16th Independent Sponsors Summit & Awards

Sylvie Gadant is a partner with Citrin Cooperman’s Private Equity and Capital Markets Practice and is the Transaction Advisory Services (TAS) practice leader. She leads buy-side and sell-side due diligence engagements for private equity firms, independent sponsors, family offices, and strategic buyers.

Prior to joining Citrin Cooperman, Sylvie was the principal-in-charge of the TAS practice at a top-20 national accounting firm, where she also spent more than 10 years with its audit and advisory practices. Previously, she served middle-market private companies across several industries for another public accounting firm.

Sylvie has advised clients on over 300 transactions valued between $5 million and $300 million, including platform investments, add-on acquisitions, leveraged recapitalizations, carve-outs, and minority investments. Her areas of expertise include analyzing an acquisition target’s quality of earnings, understanding key performance indicators, assessing working capital requirements, and identifying key deal issues and risk areas. She also provides her clients with guidance on accounting for mergers and acquisitions.

Sylvie is a frequent speaker, panelist, and moderator for various industry forums including the Kayo Private Equity Conference, the iGlobal Forum, the Association for Corporate Growth (ACG), the Exit Planning Exchange (XPX), and Expert Webcasts. She has been featured in business and industry publications, including Inc. Magazine, Forbes, PE Hub, Buyouts Magazine, Crain’s New York Business, and Accounting Today.

Sylvie is the recipient of several prestigious industry awards, including the "2020 Crain's Notable Women in Accounting" (Crain's New York Business) and the "2019 USA Women Dealmakers" (Global M&A Network), which singularly honors and spotlights an A-List of the most accomplished and respected women dealmakers from the private equity, lending, restructuring, M&A financial advisory and legal transactional communities, especially from the middle-market segments. She is also a 2017 "Top 25 Leading Women Intrapreneur" (Leading Women Entrepreneurs) award recipient.

David Acharya is the Managing Partner of ACP where he oversees all aspects of the firm’s investing, management, and strategic activities. He brings over 25 years of investing and transacting experience to ACP. He is a frequent speaker at industry events and is recognized by his peers for his expertise in private equity, capital markets, and portfolio value creation.

Before establishing ACP, Mr. Acharya was a partner of AGI Partners, LLC, a private equity firm, and played a key role in the development of the firm including strategy, hiring, and fundraising. He continues to serve on the board of directors for Impact XM and On Location and will be managing until exit. 

Earlier, Mr. Acharya was a Director of an NYC-based private equity firm where he was responsible for investment sourcing and execution. Among other accomplishments, he sourced and executed Revolution Dancewear, co-sponsored with Incline Equity Partners, and was sold to Audax Group.

Previously, Mr. Acharya was a Vice President with Apprise Media, a private equity firm focused on niche media investments, where he worked with the founders of PRIMEDIA, a former KKR founded portfolio company. Mr. Acharya invested over $200 million in niche media companies across digital, events, and print products in North America, Europe, and Asia. He made significant contributions to Apprise Media’s largest portfolio company Canon Communications, a B2B media company. Canon was successfully sold to United Business Media in 2010.

Mr. Acharya spent 10 years as an investment banker in the highly ranked leveraged finance groups of JP Morgan Chase and Toronto Dominion Securities. He advised, structured, and raised over $18 billion of capital for leading financial sponsors, telecommunications, media, and consumer product companies across the globe. He also advised clients on debt tender/consent transactions that affected over $4 billion of debt. While at Toronto Dominion and as part of its merchant banking initiatives, he was involved in numerous equity investments including Rural Cellular Corporation (sold to Verizon), T-Mobile, Bresnan Communications, and Intermedia Communications (Leo Hindery’s Cable Venture).

In 2020, after completing his term as President of the New York Chapter of the Association for Corporate Growth (ACG), Mr. Acharya was elected as Chairperson. Additionally, he was recently elected to the ACG Global Board of Directors. In recognition of his years of leadership and volunteerism, he was honored with the ACG Meritorious Award.

Mr. Acharya is a graduate of St. John’s University and holds B.S. and M.B.A. degrees with honors. 

Curtis A. Glovier has 30 years of leadership experience as a private equity investor and business executive, and has served as a board member of and investor in numerous private and public companies spanning financial and business services, healthcare, technology, industrial, consumer, intellectual property, and real estate. Mr. Glovier currently is the Senior Investment Advisor at Grafine Partners, which sponsors and invests in new private equity firms and facilitates co-investments; a Senior Advisor at Star Mountain Capital, a credit and private equity fund manager; and a co-founder of Roundview Capital Partners, which makes direct and co-investments across alternative asset classes. He is an investor in and board advisor of Cornerstone Advisors, a consulting firm focused on financial institutions. 

He was a Managing Director at Fortress Investment Group ($43 billion current AUM) for nearly a decade, where he founded the private equity department within the Credit Opportunities division and led private equity and junior capital investments in numerous companies. Mr. Glovier served on the Investment Committee of multiple Fortress funds. Prior to Fortress he co-led the leveraged buyout activities of Perseus LLC, where his investment in Maritime Telecommunications Network won the Middle Market Deal of the Year Award from M&A Advisor. Mr. Glovier started his career as an investment banker at Goldman Sachs and then moved into private equity at Nassau Capital, which managed all of the alternative investments (both funds and directs) on behalf of Princeton University’s endowment ($38 billion current AUM). Mr. Glovier has diverse alternative investing experience spanning private equity (control, non-control, and co-investments), venture capital, credit, and real estate. 

Mr. Glovier also has significant operating experience. While at Fortress he was a founding investor and board member of Opus Bank, a West Coast regional bank. He helped the bank acquire PENSCO Trust Company, a national custodian of alternative investments held in retirement accounts, and in mid-2016 left Fortress to become the Chairman and CEO of PENSCO where he significantly grew both assets under custody and operating income. He also served as Managing Principal of Opus Equity Partners, a growth equity investment fund, and as Chairman of Opus Financial Partners, a broker-dealer. Opus and PENSCO were sold in 2020. 

Mr. Glovier received a B.A., cum laude, from Princeton University, and an M.B.A. as a Palmer Scholar from The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. 

Dan is a Vice President at Moelis Asset Management and a member of the Catalyst team. He is responsible for manager research, investment sourcing and capital formation.  Prior to Moelis, Dan was a Vice President on the private markets team at Asset Consulting Group. Prior to ACG, Dan began his career at Summit Strategies Group, where he was a member of the private markets team conducting private markets research. Following Summit’s acquisition by Mercer, Dan became a Principal at Mercer, where he co-managed two discretionary funds focused primarily on small market opportunities.  Dan is a CFA® charter holder and holds a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration with a concentration in Finance and Banking from the University of Missouri.

Brad is co-chair of Winston's Private Equity Practice and represents private investment funds, hedge funds, family offices, lending institutions, and other alternative asset managers on complex business transactions. He counsels clients in structuring, negotiating, documenting, and executing leveraged buyouts, take-private transactions, minority recapitalization, growth equity investments, distressed and special situations, PIPE transactions, joint ventures, business combinations, secondary transactions,
fundraising and formation matters, and other commercial transactions. Brad also advises on the implementation and execution of exit strategies through divestitures, public offerings, GP-led secondary transactions, and recapitalizations.

Brad also represents public and private companies and private equity investors in the management of their portfolio companies in connection with a variety of matters, including mergers and acquisitions; senior secured and subordinated debt offerings and refinancings; mezzanine debt offerings; high-yield note offerings; public equity offerings; workouts; and corporate reorganizations. In addition, he represents real estate funds in a variety of transactions, including fundraising and formation; acquisitions; financings; and dispositions of office buildings, multi-family, residential, and mixed-use developments. Brad regularly represents founders, entrepreneurs, and emerging and established entities in growth-oriented capital raises as well as liquidating transactions and recapitalizations.

Brad received his J.D. from Emory University and his B.A. from Binghamton University.

Nick Jean-Baptiste is Managing Partner of Jacmel Growth Partners. He developed the firm’s differentiated approach to value creation after nearly fifteen years of Wall Street and private equity experience, working to scale businesses and provide growth capital to companies. Prior to founding Jacmel, Nick was Principal at Peterson Partners, a $1.5 billion AUM growth private equity firm, where he sourced and led transactions across a wide range of industries. He also served as Vice President with Macquarie Capital, where he provided strategic advice and capital market solutions to private equity clients. Nick began his career in Citigroup’s Investment Banking Division as a member of the banks’ Healthcare Coverage Group. Over the course of this career, Nick has taken part in providing over $10 billion of debt financing to private equity-sponsored recapitalizations and several published equity offerings. Nick earned a B.A. from Duke University and an MBA from the UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School.