According to Pitchbook, US PE middle-market dealmaking continued its resurgence in Q1, posting the second-highest quarterly deal value figure on record after Q4 2020. With $1 trillion in dry powder, the COVID recovery, and looming capital gains tax increases, the competition for deals is only likely to increase. In this environment, the need for PE firms to understand which value creation levers to pull has never been more intense.

In Bain & Co’s recently released Global Private Equity Report 2021, 71% of survey respondents said the caliber of the management team is the main source of deal success. Given this sentiment, how can CEOs and their private equity investors ensure they have the right management team in place to execute their value creation plan? How do PE firms and boards ensure their management team is equipped with the right competencies to upgrade their organization, improve their culture, and reach the next level of growth needed to provide top-quartile ROI?

Join Lancer Group on Friday, June 25th for our Q2 virtual panel. Three successful PE-Backed CEOs will provide insights from leading software companies of scale and the lessons learned from revamping their management teams post-PE investment. The panel includes:

  • Laura Ipsen – President & CEO, Ellucian (Market leader in higher education software solutions backed by TPG and Leonard Green. Just announced a sale to Vista Equity and Blackstone)
  • Christa Quarles – CEO, Corel (A suite of graphics software brands serving over 90 million users backed by KKR. Former CEO of OpenTable, part of Booking Holdings [NASDAQ: BKNG])
  • Sharon Love – President & CEO, Community Brands (Roll-up of 30+ software brands serving K-12, non-profits, and associations backed by Insight Partners)

Our discussion will focus on specific strategies CEOs and their investors can use to create a high-performance team, drive cultural transformation, and align operational capability with growth objectives for the next stage of investment. We’ll also address highly topical subjects including attracting talent in this competitive market as well as managing talent in the post-COVID recovery. 

Lancer Group invites PE investors, Operating Partners, Talent Partners, and C-Suite executives to join our panel and discover additional strategies to ensure their management team is optimized to drive deal success and greater value creation for their investment.

Our interactive panel will include an opportunity for audience members to ask panelists their questions, so please join the conversation!

To join this live panel on Friday, June 25th at 8:00 am PT / 11:00 am ET / 4:00 pm CET, please take 30 seconds to register.

Virtual Panelists

Laura Ipsen, President and CEO, Ellucian

Laura has more than 25 years of experience as a technology executive, working to drive transformation in the public and private sectors and spur adoption of comprehensive solutions in high-growth industries.

Laura joined Ellucian from Oracle Corporation, where she most recently served as general manager and senior vice president for Oracle Marketing Cloud—leading all customer-facing aspects of the business, including sales, account management, marketing, and customer services. Previously, she served as corporate vice president of Microsoft’s worldwide public sector organization, where she led a team of more than 2,000 sales and marketing professionals serving government, education, and non-privatized healthcare customers in more than 100 countries.

Laura’s experience also includes more than a decade at Cisco Systems, where she led an effort to transform how the world manages energy supplies and build smart-grid solutions for utilities around the world. Prior to that, she established and managed Cisco’s global policy and government affairs division, where she led the company’s public policy agenda as it related to the Internet and global adoption of broadband access. Laura has also held leadership roles at PricewaterhouseCoopers, Acer America, and Hitachi Data Systems.

Laura currently serves as a member of the Board of Directors for Verisk, a leading data analytics provider, as well as the Business-Higher Ed Forum (BHEF) based in Washington, D.C. She is also a member of WomenCorporateDirectors (WCD). She previously served on the Board of Directors of Monsanto for nearly eight years, and as the chair of the Washington, D.C.-based Information Technology Industry Council.

Laura holds a bachelor’s degree in international relations from the Woodrow Wilson School of Foreign Affairs at the University of Virginia, and she studied Arabic at Yarmouk University in Jordan. She is also a Senior Fellow of the American Leadership Forum, Silicon Valley Chapter.

Christa Quarles, CEO, Corel

Christa Quarles serves as Corel’s CEO and sits on the company’s Board of Directors. Joining Corel in 2020, Christa is a seasoned executive with over two decades of experience leading companies and spearheading financial and operational initiatives. As CEO of OpenTable, she led a period of transformational change, successfully navigating the company’s transition to cloud-based, small business solutions, and drove meaningful bottom- and top-line growth across its global operations. Christa also recently served as an Operating Partner at Advent International. Prior to joining OpenTable, she served as Chief Business Officer of Nextdoor, a marketplace connecting local communities to small businesses. Earlier in her career, she served as Senior Vice President, Interactive Games at The Walt Disney Company, where she led Disney Interactive to profitability. Christa also served as Chief Financial Officer of Playdom, which was later acquired by Disney. Prior to that, she held the role of Partner in Equity Research covering the internet sector at Thomas Weisel Partners LLC (now Stifel Financial).

Christa also currently serves on the Boards of Directors of Affirm and Kimberly-Clark. She received a BS in Economics and German from Carnegie Mellon University and an MBA from Harvard Business School.

Sharon Love, President & CEO, Community Brands
Sharon Love is the CEO of Community Brands, the leading provider of cloud-based software and payment solutions to associations, nonprofits, faith-based groups, and K-12 schools. With more than 2000 employees serving over 120,000 clients in 30 countries, they help organizations grow stronger and achieve their missions. Sharon comes with a lot of experience as an executive in private equity owned businesses such as Social Solutions Global and CentralSquare. Earlier in her career she worked with big brands such as NCR, Lenovo, and FedEx.