Independent Sponsors & Capital Providers Dealmakers Meeting

Helana Robbins Huddleston, CPA, CIRA, is a partner with CohnReznick Advisory who specializes in providing clients with transaction advisory and restructuring services. She has over 19 years of expertise in financial due diligence, restructuring, cash flow budgeting, financial auditing, internal control evaluation, and business process improvement. Helana leads buy-side and sell-side financial due diligence engagements with strategic and financial buyers for private and public companies with enterprise values ranging from $20 million to $500 million. She assists clients with calculating standalone costs for carve-out transactions, synergies costs and transition service agreements. Helana advises within a variety of industries including food and beverage, retail, manufacturing, distribution, technology, government, construction, hospitality, and business services. She is also a member of the Firm's Private Equity and Venture Capital Industry Practice.

In addition to transaction advisory service, Helana has provided accounting and consulting services to financially troubled companies with sales ranging from $80 million to $350 million. Her advisory work includes cash management, financial projections and modeling, operational cost improvement and cost reductions, and implementing internal control processes. She has also advised senior secured creditors in and out of bankruptcy proceedings. Helana started her career at Ernst & Young in their assurance and transaction advisory practices where she led a buy-side transaction with an enterprise value of $10 billion.

AWARDS AND RECOGNITION

Crain’s Chicago Business, Notable Gen X Leaders in Accounting, Consulting and Law Award, 2021

M&A Advisor, Emerging Leaders Award, 2018

Young Broadcasting, LLC, Turnaround of the Year Award, 2011

Dan is a Partner and serves as a member of the firm’s Executive Committee and the Investment Committee for Comvest’s direct lending strategy. He is responsible for originating, structuring, and managing investments.

Prior to joining Comvest, Dan was a Senior Director with Dymas Capital Management, where he served on the Investment Committee and was instrumental in the formation and growth of the firm from its start-up phase to an established middle-market finance company. Prior to getting his MBA, Dan began his career with Arthur Andersen and Heller Financial’s Corporate Finance Group.

Dan received an M.B.A. from the University of Michigan and a B.A. from the University of Notre Dame.

Caleb Hsieh is a Managing Director at Lafayette Square. He brings over 20 years of experience in investment banking and credit investing roles. Prior to joining Lafyette, Caleb served as Managing Director for Centerboard Securities, a strategic capital advisory firm.

Previously, Caleb spent 9 years with Macquarie Group, where he was a Managing Director in the firm’s credit investing Credit Markets Division unit focused on specialty finance and lender finance as well as a Managing Director in the firm’s Leveraged Finance Group and Financial Sponsors Group. Caleb started his career at JP Morgan and has held roles at UBS and Bank of America Securities in financial sponsors and leverages finance roles. Throughout his career, Caleb has completed over 80 lead managed transactions, representing over $55 billion in capital across several industry verticals.

Caleb is a Board Member and has been actively involved with JobsFirstNYC.  JobsFirstNYC is a nonprofit intermediary organization and a champion for the workforce needs of out-of-school, out-of-work young adults in New York City.

Originally from Cleveland, OH, Caleb holds BS Management, BS Accountancy, BA Chemistry degrees and an MBA from Case Western Reserve University.

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Matthew Harnett is a founding Partner of Tecum and serves on the firm’s Investment Committee.  In this position, he is responsible for leading all aspects of transaction origination, analysis, structuring, underwriting, deal execution and monitoring of subject private equity and mezzanine debt investments.

Matt currently serves as a Board Member of Aging With Comfort, BP Business Solutions, BP Express, Connecticut Electric, Conco Services, Hoodmart, Midwest Equipment Sales, National Power, Blackwood Solutions, and the Pittsburgh Chapter of the Association of Corporate Growth (ACG).  He also serves as a Board Observer for The Marwin Company, Inc., Gilman Cheese, DelGrosso Foods, Cox Transportation, Sentrics, and Arrow Waste.

Prior to co-founding Tecum, Matt served six years at the predecessor organization, F.N.B. Capital Corporation, LLC, where he was Vice President. Matt started his career at Ford Motor Company where he worked for four years. He completed the management program and became Zone Manager of Ford Division’s largest market in the Pittsburgh Region. Matt was responsible for annual franchisee revenues exceeding $300 million and was named Ford’s 2006 Zone Manager of the Year.  He was recognized as one of the top-performing Zone Managers nationally for exceptional results in sales and market share growth, market representation actions and franchisee profitability.

Matt is a member of the Association for Corporate Growth (“”ACG””) and was a founding member of the ACG Future Corporate Leaders Board, where he served on the Board of Directors from 2012 to 2016 and was elected Chairman of the Board 2014 to 2016.  He also served on the Pittsburgh Advisory Board of Economics Pennsylvania (2008 to 2016), which develops programs for young people focused on essential economic and financial literacy concepts.

Matt received an MBA degree from the Katz School of Business at the University of Pittsburgh, with focused studies in Finance and Strategy.  He also received dual major B.S.BA. degrees in Supply Chain Management & Logistics and Marketing from The Ohio State University.  Matt is also Chartered Alternative Investment Analyst (“CAIA”) Charterholder.