Committee

Pete Aden is a partner focused on providing tax, and consulting services for businesses in the construction and real estate industry, and professional services organizations. His experience in the construction and real estate industry runs deep, having specialized in serving the industry since 1999. Pete is very active in community organizations and was recognized by the Colorado Society of Certified Public Accountants (COCPA) as an Everyday Hero in 2017 for the difference he has made in others’ lives and the contributions he has made to developing the next generation of certified public accountants. 

Pete currently serves as Wipfli’s Rocky Mountains Market Leader. In that role, he oversees a team of professionals who provide audit, tax and consulting services to businesses, organizations and individuals in Colorado. Pete is responsible for driving the overall financial results of the market, client development and retention, Wipfli’s brand and value proposition in the marketplace and community engagement.

Certifications

• Certified Public Accountant
• Certified Construction Industry Financial Professional

Professional memberships and activities

• American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) - Member
• COCPA - Member
• CFMA - Member
• Institute of Certified Construction Industry Financial Professionals (ICCIFP) - Member
• Titan100 – Board Member

Ted Brown is a Lockton Partner, as well as, President of Risk Solutions for the West series, and is responsible for the strategic growth and investments of our largest P&L. Ted is also accountable for the growth and performance of our Real Estate and Development practices as well as his client’s balance sheet protection and the overall client experience.

Anthony Chirikos is a Founding Partner of Snow Peak Capital and a member of SPC’s Investment Committee.  Anthony is involved in all aspects of SPC activities, including establishing strategic direction, originating and executing transactions, overseeing investment operations and providing firm oversight. Anthony brings substantial experience to SPC, having led or been involved with several acquisitions and divestitures over the course of his career, and having served as a Director of numerous private companies.

Prior to co-founding SPC, Anthony was a Managing Director for The Gores Group where he was responsible for evaluating, structuring and executing acquisitions, leading due diligence efforts, arranging financing transactions and overseeing portfolio company exits. Prior to joining Gores in 2004, Anthony worked for Jefferies & Company, where he focused primarily on leveraged finance transactions and mergers & acquisitions assignments. Mr. Chirikos earned a B.S. in Economics, graduating summa cum laude from The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

Carlos Elizondo has an accomplished career spanning over 25 years of corporate finance, advisory, special situations and operations experience. Mr. Elizondo is currently the Head of Originations for the Pacific Southwest Region of PNC Business Credit and a Senior Vice President with PNC Bank. He is responsible for a team of business development officers located in Austin, Dallas, Houston, and Los Angeles whose coverage responsibilities include private equity firms and middle-market companies located in the Western US. His team is tasked with originating asset-based and cash flow loans as part of the senior secured lending arm of the bank. Mr. Elizondo is a respected leader and has advised clients through all economic and corporate life cycles, bringing to bear his strong relationships and a diverse range of experiences across multiple industries and disciplines.

Mike Franson is an experienced financial advisor who has worked with a variety of middle-market businesses in both the public and private sectors. Over the course of his career, Mike has completed over 100 transactions with a total value exceeding $4.0 billion. He co-founded St. Charles Capital (SCC), a top M&A boutique headquartered in Denver, where he served as President & CEO, leading the firm to 25 investment bankers. In 2014, SCC was sold to KPMG, and Mike became the Global Head of TMT M&A, overseeing a team of 200 investment bankers focused on middle-market TMT M&A across 80 countries.

Mike has also led SCC's merchant banking efforts, investing in growth, buyout, and recapitalization transactions. He continues to hold investments in several of these transactions and serves as an active board member for Outlast Technologies GMBH and Chairman of Slumber Cloud. Mike successfully exited a private equity investment in Adam's Polishes in 2020, where he served on the board of directors. He was the lead M&A advisor to CoorsTek from 2003 to 2019, advising on over $1.3 billion in transactions and helping to build the company into a global market leader with ~$1 billion in annual revenue.

Currently, Mike serves as lead director of the board of directors of Northwest Pipe Company (NWPX), a publicly traded company and market leader in North America manufacturing large-diameter steel water transmission pipe and precast concrete pipe. He has also served on eleven other for-profit boards, including three other public company boards.

For the past 22 years Beverly Gibson has been one of the leading Business Performance Advisors at Insperity, helping companies implement HR and business performance solutions. As a CBPA, Bev acts as a key business consultant to her clients. During her tenure with Insperity, she has been a perennial member of the Insperity Chairman's Club and attained the level of the eleven-million-dollar club.

Scott Gotshall is the CEO / Head of Personal Genome Diagnostics (PGDx), a cancer genomics company that was acquired by Labcorp in Feb '22. PGDx was formed out of Johns Hopkins in 2010 and provides comprehensive genomic profiling products in services, which are both tissue and blood-based. Previously, Scott led the legal and business management functions at PGDx and helped drive this acquisition which was >25+ revenue. Prior to PGDx, Scott spent close to 10 years as a legal and operations leader at Roche Diagnostics, served as Corporate Counsel at a tech company, and worked a law firm as a corporate law focused on M&A transactions.

Empowering Futures, Enlightening Minds: Guiding Wealth Creation through Comprehensive Education and Unparalleled Access to Global Capital Markets.

Karen Hayward is an author, international speaker and a Managing Partner and CMO with Chief Outsiders, where she is responsible for building and supporting a team of world-class marketers. Located in the San Francisco Bay Area, Karen matches mid-market CEOs and Private Equity Portfolio managers with the best-fit Chief Marketing Officers to help accelerate top line growth.

Her book “Stop Random Acts of Marketing” takes the learnings from her previous experience as a VP in both Sales and Marketing and shows mid-market CEOs how to build a strategic growth plan in the digital age to deliver compelling ROI.

Carolina Hensley has spent almost her entire career focused on investing in family-owned and founder-driven businesses. She has experience along the entire capital structure, from a brief stint as a commercial lender, a few years as a mezzanine debt lender, and for the past 12 years she has been with Progress Equity Partners, an independent private-equity firm in Denver. Being involved in the deal process from sourcing to portfolio management and the eventual exit, she really enjoys meeting entrepreneurs and working alongside them and their teams as they plan and execute on their strategic vision.

Tracie brings over 19 years of experience in private equity marketing, communications, and origination as the Director of Marketing; Tracie leads the day-to-day execution of Excellere's marketing and communications strategies and overall brand strategy. These initiatives include balancing creativity with analytical skills while supporting the firm’s origination efforts and investment opportunities.

Lisa Kislak is a fractional CMO with Chief Outsiders, an executive as a service company recognized as a top private company by Inc. 5000 for the past nine years. She is a growth expert having worked across a variety of B2B and B2C industries including private equity, family owned, public and startup companies. She also has her Level 1 Sommelier Certification.

I have over three decades of B2B experience and PE investment. I currently lead KTC Instruments and I am an Operating Partner in a private equity firm. My board tenure spans multiple organizations, focusing on audit and compensation committees. I write on value-based management, executive compensation, and strategy alignment, championing sustainable growth

Lee is managing partner of Smart Business Network Inc., a national events, media and marketing company founded in 1989, primarily responsible for expanding the company’s Aspire deal-making conference throughout the U.S. He plays a key role in establishing corporate policies and developing long-term strategy and growth plans. Previously, he founded and chaired the Growth Group at national law firm Arter & Hadden LLP (now Tucker, Ellis & West), which focused on working with middle-market and high-growth technology companies. 

A Colorado native and serial entrepreneur leads an LED lighting company that combines software with best-in-class installation. Under his leadership, NSES has earned the Xcel Energy Efficiency Partner Award for six consecutive years, from 2017 to 2023. He was honored as a Denver Business Journal Who’s Who in Energy for 2018-2019. He is a Rice University graduate.

With 20 years of Hospitality experience as an owner/operator of 14 bars and restaurants in Illinois, Wisconsin and North Carolina, Matt took that knowledge and understanding of consumer trends and in 2013 launched Crafthouse Cocktails. Along with co-founder Charles Joly, Matt brought to market the first super premium Ready-to-Drink/Ready-to-Serve bottled cocktails. Still independently owned, they have expanded to over 20 markets and have national partnerships with Virgin Voyage cruise line, Amtrak and Ambassador Theatre Group.

Taylor Merritt is Chairman and CEO of the Merritt Family Enterprise, a values-driven organization in its third generation of stewardship by the Merritt family. The organization consists of manufacturing companies, as well as diverse investment holdings, primarily in commercial real estate and private equity. Taylor has been recognized personally as a Colorado Titan 100 honoree, as well as a Family Business Magazine CEO to Watch.

Marcia leverages over 10 years of financial services expertise and 20 years in business advisory to guide clients through complex deals. Drawing from 100+ service offerings, including tax, advisory, and attest, she works closely with business owners, CFOs, and executives. Marcia has extensive experience across private equity, real estate, healthcare, and SaaS industries, among others.

Michael Nolan is the Development Director – Private Equity and Quality of Sales at Sales Xceleration. He is responsible for building relationships with private equity sponsors and helping their portfolio companies grow their topline performance to build value creation and accelerate performance. Michael and his team leverage a collective of 110 sales leaders with portfolio company experience to help their companies grow 32% in year 1, resulting in $1.7B in revenue growth. Their focus is to drive significant growth through strategy formulation, process development, and effective execution in pre-acquisition due diligence, value acceleration during the hold period, and value maximization to support successful exits.

Gregory "Greg" Ramos has more than 25 years of experience helping companies large and small execute on their strategic vision through mergers and acquisitions, strategic business transactions, corporate reorganization and succession planning. Greg has closed more than 90 M&A transactions in that time, with an aggregate value exceeding $13 billion, and numerous private offerings aggregating hundreds of millions of dollars.

Alex Rich is an experienced business transformation leader with extensive expertise designing and deploying strategic programs that produce meaningful results. He has partnered with leaders across the healthcare verticals to solve business challenges and grow the bottom line.

Alex has worked with dozens of health systems and healthcare providers to reimagine how services are delivered to patients, how payments and contracts are structured with insurers, and how operational systems and processes are designed. As an advisor on mergers and acquisitions transactions, he partners closely with executives and investors to determine how best to optimize their portfolio of assets – from consolidations and dispositions to acquisitions and integrations.

Alex worked with Platinum Equity’s portfolio operations team to improve the performance of their holdings. He most recently served as vice president of transformation at LifeScan, a market leader in glucose monitoring owned by Platinum.

Before focusing on healthcare and private equity portfolio improvement, he served a variety of Fortune 50 clients within Deloitte Consulting’s Strategy & Operations group and completed a commercial rotational program at British Petroleum.

Alex earned a bachelor’s degree of business administration in finance from the University of Texas at San Antonio.

Dr. Afshin Safavi is a founder, CEO, councilman, consultant, board member, scientist, entrepreneur, and investor in biotechnology, pharmaceutical, animal health, technology, and real-estate sectors with multi-billion-dollar turnovers in biological products and is responsible for multiple drug products in the market today. He has founded Colorado Health & Tech Centers (CHTC) and BioAgilytix Labs, one of the most successful multi-billion-dollar Contract Research Organizations (CRO) known internationally.

He has extensive experience establishing and leading teams in pharmaceutical and manufacturing companies. Before founding Colorado Health & Tech Centers (CHTC) and BioAgilytix Labs, he worked for various organizations, including AAIPharma, Bayer Biologicals, Talecris BioTherapeutics (Grifols), Nobex Corporation, GlaxoSmithKline, and IGEN International.

Dr. Safavi obtained his B.S. in Biochemistry from UCLA and his Ph.D. in Biochemistry from the University of Kentucky Medical School. He completed a two-year postdoctoral assignment at the Emory University, Department of Pathology.

Jenna Schlageter is the Head of Business Development for the AEA Growth team. In her role, she is responsible for deal origination, sourcing strategies, marketing, and relationship management.

Prior to AEA Growth, Jenna led business development for Bow River Capital’s Private Equity strategy, where she focused on service companies in tech-enabled business, industrial, and healthcare end markets. Prior to Bow River Capital, Jenna spent 14 years in banking roles at BMO and NBH Capital Finance, providing financing solutions to closely held businesses and private equity firms for growth capital, leveraged buyouts, recapitalizations, and syndications.

Jenna holds a B.S. from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio.

Chad brings two decades of experience investing in private and public businesses. Prior to founding Black Lake, he was at leading private equity firms HIG Capital and AEA Investors, which manage over $60B collectively. He also invested in long/short global equities with SAC Capital and Tiger Cub, Fox Point Capital. Chad began his career as a management consultant with McKinsey & Company. He earned an MBA with Honors from the Wharton School and a BS in Chemical Engineering with Distinction from the University of Wisconsin.

Mark Spiecker is President of STAQ Pharma, a 503B Outsourcing Facility in Columbus, OH and Denver, Colorado that will provide sterile injectable compounded medications to hospitals across the country. Prior to joining STAQ, Marks’s career spanned a number of strategy and leadership roles. In each role Mark utilized his passion for business development, process improvement and innovative operations to successfully guide complex organizations through significant change.

Mark is the former CEO of Sharklet Technologies, Inc. a medical device firm that developed a texture inspired by Sharkskin to control bacteria on surfaces. Mark exited Sharklet to a Bioscience group out of China, providing significant returns to shareholders. Mark is an active community leader, currently serving as a Chair and Board Member of the Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce, a Trustee at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. Prior to 2019, Mark served as Chair of the Board of the Colorado Biosciences Association.

Founder of a private capital firm that employs industry-specific skillsets to make strategic investments in distressed and turnaround situations and merger and direct investments in private and pre-public companies.

Bo Sutton is a Co-Founder and Partner of Liftout Capital and has nearly 15 years of private investing experience. Prior to co-founding Liftout Capital, Mr. Sutton was a Director at Bow River Capital where he led acquisition and sale transactions focused on Business and Industrial Services. He served on numerous boards and was Chairman of Ocean Tomo.

Prior to Bow River, Mr. Sutton worked as a private equity real estate investor, investing in distressed real estate debt at Platform Ventures and agricultural real estate at Resource Land Holdings.

Mr. Sutton currently serves on the Board of Directors for the Young Americans Center for Financial Education.

Mr. Sutton earned an MBA with an emphasis in Finance and a BS in International Business, both from the University of Colorado. Mr. Sutton is a CFA Charterholder.

Lyle Wallace has more than 20 years of experience counseling corporations and private equity clients through acquisitions, dispositions, and mergers, both domestic and international. He has represented clients in more than two hundred transactions during his career and has developed a reputation not only as a talented legal practitioner, but also a practical problem-solver.

Russ is an experienced CFO consultant with a strong background in business and complex securities valuation. He is passionate about supporting owners’ financial infrastructure, reporting, and planning to achieve long-term business growth.

Russ maintains an active presence in the Denver non-profit community, helping charitable organizations lead from the front while optimizing fundraising and operations. He is an active partner with Social Venture Partners Denver, and legacy member of Denver Children’s Foundation. Outside of the office, Russ enjoys the outdoors, fly fishing and backcountry snowboarding.