BRIDGE GROWTH PARTNERS - Key Persons
Job Titles:
- Chief Compliance Officer
- Chief Financial Officer
Alison Catchpole is Chief Financial Officer and Chief Compliance Officer of Bridge Growth Partners. Prior to joining BGP in 2014, Ms. Catchpole served as Chief Financial Officer and Managing Director of Solera Capital, where she was responsible for Solera's finance and investor relations functions. Previously, she worked at Invesco Private Capital as Vice President of Operations. Ms. Catchpole began her career as an auditor with PricewaterhouseCoopers, specializing in the financial services industry and received a B.S. in Accounting from Boston College.
Alok Singh - CEO, Chief Investment Officer, Founder
Job Titles:
- Chief Executive Officer
- Chief Investment Officer
- Co - Founder
- Member of the BGP Team
Alok Singh is the Chief Executive Officer, Chief Investment Officer and Co-Founder of Bridge Growth Partners. He is currently a Director of Accedian, Solace, and Syniti, and is the former Chairman of Finalsite and a former Director of Salient CRGT. Prior to founding BGP, Mr. Singh was a Managing Director at New Mountain Capital, and served as Chairman, Lead Director, and Director of numerous companies including: Chairman of JDA Software, and RedPrairie; Lead Director of AmWINS, Camber, Deltek, Ikaria, Stroz Friedberg; and Director of Avantor, EverBank, and Validus. Prior to joining New Mountain, Mr. Singh held various senior positions at Bankers Trust (including being a member of the Partnership Group), Deutsche Bank Alex. Brown, and Barclays Capital. Mr. Singh is a member of the Dean's Council of Weill Cornell Medical College, and a member of New York University's Stern School of Business Board of Overseers. He received his B.A. in Economics and History and his M.B.A. in Finance and International Business from New York University.
Job Titles:
- Senior Principal
- Director of Inovalon
Bill Teuber is a Senior Principal of Bridge Growth Partners. He currently serves as a Director of Accedian and Syniti.
Prior to joining BGP, Mr. Teuber held numerous senior leadership positions at EMC, including Vice Chairman from 2006-2016, Global Head of Sales from 2006-2012, Chief Financial Officer from 1997-2006, Executive Vice President from 2001-2006, and Senior Vice President from 2000-2001, among others.
Prior to EMC, Mr. Teuber was a Partner at Coopers & Lybrand from 1988-1995, prior to Pricewaterhouse's acquisition of the Company in 1998 (subsequently forming PricewaterhouseCoopers, or "PwC").
Mr. Teuber is currently a Director of Inovalon, a leading healthcare technology company. Previously, he was the Lead Independent Director of Popular, a diversified financial services company (includes Banco Popular as a holding), and served as a Director of CRH, a global diversified building materials group. He also serves on the investment committee of The College of the Holy Cross.
He holds an M.B.A. degree from Babson College, a Master of Science in Taxation from Bentley College, and a Bachelor's degree in English from The College of the Holy Cross.
Brad Weckstein is a Managing Director of Bridge Growth Partners. He is a former Director of Salient CRGT and Finalsite.
Mr. Weckstein has over 15 years of experience in the financial services and private equity industries. Prior to joining BGP in 2017, Mr. Weckstein was a Director at New Mountain Capital, a multi-strategy alternative asset manager with $15 billion of assets under management, which he joined in 2005. During his almost 12 years at the firm, he was a member of the team during a period of significant growth and success, and focused on various sectors including business services, federal services, and technology enabled services. Prior to New Mountain Capital, he began his career in investment banking at Morgan Stanley, where he worked in the Global Industrial Group and Princes Gate private equity group. He has served on multiple private company board of directors in roles including Audit Committee Chairman and Compensation Committee member. Mr. Weckstein received his B.S., summa cum laude, in Finance and International Business from the Stern School of Business at New York University.
Clarence Mokaya has been hired as an Associate at Bridge Growth Partners, starting in August 2020. Prior to joining Bridge Growth Partners, Mr. Mokaya was an Investment Banking Analyst in the Industrials group at Goldman Sachs & Co. from 2018-2020. He received a B.A. in Economics and Psychology from Brown University.
Daniel H. (Don) Callahan is an Executive Partner at Bridge Growth Partners. Acknowledged internationally as a leader in both the financial services and technology industries, Mr. Callahan was most recently the Chief Administrative Officer and Global Head of Operations and Technology at Citigroup. He retired from Citigroup in December 2018 and now serves on the boards of Tata Consultancy Services, Ltd., WEX, Kore AI, Capco, and Accedian, a Bridge Growth Partners-backed company.
At Citigroup, Mr. Callahan managed a complex set of businesses and services spanning more than 100 countries, a multi-billion dollar operating budget and critical systems infrastructure including the bank's cyber security initiatives. He most recently led a top-to-bottom transformation of operations and technology, helping move the global bank from a collection of independent and dispersed entities into a lean, fully integrated enterprise. Mr. Callahan also established globally consistent technology standards and governance, and migrated critical functions to an integrated, managed, shared services model. As a result, in 2017, Citi was named by the Gartner Group as the most efficient of all major global banks in generating income per dollar of IT spending.
Earlier in his career, Mr. Callahan spent 12 years at IBM, where he held a number of management positions, including director of strategy for IBM Japan.
He serves as Executive Chairman of TIME, where he is leading a comprehensive digital transformation of this iconic media brand. He is also on the business committee of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, a fellow at the Foreign Policy Association and on the boards of Columbia Teachers College, the American Red Cross New York Region and the New York Hall of Science. He holds a Bachelor's in History from Manhattanville College, where he serves as trustee chair emeritus.
Job Titles:
- Senior Advisor
- Board Member for the Rhode Island PBS Foundation
Dave Laverty is a Senior Advisor at Bridge Growth Partners. He is a former Director of Finalsite. Previously, he served as Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer of IBM's Data and Analytics Division, where he was responsible for strategy positioning and driving demand for the division and managing a global team of 400 marketing professionals.
Prior to IBM, Dave was Chief Marketing Officer for Cognos a global business intelligence software company acquired by IBM. Before joining Cognos, Dave held senior management positions with Surebridge, a venture-backed infrastructure and SaaS provider acquired by Navisite, and with Lotus Development Corporation, acquired by IBM.
Mr. Laverty serves as a board member for the Rhode Island PBS Foundation, and Demand Spring, a marketing consultancy. He is a graduate of Bryant University with a Bachelor's degree in Business Administration.
Job Titles:
- Senior Advisor
- Director of DXC Technology
David Barnes is a Senior Advisor at Bridge Growth Partners. Mr. Barnes previously served as the Chief Information and Global Business Services Officer of United Parcel Service, a world leader in supply chain, logistics, and transportation services. In this capacity, from 2005-2016, he served as a member of the UPS Management Committee, as a member of the Company's Finance, Risk, and Strategy Committees, and as the Chair of the Technology Steering Committee.
Mr. Barnes currently serves as a Director of DXC Technology, Hertz, Solace, and Syniti, and is a former Director of Ingram Micro.
Dr. Danny Sabbah is a Senior Advisor at Bridge Growth Partners, and is a former Director of Finalsite.
Dr. Sabbah held numerous senior executive positions at IBM, including Chief Technology Officer and General Manager of IBM Cloud and NextGen Computing, General Manager of Tivoli and Rational Software, and Chief Technology Officer of IBM Software (among others) where he oversaw more than 22,000 developers across 57 R&D centers.
He began his IBM career in 1974, focusing on telecommunications software (VTAM) in Kingston, New York. He received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Rochester in 1981, specializing in artificial intelligence and computer vision.
Eric Klein is a Managing Director at Bridge Growth Partners. He currently serves as a Director of Accedian.
Prior to joining BGP in 2014, Mr. Klein was an Associate at Vestar Capital Partners from 2010-2012. Previously, he worked as an Associate at Eos Partners. He began his career as an Analyst in J.P. Morgan's Diversified Industries investment banking group. Mr. Klein graduated summa cum laude from the University of Pennsylvania earning a dual B.S. from The Wharton School and B.A. from The College of Arts and Sciences, and holds an M.B.A from The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania.
Job Titles:
- Senior Advisor
- Director of Theragenics
George Stoeckert is a Senior Advisor of Bridge Growth Partners. He was most recently President & CEO (Interim) of The Brink's Company, and presently serves on the Board of Directors. Previously, he was the President of North America and Internet Solutions at Dun & Bradstreet. Prior to Dun & Bradstreet, Mr. Stoeckert was at Automatic Data Processing Inc., where for nearly 17 years he held various senior operational leadership positions and in his last role led the global employer services business. Mr. Stoeckert also spent 17 years with Ryder System, Inc. in various financial and general management roles including Senior Vice President of Corporate Strategy and Mergers & Acquisitions.
Mr. Stoeckert serves as a director of Theragenics, a medical device company. He is a past director of Onvia, Inc and Capital Re Corporation.
He holds a M.B.A. from the University of Miami Graduate School of Business as well as an A.B. in Psychology.
Jack Welch is an Executive Partner at Bridge Growth Partners. He is a former Professor at the Carroll School of Management of Boston College where he taught strategy. Prior to Boston College, Mr. Welch spent 30 years at McKinsey & Company, where he worked broadly across industries and functions. While at McKinsey, he held many leadership positions including Head of Strategy Practice, Managing Partner of the Boston office, and as a member of the committee that elects new partners. He is also on the board of directors of Clean Harbors, a leading environmental services company, and is a former Director of BGP-backed Finalsite.
Job Titles:
- Senior Associate
- Senior Associate, BGP Consulting & Operations
Jamie Singh is a Senior Associate at Bridge Growth Partners. Prior to joining Bridge Growth Partners in 2020, Mr. Singh was an MBA Associate in The Walt Disney Company's Direct-to-Consumer & International Strategy and Business Development Group. He previously worked in Growth Strategy and Partnerships at Impact from 2016-2018 and in Sales at Krossover from 2014-2016. He received an MBA from the New York University Leonard N. Stern School of Business and a B.A. from Washington University in St. Louis.
Janet Perna is a Senior Advisor of Bridge Growth Partners. She was the former General Manager of Information Management within IBM Software, responsible for a multi-billion dollar businesses within the Company.
Ms. Perna has held numerous board positions, and is a current Director of Solace, and was a former Director of Cloudmark, Cognos, Deltek, Flexera, JDA Software, RedPrairie, and Varicent Software.
She is a member of the Foundation Board of Directors at the State University of New York at Oneonta, and is also the Founder of the Perna-Rose Foundation for Hope. Ms. Perna has a B.S. in mathematics and was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from the State University of New York at Oneonta.
Joe Tucci - Chairman, Founder
Job Titles:
- Chairman
- Co - Founder
- Member of the BGP Team
- Chairman and CEO of EMC
- Member of the Board of Overseers of Columbia Business School
Joe Tucci is the Chairman and Co-Founder of Bridge Growth Partners. He also serves as the Lead Director of GTY Technology Holdings, and as a Director of Motorola, Paychex, and Syniti.
Prior to founding BGP, Mr. Tucci was the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of EMC, serving in such capacity until September 2016 when Dell acquired EMC for $63 billion, the largest technology transaction to date.
As Chairman and CEO of EMC, Mr. Tucci transformed EMC into a federation of businesses that grew to include EMC, VMware, Pivotal Software, RSA Security, VCE, Virtustream, among others. EMC's revenues grew from $5.4 billion in 2002 to $24.7 billion in 2015. In 2015 EMC was named one of the world's top 10 multinational workplaces (out of 700 multinational global companies surveyed) by the Great Place to Work Institute.
Mr. Tucci is also a member of the Board of Overseers of Columbia Business School, a member of the Board of Trustees of Northeastern University, an overseer of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, and a member of the Board of Directors of the National Academy Foundation.
Jonathan Harber is a Senior Advisor at Bridge Growth Partners. Mr. Harber has over 30 years of experience as a pioneer in education technology. Mr. Harber was the CEO and Co-Founder of SchoolNet, a company that helped school systems use data to increase academic achievement. In 2011, SchoolNet was acquired by Pearson, a global education and publishing company, where Mr. Harber served as CEO Pearson K12 Technology.
Mr. Harber is a former Director of Finalsite, which is backed by Bridge Growth. Finalsite is the leader in marketing and communications solutions for K-12 independent and public schools.
Mr. Harber received his M.S. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) where he completed a thesis on education technology at the MIT Sloan School of Management and the MIT Media Lab. He received his B.A. with Honors in Cognitive Science from Wesleyan University.
Ken Hamel is a Senior Advisor at Bridge Growth Partners. He currently serves as a Director of Syniti. Mr. Hamel has over 38 years of operations, finance and IT experience in the technology industry. He has a long-tenured history at SAP, joining in 2003, and held numerous leadership roles including Executive Vice President - Global Business Operations (2018-2021), Senior Vice President - Global Customer Strategy and Sales Operations (2012-2018) and Senior Vice President - Global Presales and Solutions (2009-2012).
Prior to SAP, Mr. Hamel spent 10 years at Oracle as Vice President of Oracle University - Americas, leading the Customer Education business in the US, Canada and Latin America, and Vice President of Global Sales Support. Earlier in his career, Mr. Hamel held various senior sales positions at Digital Equipment Corporation for 10 years.
Parth Shah has been hired as an Associate at Bridge Growth Partners, starting in May 2022. Prior to joining Bridge Growth Partners, Mr. Shah was a Private Equity Senior Associate at Webster Equity Partners from 2020-2022. Mr. Shah was also previously an investment banking associate in the Mergers & Acquisitions group at Bank of Montreal from 2018-2020. He received a B.S. in Finance and Economics from NYU Stern University.
Peter Griffiths is a Senior Advisor at Bridge Growth Partners. He is a Director of Accedian and Syniti. Previously, he was the Executive Vice President of Products at CA Technologies, where he was responsible for investment and strategy across the company's broad portfolio of products and solutions for enterprise and growth markets.
Prior to CA, Mr. Griffiths was Vice President of Worldwide Business Analytics and Applications Development of IBM, responsible for building the Business Analytics division within IBM Software.
Prior to IBM, Mr. Griffiths served as Senior Vice President of Products at Cognos, which he joined when Cognos acquired Relational Matters PLC, a data analytics company that Mr. Griffiths co-founded and led as Chief Executive Officer.
Mr. Griffiths was a former Director of Lavastorm Analytics, and is currently a member of the Board of Trustees of the Anita Borg Institute. He earned a B.S. degree in Electronic Engineering with 1st Class Honors from Brighton University in England.
Job Titles:
- Senior Advisor
- Director of GTY Technology Holdings
Randy Cowen is a Senior Advisor at Bridge Growth Partners. He currently serves as a Director of Solace. Mr. Cowen has over 30 years of leadership experience in the technology and IT sectors. He has a long-tenured history at the Goldman Sachs Group, joining in 1982 and becoming a Partner in 1996, and held numerous executive leadership roles including Global Head of Technology and Operations (2004-2008), Chief Information Officer (2001-2007) and Co-Chief Administrative Officer (2007- 2008).
Mr. Cowen currently serves as a Director of GTY Technology Holdings, and previously served as a Director of EMC, Pivotal Software, and The Depository Trust & Clearing.
He holds a Bachelor's degree in History with a minor in Mathematics from Michigan State University.
Job Titles:
- Executive
- Partner
- Lead Director of MSCI
- President and Chief Executive Officer of Cognos
Rob Ashe is an Executive Partner at Bridge Growth Partners. He is the former President and Chief Executive Officer of Cognos, having joined the company in 1984. He was appointed President in 2002, and CEO in 2004, and held both roles until IBM acquired the company in 2007 for $4.9 billion. Following the acquisition, he served as General Manager of Business Analytics at IBM until 2012.
Prior to becoming President and Chief Executive Officer of Cognos, Mr. Ashe held several senior executive roles at the company, including Senior Vice President ("SVP") of Application Development Tools, SVP of Products, SVP of Worldwide Customer Services, Chief Corporate Officer, as well as Chief Financial Officer.
Mr. Ashe is the Lead Director of MSCI, the Lead Independent Director of Shopify, a Director of ServiceSource International, and was the former Lead Director of Halogen (until its sale to Saba Software in 2017). He holds a Bachelor of Commerce in Accounting from the University of Ottawa, and is a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Ontario.
Job Titles:
- Managing Member of Lakeside Capital Holdings Co - Founder
- Trustee of the Jewish Museum
Sander Levy is the Managing Member of Lakeside Capital Holdings, a private investment firm. He is a Co-Founder of Bridge Growth Partners and a Senior Advisor of the Firm and served as a Managing Principal from Bridge Growth's founding in 2013 until April 2021. Prior to Bridge Growth Partners, he was a Managing Director of Vestar Capital Partners, a private equity investment firm, which at the time managed over $8 billion of equity capital, and was a founding partner at the firm's inception. Mr. Levy was Co-Chair of Vestar's Investment Committee, a member of the Executive Committee, and was primarily responsible for the firm's financial services practice. Earlier in his career, he was a member of the Management Buyout Group of First Boston (now Credit Suisse).
He currently serves as Director of Symetra Financial, and is a former Director of SalientCRGT, Clark Schwebel, Duff & Phelps, Gleason, Sun Apparel, Triton Container, Validus and WiltonRe Holdings, among other Vestar-related companies.
In addition, Mr. Levy serves as a Trustee of The Jewish Museum. He previously served as a member of the Board, Executive Committee and was Chair of the Finance Committee of The Birthright Israel Foundation. He also served on the Investor Advisory Committee on Financial Markets of The Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
Mr. Levy graduated summa cum laude from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and holds an M.B.A. from Columbia Business School.
Steve Mills is an Executive Partner at Bridge Growth Partners and currently serves as a Director of Accedian, Marsh and McLennan, and Syniti.
Mr. Mills most recently served as Executive Vice President of IBM, after joining the company in 1973, and was closely associated with the growth of IBM's Software business over the last 25 years. Mr. Mills became Senior Vice President and Group Executive of Software at IBM in 2000, and in January 2015 he was named Executive Vice President of IBM Software and Systems. In this role, he was responsible for directing approximately 110,000 employees, spanning development, manufacturing, sales, marketing and support. IBM's Software and Systems businesses represent $40 billion in annual revenues.
During his tenure at IBM, Mills oversaw many of IBM's key strategic initiatives including transaction systems, development tools, security products, database and analytic offerings, including IBM Watson. He directed organic investments and acquisitions measured in the billions of dollars, and under his leadership IBM acquired and integrated over 150 companies.
Job Titles:
- Executive
- Partner
- Director of BGP
Steve Pusey is an Executive Partner at Bridge Growth Partners. He is the former Chief Technology Officer of Vodafone, the world's second-largest mobile telecommunications company. While at Vodafone he also served as a Director of the Company. Over the course of nearly ten years, he took the company to network leadership in nearly every market, and was responsible for defining and leading the group's global technology strategy and operations for networks, IT and product development. Prior to joining Vodafone, he was President of. the EMEA and Asia regions for Nortel Networks, and also spent five years at British Telecommunications.
Mr. Pusey is currently a Director of BGP-backed companies Accedian and Solace. He also serves as a Director of Centrica, FireEye, GlobalLogic, Huawei (Customer Strategy Board), and Tomia. Previously, he served as a Director of ARM, and was a member of the Verizon Wireless JV Board and the IBM Customer Advisory Board, and he was the Chairman for Nortel's Caty unit. He also served on the HP Customer Advisory Board, and was previously the Board Chairperson for the Vodafone Venture Capitalist unit and represented Vodafone on the GSMA Association Board.
He attended the Advanced Management Program at Harvard Business School, and holds certifications from the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology and the Haas Technical Education Center (HTEC) in telecommunications and microelectronics with distinction.
Tom Ferrando is a Senior Advisor at Bridge Growth Partners. Mr. Ferrando brings more than three decades of experience building and scaling technology services businesses. Most recently, Mr. Ferrando served as the Chief Executive Officer of Salient CRGT, a former Bridge Growth Partners portfolio company and a leading provider of data analytics, cloud, agile software development, cybersecurity, and infrastructure solutions to U.S. national security, federal civilian, and federal health agencies. Mr. Ferrando played an integral role in driving Salient CRGT's transformative growth, resulting in its acquisition in August 2021 by GovernmentCIO, a portfolio company of Welsh, Carson, Anderson & Stowe. Prior to that, Mr. Ferrando was CEO of CRGT, which merged with Salient in 2015.
Mr. Ferrando currently serves on the Board of Directors of GovernmentCIO.
He holds a Master of Science in Management from Stevens Institute of Technology and a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from Seton Hall University.
Job Titles:
- Chief Administrative Officer
- Member of the BGP Team
- Senior Principal
Tom Manley is a Senior Principal and Chief Administrative Officer of Bridge Growth Partners. He currently serves as the Chairman of Solace and the Lead Director of Accedian, and is a former Director of Finalsite.
Prior to joining BGP, Mr. Manley served as Chief Financial Officer of Avaya, a provider of business communications systems, and as Chief Financial Officer and Senior Vice President of Administration at Cognos, a business intelligence and performance management software company that was ultimately acquired by IBM in 2008. During his time with Cognos, Mr. Manley twice was nominated for Canada's "CFO of the Year" award. Prior to Cognos, he served in senior management positions at Nortel Networks (the latest being SVP of Finance), and General Motors of Canada.
Mr. Manley previously served on the board of directors of Deltek, DragonWave, Elastic Networks, JDA Software, RedPrairie, and the University of Ottawa Heart Institute. He graduated from Carleton University with a Bachelor of Engineering with distinction, and holds an M.B.A. degree from Queen's University.
Tracy Tang has been hired as an Associate at Bridge Growth Partners, starting in September 2020. Prior to joining Bridge Growth Partners, Ms. Tang was an Investment Banking Analyst in the Mergers & Acquisitions group at Greenhill & Co. from 2017-2020. She received a B.B.A. with High Honors in Business Honors & Finance from The University of Texas at Austin.
From 2002 to 2012, Mr. de Balmann was Co-Chief Executive Officer of Bregal Investments, a private equity firm that he built on behalf of the Brenninkmeijer family, now with a global presence and over $13 billion of invested capital in its 15+ year history.
From 1999 to 2001, he was Co-Head of Deutsche Bank's Global Investment Bank (GIB) and a member of the Board of the Bank's Global Corporates and Institutions Division. As co-head of GIB, He also oversaw the firm's private equity and venture capital investments. In addition, he was Co-Chairman and Co-CEO of Deutsche Bank Alex. Brown.
Mr. de Balmann received an M.S. in Operations Research from Stanford University in 1970 (where he was a Fulbright scholar), and an Engineering degree from the Ecole Polytechnique in Paris. He is a Director of ESI (a Paris SE-traded company) and Exelon, and is a former Director of BGP-backed Finalsite. He holds dual U.S. and French citizenship.