WATCH

This year’s Corporate Development Professionals to Watch list was curated by Middle Market DealMaker editors based on more than 270 nominations from the ACG dealmaking community.

We selected 10 corporate development honorees who represent the diversity of the profession. These 10 represent strategic acquirers of varying sizes and across industries—including telecommunications, healthcare and publishing, among others. Some have been in their roles for years while others are new to the position. All of them are eager to transact in the coming year, a common theme in the responses they gave when asked about their professional goals for 2023.

Read on to learn more about their plans for the year ahead, their proudest professional accomplishment from 2022 and the piece of career advice that’s helped them get to where they are today.

Jelena Guzenko

Global Vice President, Strategy and Business Development, Schneider Electric New York, NY

Proudest 2022 Professional

ACCOMPLISHMENT: In 2022, I led several highly complex deals spanning multiple geographies for Siemens Energy. In April 2022, after 20 years of a rewarding career with Siemens, I decided to undergo a significant change and joined Schneider Electric to lead global strategy and business development. Since then, I’ve been leading the strategy for critical initiatives with a focus on decarbonization, such as the buildup of a new Process Electrification Consulting business, exciting M&A and strategic partnership deals, and heading up a sophisticated market and business intelligence team.

PROFESSIONAL GOAL FOR 2023: I identify with Schneider Electric’s purpose of empowering the world to make the most of our energy and resources, while bridging progress and sustainability. As the strategy executive, it is my passion to help uncover new opportunities for decarbonization and sustainability, and lead the transformation within and outside our organization. This includes understanding and shaping new technology and market trends, and optimally focusing our resources for organic and inorganic growth, while continuously streamlining our portfolio.

Xavier Chaillot

Chief Corporate Development Officer, Career Certified Denver, CO

PROUDEST 2022 PROFESSIONAL ACCOMPLISHMENT: We have completed two acquisitions and expanded into Career Certified, a multi-vertical online education provider for regulated professions. We also acquired Mbition, which complemented our real estate portfolio with AHIT, the leading provider of home inspection education; Stringham School, the leading real estate school in Utah; and Home Appraisal, which is bound to relaunch in 2023. In addition, we acquired Amber Book, a leading provider of exam prep courses for the Architect Registration Exam. Finally, despite a challenging economic environment, the company continued to generate solid organic growth with exceptional profitability.

PROFESSIONAL GOAL FOR 2023: Our objective in 2023 is to further integrate and grow our core and recently acquired businesses while opening up new verticals through further acquisitions. We are focused on bringing the best and highest quality online education to heavily regulated professions to help people realize their aspiration, one person at a time.

Patrick Gilligan

VP, New Business Development, Marubeni America

New York City, NY

PROUDEST 2022 PROFESSIONAL ACCOMPLISHMENT: Together with our C-Suite in New York City, we established a program to solicit new platform themes from non-industry people in the organization. Promising themes and ideas were researched, vetted and then presented at a senior level. Why? While our industry people are experts, they’re often blinded by their career biases and programmed to think conventionally within their industry norms. Through the process, we uncovered some interesting themes that otherwise wouldn’t get attention, built target lists and started dialogues. It’s also been a great way to get more staff involved in the future of our organization.

PROFESSIONAL GOAL FOR 2023: My goal in 2023 is to source more deals by being quicker and more decisive. It’s getting more difficult for corporates to see deal flow, and one culprit is the inability to respond and act quickly. When comparing ourselves to very transactional PE funds, sellers and advisors see us as slow and time consuming. Naturally, they’ll prefer to work with the funds. Seeing more deals will require not only doing more outreach, but also being more responsive, so advisors can trust they will get feedback in a timely manner when they share. To this end, maybe in 2023 we track days between events—for example, how many days are there between when we get a teaser to when we either decline or sign an NDA. There are many other events we can measure. We need to have data points on how good or how bad we are.

JAMES TIDWELL

Director, Corporate Development, AMETEK

Berwyn, PA

PROUDEST 2022 PROFESSIONAL ACCOMPLISHMENT: After a record year for AMETEK in 2021, I am proud of the AMETEK team for successfully integrating new businesses and closing two acquisitions in 2022. Both companies are market leaders in their respective niches with advanced technology. This may sound strange coming from a deal guy, but I’m also proud of the deals we walked away from this year. AMETEK has a long, successful track record of acquisitions, and our deal discipline of not overpaying and not taking unacceptable risks is core to that success.

PROFESSIONAL GOAL FOR 2023: To use AMETEK’s free cash flow and strong balance sheet to set new records for our capital deployed on strategic acquisitions.

Matt Hinson

Chief Business Development Officer, American Trailer Rental Group Ft. Mitchell, KY

Proudest 2022 Professional

ACCOMPLISHMENT: In 2022, I’m most proud of being named chief development officer at American Trailer Rental Group. The team here has a proven history of operational excellence and executing on both an organic growth strategy and M&A. Before joining ATRG, I was SVP of development at Orthopedic Care Partners. In that seat I was able to heavily influence growth. We grew that business from 20 physicians in Florida to over 115 across four states. I was ready to lead a development program of my own, though. After meeting Jonathan Brooks (CEO of ATRG) and the rest of the team, I immediately realized that this team is building something remarkable.

PROFESSIONAL GOAL FOR 2023: ATRG has as a strong track record of acquisitions, led by CEO Jonathan Brooks and Lucas Wright, our CFO. My goal for 2023 is simply to help accelerate the strong work they’ve already been doing. I appreciate the opportunity they have given me here and the resources they’ve dedicated to formalizing an M&A program. If I continue their pace of deals and value of EBITDA acquired, I’ll call it a win.