Sports which he joined as part of the acquisition of KYCK where he served as Vice President of Operations.

Emir was born in Bosnia and Herzegovina (formerly Yugoslavia), lived in Germany for 6 years and moved to the United States at the age of 12.

Hank Durschlag

Founder & Director
BOA Nutrition, Inc.

Hank Durschlag founded BOA Nutrition, Inc. in January 2020. Prior to BOA Nutrition, Hank Durschlag founded HeadTrainer, Inc., and served as a Director.

Mr. Durschlag previously served a President of Double Eagle Holdings, LLC, and as CEO of HealthSport, Inc., both R&D companies involved in the development of nutraceutical and other products for professional and amateur athletes. Hank was a founding partner and served as President of GlucoTec, Inc. (now Glytec Systems), a developer of FDA-approved software related to intravenous dosing of insulin, other medications and other fluids.

Prior to his own endeavors, Mr. Durschlag was the Vice President of Sales & Marketing for Diabetes Management Services, Inc. (DMS), a national diabetes products and service company with treatment modules focusing on acute care, and women’s health. Hank received a Bachelor’s Degree from California University of Pennsylvania, California, PA, and a Master’s Degree in Business Administration (MBA) from Clemson University, Clemson, SC.

Luis Galarza

Director - Transaction Advisory Services
RSM US LLP

Luis has built a career on becoming a trusted Deal Advisor by leveraging over 14 years of combined experience in M&A consulting, private equity, and investment banking, across the spectrum of industry verticals. Working side-by-side with leaders from across the globe in organizations of all sizes, ranging from Fortune 5 to lower-middle market, Luis has focused on capturing value throughout all facets of the M&A lifecycle. Currently, Luis is focused on the middle market, performing operational due diligence in preparation for post-merger integration, in order to position organizations for long-term, accretive growth.

Ashley Gautreaux

Director
CreativeCo

Ashley Gautreaux, Director at CreativeCo Capital, brings experience in operations and investments for high growth companies. Venture Capital has enabled her to follow her passion to empower others with ideas and capabilities to change the world as we know it. The CreativeCo mission is to provide early-stage founders with what they need most for growth - capital investment and product engineering resources. She leads investor relations, fund operations, and sources investments. Before joining VC, she spent 7 years as a leader at Tesla to help grow the organization from $204m to $24B, focusing on global acquisitions, new market expansion, and operations.

Greg Higgs

CEO
Fab Fours Inc.

Greg is the original founder of Fab Fours, an automotive aftermarket manufacturing company. Just months out of college in 2003, Higgs met an investor and never looked back. Originally intended to be a innovative brand with an outsource strategy, the company quickly had to vertically integrate to control quality and delivery. With a decade of annual double digit growth, Fab Fours now produces 100% in house in our 146,000 square foot facility, leading the North American bumper market by all metrics.

Sam Houston

Finance Director & Controller
Warn Industries, dba Fab Fours

Sam is the current Director of Finance for Warn Industries in Lancaster. He was the CFO of Fab Fours, who sold substantially all of their assets to Warn earlier in 2021. Prior to that, Sam held positions with Forest2Market in the Charlotte area including CFO and COO. Before that he spent 20 years with MeadWestavo culminating as the CFO of the Forestry Division where he helped transform that business into a Real Estate Development business.

Danny Johnson

Member
Moore & Van Allen PLLC

Danny has more than 35 years of experience with a wide range of employee benefit and executive employment matters, including public company clients in connection with their executive compensation programs and dealing with golden parachute severance issues that arise in merger, acquisition, divestiture, and corporate finance transactions. He is regularly involved with complex transactions involving ESOPs, including ESOP implementation and finance transactions, ESOP administration issues, and transactions involving the sale of ESOP-owned companies.

Michael Johnson

CEO
U.S. Brick

Robert Michael (Mikee) Johnson is a distinguished business leader and entrepreneur and a devoted community service leader in central S.C. Currently, Mr. Johnson represents US Brick as the company’s CEO in Columbia.

Growing up in Orangeburg, Mikee diligently worked his way up through the family business, Cox Industries, Inc., from a summer laborer in 1985 to CEO in 2008, driving positive impact on the growth of the business as well as developing philanthropic initiatives within his community along the way. A graduate of English & Political Science from Furman University, Mr. Johnson earned two MBAs—one from Kennesaw State University, with a focus on Family Business, and one from the Darla Moore School of Business at University of South Carolina.

Among numerous honors, Mr. Johnson was awarded South Carolina Business Leader of the Year in 2016, Order of the Palmetto in 2014, Furman University Corporate Sustainability Fellow in 2014, and selected for the Riley Diversity Leadership Initiative in 2010. He has served as Board Chair of SC Chamber of Commerce, Board Member of Palmetto Agribusiness Council, Board Chair at Palmetto Conservation Organization and Board Member for the South Carolina Chapter of The Nature Conservancy, among other civic and community leadership roles. He and his wife, Cynthia Johnson, live in Columbia and have three children, Brady, Causey, and Lilly-Rae.

Brad Jones

EVP & Charlotte Regional President
FNB Corporation

Brad Jones is the EVP and Charlotte Regional President for FNB Corp. He is responsible for overseeing the development of new business opportunities, organizing and providing leadership to FNB's regional management team in the Charlotte region. He has over 30 years of financial experience in leadership roles at large financial institutions and is very involved in the Charlotte community.

Sean Kelley

Managing Director, Business Development
Gridiron Capital

At Gridiron Capital, Sean focuses on developing new business partnerships, marketing, communicating with business owners, and managing investment sourcing and exit planning. Prior to joining Gridiron Capital, Sean served as vice president at BB&T Capital Markets in Richmond, Virginia. His responsibilities at BB&T included executing mergers and acquisitions advisory for middle-market businesses, as well as establishing and strengthening business development relationships with middle-market investors. Earlier in his career, Sean worked at Credit Suisse and Deutsche Bank.

Michael Laskowitz

Director
Aon

Michael is a Director in Aon’s M&A and Transaction Solutions practice. His role is to provide due diligence services to private equity and corporate clients as part of their acquisition activities. Michael’s focus is assessing risk insurance programs to determine the impact to the client’s valuation of the business and developing optimal risk transfer solutions.

Dillon Lewchuk

Vice President
Chartwell Financial Advisory

Dillon Lewchuk is a Vice President at Chartwell Financial Advisory, working closely with entrepreneurs to develop creative capital solutions. Prior to Chartwell Financial Advisory, Dillon worked at a variety of global Middle Market investment banks, as well as working at lower middle market private equity and mezzanine lending firms.

Matt Lindberg

Managing Partner
Plumb Line Capital

Matt founded Plumb Line Capital Partners, LLC (PLCP) and serves as Managing Partner. PLCP works with a number of long term focused investors / family offices investing, advising, operating, and helping to grow family / founder / entrepreneur owned companies. PLCP structures these deals as "direct deals" in order to bring in the most strategic investors, board members, industry experts, etc. to accelerate the growth / scale the operations of the company. PLCP works in board member / strategic / operational partnership roles to these operating companies.

Additionally, Matt is Managing Partner of Abatemaster, a leader in environmental services including asbestos surveys, inspections, & abatement, lead based paint removal, mold remediation, soda blasting, and demolition services in North Carolina, South Carolina, and Virginia for 25 years.

He has previous experience working as a private equity investor at investment firms that focused on investments in family, founder, entrepreneur, and management team owned companies where he was actively engaged as a board member in the strategy and operations of portfolio companies. Previously, he worked as an investment banker where he provided public and private companies with mergers and acquisitions and debt and equity capital raising advice.

Peter Marsh

Founding Partner
Flywheel Coworking LCC

Peter is a founding partner of Flywheel which designs and operates coworking innovation space in partnership with premier educational institutions and local community partners. We operate locations in Winston-Salem at 500 W. 5th St., and at the Cabarrus Center for Innovation in Concord, NC. We also designed and operated the coworking facility at the Hurt Hub @ Davidson before transferring operations to Davidson College.

Steve Menaker

Partner, Charlotte & NC Growth Leader
RSM US LLP

Steve has more than 30 years of experience in public accounting and joined RSM US LLP in November 2006. He currently serves as the firm’s industrial products leader. In this role, Steve coordinates and supports the firm’s commitment to these industries and RSM’s go-to-market approach. He focuses on the manufacturing sector while overseeing the various sector teams under the C&IP umbrella.

Steve serves as audit partner on numerous engagements for privately held and PEG owned companies, with a focus on manufacturers. He has performed numerous buy-side due diligence projects for private equity groups and strategic buyers and served as past president of the Charlotte, NC Chapter of the Association for Corporate Growth. He also worked on a 20-month restatement project for a multi-billion dollar company with extensive fraud and accounting irregularities.

Christine Nicodemus

Chief Product Officer
Aperture Education

Christine serves as Chief Product Officer at Aperture Education. She previously founded Ascend Goals, an EdTech company that was acquired by Aperture in early 2021. Her professional experience has largely been in digital product management, spanning transportation, travel, and financial services industries.

Joey Osborne

Former CEO
Mosquito Authority

Michael Ouyang

Vice President
Warren Equity Partners

Michael Ouyang is responsible for evaluating and executing investment transactions and managing portfolio companies at Warren Equity Partners, a private equity firm based in Jacksonville, Florida with an additional office in New York that invests in middle market companies operating primarily in North America.

Jon Perry

CEO
Specialty Products & Insulation (SPI)

Jon joined SPI in February of 2019 as the CEO, and brings with him a wealth of experience across various industries. A graduate of Worcester Polytechnic Institute and The Wharton School, he holds a BS in Mechanical/Metallurgical Engineering, as well as an MBA.

Jon Pritchett

President & CEO
BOA Nutrition, Inc.

Chad Rash

Partner, Transaction Advisory Services
BDO USA, LLP

Chad leads BDO Charlotte's Transaction Advisory Services team and is part of BDO’s Mid-Atlantic Transaction Advisory Services group. With over 19 years of experience, Chad oversees transaction service offerings throughout the transaction lifecycle including target/buyer identification, transaction readiness, diligence and execution, as well as post-transaction implementation.

R.J. Romano

Supply Chain Advisory Practice Leader
BDO USA LLP

RJ is a Managing Director in BDO’s Operational Value Creation Practice and serves as the Supply Chain Advisory Practice Leader. He has more than 18 years of experience predominately in industry in various roles working working with manufacturers, distributors, trucking companies and third-party logistics companies (3PL).

Since transitioning to consulting in 2017, RJ has led Supply Chain Advisory practices for two different consulting firms, assisting clients at various manufacturing, distribution and transportation/logistics companies focused on supply chain network design/integrations, manufacturing process improvement, distribution/transportation operations and supply chain technology implementation.

Dan Roselli

Founder
CFV Ventures

Dan is a co-founder of Charlotte's entrepreneurship center called Packard Place which was ranked as one of the 5 largest tech and innovation centers in the country and its community and alumni have raised over 2 Billion dollars in capital and created over 2,500 jobs in the Charlotte Region. Dan also co-founded the QueenCity Fintech program which is one of the top Fintech Accelerators in the World and has over 70 alumni companies with over $35M in raised capital.

Todd Taylor

Attorney
Moore & Van Allen PLLC

Todd Taylor serves as co-head of the Commercial & Technology Transactions and the Data Security & Privacy groups at Moore & Van Allen PLLC. He focuses his practice on data privacy and security, licensing, technology, supply chain and commercial transactional matters. Before joining the firm, Todd served as an in-house attorney at Bank of America, where he worked extensively on various data security, technology licensing, supply chain, cross-border and third party servicing matters.

Derek Wang

Co-Founder & CEO
Stratifyd

Dr. Derek Wang is Founder and CEO of Stratifyd, Inc. Dr. Wang earned a PhD in Computer Science from University of North Carolina Charlotte. He has held positions at Microsoft Research, Xerox, and Bank of America before becoming the Associate Director of the Charlotte Visualization Center where he worked on projects for Homeland Security and Bank of America, among others.

Chad Ware

CFO
Central States Mfg.

Chad Ware joined Central States Manufacturing in June 2018 as Chief Financial Officer. He began his career in public accounting at HoganTaylor in its audit practice, focusing on manufacturing, retail and not-for-profit industries. Mr. Ware then moved to Tyson Foods, Inc. holding various roles in internal audit and corporate accounting, including Director of Financial Reporting. Mr. Ware has a Bachelor’s degree in Accounting from Harding University and is a certified public accountant (inactive) in Arkansas.

Justin Witz

Founder & CEO
Catapult HQ, Inc.

Justin is an Iraqi War Veteran who served in the U.S. Air Force. He is the Founder & CEO of Catapult, an automated Request for Proposal (“RFP”) platform with over 1,600 companies worldwide utilizing their products to standardize there organizational experience for all types of RFx activity.