Industry Partners
Enhanced strategic insight
Our Industry Partners include successful operating executives who have built and sold businesses in the industries we serve. Their sector insight, combined with our transactional advisors’ expertise, can significantly enhance the sale price and terms in an M&A transaction.
Jim Bullock
Medical Devices
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Jim is a medical devices and software industry veteran with over 40 years of experience. He has served as CEO of several venture capital-backed enterprises, including Endocardial Solutions, Atritech, and Zyga Technology. His career includes sales and marketing for American Hospital Supply, Baxter and other large medical device companies. Jim took Endocardial Solutions public in 1997 and sold it to St. Jude Medical in 2005. Later, he served as President and CEO of Atritech, which he sold to Boston Scientific in 2001. He most recently ran Zyga Technology, which was sold to RTI Surgical.
Tom Burke
Pharmaceutical & Related Outsourced Services
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Tom is a 30-year veteran of Upsher-Smith, where his roles included EVP of Commercial Operations and COO. During his tenure, Upsher-Smith completed the largest acquisition in its history when it purchased Proximagen, a biotechnology company with a pipeline in various stages of development across multiple therapeutic areas. Tom’s career also includes CEO of Hennepin Life Sciences and Co-Founder and CEO of Vail Scientific. He currently serves as an advisor and board member to several biotech, pharma and diagnostic companies.
Doug Castek
Supply Chain & Logistics
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Doug is an operations and supply chain executive with extensive consulting expertise and experience as a VP of Sales in technology, corporate supply chain management, and SaaS customer success. His career began as an industrial engineer for an aircraft engine manufacturer. Later, he became Senior Manager for PWC and was one of the nine equity Partners that led Andersen Consulting’s (Accenture) Logistics Strategy practice. He has also been a VP of Procurement for Churchill Downs, Inc. and a Senior Executive for Transplace, a 3PL. Doug now operates his own consulting firm, DMC Consulting.
Barry Friends
Food Processing, Distribution & Consumption
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Barry is a food industry veteran and thought leader with over 35 years of experience spanning strategy, operations, M&A, labor relations, supply chain, process innovation, and consulting. His career includes senior roles at Technomic, Reinhart Foodservice, US Foods, Sysco, Willow Run Foods and Sky Bros. In 2017, Barry co-founded Pentallect, where he is currently a Partner. Pentallect offers business and marketing consulting services for the foodservice, retail food, and non-traditional food and beverage channels.
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John is an accomplished business development executive with over 30 years of experience in multiple roles at 3M spanning industrial, specialty material and medical markets. He has global senior management experience with substantial expertise in advanced strategy development, acquisitions, divestitures, restructurings and management of minority investments and JVs, including advisory board and BOD experience. John holds a PhD from Northwestern University and an MBA from the University of Minnesota. He currently serves as an advisor to several private companies.
Paul Mortell
Specialty Manufacturing
Tom Vanderheyden
Digital Health
Advanced Materials, Manufacturing, Filtration & Purification
John Grant
Scott Kulstad
Physician Group Practice & Home Medical Equipment
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Scott is a former senior executive of M Health Fairview, a 12-hospital academic health system with over 55 primary care clinics, more than 100 specialties and a network of 5,000+ physicians. Prior to that, Scott worked in Deloitte’s healthcare consulting practice. His expertise includes JVs, M&A, strategic planning, and significant valuation and regulatory experience. Scott is currently President and CEO of Tripartite Consulting and serves the University of St. Thomas as an Executive Fellow in the Opus College of Business Healthcare MBA program.
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Paul is a manufacturing executive who has applied his expertise to a variety of fields. His career began at Advance Circuits, which grew from $3 million to over $92 million in sales during his 8-year tenure. Paul next co-founded and spent 12 years growing Tycom Corporation from $0 to $96 million. He also co-authored U.S. patents for robotic assembly and automated inspection equipment before selling Tycom to Kyocera in 2001. Paul later co-founded and grew Cirus Controls before selling it to Certified Power Systems in 2016. Paul currently sits on the Board of Governors of the Engineering School at the University of St. Thomas.
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Tom is a healthcare industry veteran. During his career, Tom’s significant accomplishments include spearheading the reinvention of BCBS of MN with the launch of Stella Health; serving as CEO of Harken Health, an innovative UnitedHealth Group subsidiary that operated clinics and sold insurance plans to individuals and small businesses; and pioneering UnitedHealth’s first international operation, where he navigated multicultural complexities and built a new BPO corporate operations center in India. Most recently, Tom served as COO of Altais Health, a startup providing next-generation clinical support tools, technology and services to physicians and the clinical community.
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