Private Equity Fast Pitch

Lauren is a Partner at MiddleGround where she is responsible for transaction sourcing and management of the Investment Team with John Stewart. Prior to founding MiddleGround, Lauren spent more than ten years executing transactions as an investment banker and private equity investor.    She started her career in investment banking as part of the Financial Institutions Group at Banc of America Securities and then moved to Macquarie Capital to help launch a private capital markets platform. She subsequently spent 6 years at Monomoy Capital, where she was a Director on the transaction team and served on the Board of Directors for three portfolio companies.    Lauren received a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration from the Kenan-Flagler Business School at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (go Tarheels!) as well as an MBA with Honors from Columbia Business School (go whatever Columbia's mascot is!).   While Lauren is now a certified New Yorker, her native Iowa roots are easily identifiable thanks to her love of corn. She and her husband, Brian, are the proud parents of two girls, Maddie and Cece. Lauren likes to spend her spare time golfing, is the worst FIFA 2019 soccer player on the Investment Team and is currently the tallest member of the firm. 000000DE 000000DE 000028E3 000028E3 000FD93E 000FD93E 00007C5F 0000790E 00010292 00010292

Brett Hickey is the Founder & CEO of Star Mountain Capital, LLC, a $1+ billion AUM specialized U.S. lower middle-market investment firm. Star Mountain employs a data-driven approach to provide value-added debt and equity capital to established small and medium-sized companies leveraging its large market expertise, scale-driven resources, and longstanding relationships. With approximately 30 full-time people and over 25 operating partners and advisors, Star Mountain brings proven large market expertise to help business owners maximize value. Star Mountain’s team and partners include former senior executives from GSO / Blackstone, Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, Credit Suisse, and Citigroup. Star Mountain provides flexible capital solutions including debt and equity for business owners and has a strategic primary and secondary fund business through which it invests in over 250 U.S. private businesses. This secondary business provides early liquidity to investors in U.S. lower middle-market credit and equity funds. Star Mountain’s in-house technology team has built proprietary systems to support its data-driven approach to maximize value for investors and business owners alike. Star Mountain is a trademarked brand, including “Investing in the Growth Engine of America ®” and Star Mountain’s distinctive “Collaborative Ecosystem ®” includes hosting and participating in 100+ events per year. Star Mountain’s Charitable Foundation supports career development form women, veterans, and athletes as well as health & wellness initiatives including cancer research. Prior to becoming a principal investor starting in the early 2000s, Mr. Hickey was an Investment Banker at Salomon Smith Barney / Citigroup Global Markets in New York City where he covered global Asset Managers and Financial Institutions. In that role, he analyzed asset managers and asset classes, ultimately working on over $20 billion in completed strategic acquisitions and capital raises. Mr. Hickey’s board memberships include member and former Chairman of Networks for the NYC Chapter of the Young Presidents’ Organization (YPO), Global Board of Harvard Alumni Entrepreneurs, and Global Board of Help for Children (HFC). Mr. Hickey received a Bachelor of Commerce with Distinction from McGill University (Finance Major and Accounting Concentration) and is an alumnus from Harvard Business School’s Owner/President Management executive leadership program. He is a frequent guest lecturer on industry panels and at academic institutions. Mr. Hickey is also a former Canadian national gold medalist and North American medalist in speed skating. Mr. Hickey is married with two children and lives in New York. 00000370 0000036E 0000B524 0000B524 00025F0A 00025F0A 00007EB8 00007EAB 00005829 000071E0

Bob Grady, is a seasoned private equity executive with over two decades of experience. Prior to joining Gryphon, he spent five years as General Partner and Managing Director of the Cheyenne Capital Fund, a $500 million private equity fund that achieved top-decile performance among similar vintage private equity fund-of-funds.     Over the same time period, Mr. Grady was Chairman, as a non-paid volunteer, of the New Jersey State Investment Council, which oversees the state’s $78 billion pension plan. During his tenure as Chairman, the fund significantly outperformed its expected rate of return and its policy benchmarks, achieving over $35 billion in investment gains and income over four fiscal years.   From 2000-2009, Mr. Grady was a Partner, Managing Director, and Global Head of Venture & Growth Capital at The Carlyle Group. In addition to sitting on Carlyle’s Management Committee, he was the fund head for Carlyle Venture Partners, a growth capital partnership with $1.5 billion under management in three funds, while also sitting on numerous Carlyle investment committees and portfolio company boards of directors. While at Carlyle, he was a Director of the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA), where he also served as Chairman. Before his tenure at Carlyle, Mr. Grady spent seven years at Robertson Stephens & Co., including as a Partner and Managing Director who served on the firm’s Management Committee.   Earlier in his career, from 1989-1993, Mr. Grady served in the White House as a senior policy advisor to President George H.W. Bush. He held a number of key roles, among them Deputy Assistant to the President, Executive Associate Director of the Office of Management & Budget (OMB), and OMB Associate Director for Natural Resources, Energy and Science.   Mr. Grady also served on the faculty of the Stanford Graduate School of Business from 1993-2004 as a Lecturer in Public Management, teaching courses on environmental policy, regulatory policy, and investing in highly regulated industries. Mr. Grady holds an A.B. from Harvard College and an M.B.A. from the Stanford Graduate School of Business. He has been a Director of numerous private and public companies and non-profit organizations. He is currently a Director of Maxim Integrated Products (Nasdaq: “MXIM” and Stifel Financial Corporation (NYSE: “SF”), as well as a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. 00000422 00000421 0003004C 0003004C 0003E4F0 0003E4F0 00007F9B 00007F41 0001E5EB 00008A43

Marshall Adkins joined Raymond James in 1995 and serves as the head of the firm’s Energy Investment Banking practice. Marshall Adkins joined Raymond James in 1995 and serves as the head of the firm’s Energy Investment Banking practice. Prior to this role, Mr. Adkins served as the director of Energy Research and focused on oilfield services and products. Prior to Raymond James, he spent 10 years in the oilfield services industry as a project manager, corporate financial analyst, sales manager, and engineer. He holds a B.S. degree in petroleum engineering and an MBA from the University of Texas at Austin. 00000143 00000143 00006988 00006915 0000812F 0000812F 000081C5 000081C5 0001100A 0001100A

Joe Linnen is a Partner of The Jordan Company. He is also a member of the firm's Executive Committee. Joe joined TJC in 1993. He focuses all of his time on sourcing, originating and evaluating transactions on behalf of TJC. ​He serves on the board of directors of Worldwide Clinical Trials and CFS Brands. Joe is Chairman Emeritus of the La Lumiere School Board of Trustees and he was Co-Chairman of its Courageous Vision Capital Campaign. Joe was a founding Director of the Oz Park Baseball Association in Chicago. Joe holds a BS degree in Business Administration with concentration in Finance from the University of Notre Dame.     00000468 00000465 000052FA 000052FA 000CEF53 000CEF53 00007DAE 00007F07 000032D0 000032D0

Discover impactful quotes from past podcast guests, the importance of forming habits and setting goals, the benefits of being a giver in the private equity world, and the power of mantras and stoic philosophy.

Vescovo grew up in Dallas, Texas, where he graduated from St. Mark's School of Texas. He earned a bachelor's degree in Economics and Political Science from Stanford University, a master's degree in Defense and Arms Control Studies (Political Science) from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and an MBA from Harvard Business School where he was a Baker scholar. In December 2018, he became the first person to reach the deepest point of the Atlantic Ocean, piloting DSV Limiting Factor, a reported US$50 million submarine system (Triton 36000/2) - including its support ship the DSSV Pressure Drop and its three ultra-deep-sea robotic landers - 8,375 m (27,477 ft) below the ocean surface to the base of the Puerto Rico Trench. On February 3, 2019, he became the first person to reach the bottom of the Southern Ocean, in the southern portion of the South Sandwich Trench. As of March 2019, he was continuing to lead the Five Deeps Expedition, whose objective is to thoroughly map and visit the bottom of all five of the world's oceans by the end of September 2019. In April 2019, Vescovo descended nearly 11 km (6.8 mi) to the deepest place in the ocean - the Challenger Deep in Pacific Ocean's Mariana Trench. On his first descent, he piloted the DSV Limiting Factor to a depth of 10,928 m (35,853 ft), a world record by 16 m (52 ft). Diving for a second time on May 1 he became the first person to dive the Challenger Deep twice, finding "at least three new species of marine animals" and "some sort of plastic waste." Among the underwater creatures Vescovo encountered was a snailfish at 26,250 feet and a spoon worm at nearly 23,000 feet, which was the deepest level that the species had ever been encountered. On 7 May 2019, Vescovo and Alan Jamieson made the first human-occupied deep submersible dive to the bottom of the Sirena Deep, about 128 miles northeast from Challenger Deep. The time spent there was 176 minutes; among the samples they retrieved was a piece of mantle rock from the western slope of the Mariana Trench. He completed the Five Deeps Expedition on 24 August 2019 when he reached 5,550 m at the bottom of the Molloy Deep in the Arctic ocean. He was the first human to reach this location.\ In 2019, Victor Vescovo was recognized by Guinness World Records as the person who has covered the greatest vertical distance without leaving Earth's surface. As part of achieving the Explorers Grand Slam (Last Degree), Vescovo climbed Mt. Everest (8,848 metres (29,029 ft)) on 24 May 2010, Earth's highest point. Almost nine years later he dove to the bottom of the Challenger Deep in the Mariana Trench (−10,924 metres (−35,840 ft)), Earth's lowest point, in the deep submersible Limiting Factor on 29 April 2019, for a total vertical distance of 19,772 metres (64,869 ft). Vescovo completed the Explorers Grand Slam (Last Degree) by climbing the highest peak on each of the seven continents, and skied the Last Degree of Latitude at both the North and South Poles. Uniquely, with the successful completion of his Five Deeps Expedition, Vescovo has also dived the deepest point in each of the five world's oceans.   00000113 00000112 0000472B 0000472B 00179882 00179882 0000802F 00007FD3 00011ED6 00011ED6

Mr. Crawford is a Co-founder and President of Coltala Holdings. He has over 15 years of experience in investing, asset management and building operating teams. As a Managing Director of Avesta Holdings, Mr. Crawford led business development activities; identified capital and acquisitions, special situation opportunities and managed key investor relationships. Mr. Crawford helped build Avesta's business to include over 320 employees and $1billion in assets and $100 million in revenue.   Mr. Crawford was a Vice President at Goldman Sachs where he spent seven years as an advisor to numerous CEOs, institutions and private company owners. Mr. Crawford joined Goldman Sachs from the private equity firm Advantage Capital Partners (ACP), a national lower, middle-market, private equity firm. Prior to joining ACP, he served as a Peace Corps volunteer in the Dominican Republic where, at 23 years of age, he founded a four-member coffee cooperative and grew it to include more than 200 coffee farmers with access to global markets. Mr. Crawford is a trustee of the New World Symphony in Miami Beach, Florida; a trustee on the Business School Council at The Freeman School of Business at Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana; and a Term Member of the Council on Foreign Relations.   As a U.S. Naval Intelligence Officer, Mr. Crawford served with Special Operations Command South in Latin America. From 2012-2013, he was deployed to Afghanistan as the Tribal and Political Adviser for SEAL Teams Two and Four as part of a Special Operations Task Force. He was awarded the Bronze Star for his service.  Education MBA, MIT Sloan School of Management (MIT Sloan Leadership Fellow) MA, GMBA Tulane University, Latin America Studies / Finance (Morton Aldrich Fellow / FLAS Fellow / Cowen Scholar) BA, Texas Christian University / English Literature   Listen to Edwards Ted Talk: https://youtu.be/gl4n6b5Lu-8 www.enothstar.com 000003E4 000003E1 0000535A 0000535A 00064FB6 00064FB6 00008045 00007F60 00014A68 00014A68

Dave Carvajal is a builder of billion dollar businesses. As CEO of Dave Partners, Dave is a sought out advisor and consultant to Board of Directors, venture firms, CEO entrepreneurs and leadership teams of some of the most exciting growth companies in the technology space that are making the world better. Dave built HotJobs to 650 employees, $125M in revenues, IPO and $1.2B market capitalization as co-founder. The HotJobs team experienced a second exit with the acquisition by Yahoo! in February of 2002. He built TheLadders to 400 employees and $85M in revenues. ​ Graduate of executive education and leadership programs at The Wharton School, Columbia Business School, and The Harvard Business School. Bachelor’s degree from Clemson University. Husband to a great woman, father to identical twin boys, and master to Clover the wonder dog. He is an Ironman athlete, who speaks French and Spanish. 000002F7 000002F6 00009C27 00009C27 000E7314 000E7314 00008159 00008208 000111AC 000111AC

Mr. Johnson joined RLJ Equity Partners from American Capital, a publicly traded alternative asset management company with more than $20 billion of assets under management. Prior to joining American Capital, Mr. Johnson was a Vice President in the Financial Sponsors and Private Equity Group at Bank of America. He also served as a White House Fellow and Special Assistant to the Secretary of Defense. Mr. Johnson began his career with Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette, and prior to that, he was with McKinsey & Company. Mr. Johnson received his B.S. from the University of Tennessee and his M.B.A. from the Harvard Business School.   0000029B 00000299 00004FDE 00004FDE 00020A58 00020A58 000080A0 000080AD 0000E824 0000E824