In partnership with the Johns Hopkins Alumni Association and Johns Hopkins Carey Business School Development and Alumni Relations, the Private Equity and Venture Capital Club at Carey will hold its event in Washington DC to launch the JHU Finance Affinity Group DC/Baltimore and host a panel discussion.
Join Hopkins alumni, friends and a panel of experts for a moderated and interactive discussion about the current climate and ecosystem for investments and deals—especially when operating in an uncertain and volatile environment. The evening will begin and end with refreshments and the opportunity for dynamic networking.
Panel Discussion: The Investment Landscape in Times of Uncertainty and Change
Panelists
- Adam Hartmann, Director of Operations, Quona Capital
- Jon Isaacson, Managing Director, Business Services and Health Care, American Capital
- Sheri L. Orlowitz, Founding Partner, Artemis Holdings Group
- Julia Spicer, Executive Director, Mid-Atlantic Venture Capital Association
- Moderator: Kelvin Fu, President, PEVC Club, A-Level Capital
Event Details
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- Date: November 10, 2016 (Thu)
- Location: The Beacon Hotel (1615 Rhode Island Avenue, NW, Washington, DC 20036)
- Registration
- $15.00 per person for alumni and guests
- $5.00 for current students
Program
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- 6:30PM to 7PM: Registration and Networking
- 7PM to 7:45PM: Panel with Q&A
- 7:45PM to 8PM: Post-Event Networking (Food & Drinks)
About the Panelists
Adam Hartmann
Director of Operations, Quona Capital
Jon Isaacson
Managing Director, Business Services and Health Care, American Capital
Mr. Isaacson joined American Capital as a Principal in 2002 and was promoted to Managing Director in 2005. He is a rotating member of the firm’s Investment Committee and leads the Healthcare practice and co-leads the Business Services practice covering the upper middle market.
Jon was previously with Thayer Capital Partners, a Washington D.C. based private equity firm where he was a Managing Director focusing on outsourced business services investments and was a member of the firm’s Investment Committee. Mr. Isaacson joined Thayer from GTCR Golder Rauner, LLC, a Chicago-based private equity firm. Previous to GTCR, Mr. Isaacson was a Financial Analyst for Morgan Stanley & Co. and a Management Consultant for McKinsey & Co. Jon has extensive experience and expertise investing in business process outsourcing (BPO), information technology services, installed base software, distribution and logistics, transaction processing, education and training, and marketing services companies. Within healthcare, Jon’s focus includes outsourced pharmaceutical services, behavioral health, medical devices, and healthcare information technology.
Previously, he has served on the Board of Directors for Vigilinx, Inc., Primary Multicraft, Inc., RoadRunner Freight Systems, Montana Silversmiths, Inc., Astrodyne Corporation, Renaissance Interactive, Western Wats, Inc., Affordable Care, Inc., Marina Medical Billing Service, Inc., Contec, LLC and Exstream Software. He was also an observer on the Board of Directors for Compusearch Software Systems, Inc. and Beacon Hospice. Currently, Jon serves on the Board of Directors for Cambridge Major Labs-AAIPharma Services, Soil Safe Holdings, Inc., Financial Asset Management Systems, Inc., Meadows Behavioral Healthcare and ECA Medical Instruments.
Mr. Isaacson received his Master of Business Administration from Stanford University Graduate School of Business and a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from The Johns Hopkins University.
Julia Spicer
Executive Director, Mid-Atlantic Venture Capital Association
As Executive Director, Julia is responsible for providing MAVA’s strategic direction and oversight of operations. Prior to joining MAVA in 2002, Julia was vice-president for communications for Columbia Capital, a communications and technology private equity firm based in Alexandria, VA, where she provided strategic communications consultation and investor relations to Columbia Capital and its portfolio companies. Previously, she was President and COO at IntellEvents, a strategic positioning firm that she co-founded. For nearly 10 years, Julia was with GTE Corporation, serving as vice president directing strategic communications and investor relations for the corporation’s wireless and emerging technology businesses, as well as GTE Laboratories. In addition she directed public policy communications for the corporation at the federal level and had oversight for the GTE Corporate Foundation, one of the top 20 in the country. Julia received her B.A. in Communications from the University of North Carolina where she was a John Motley Morehead Scholar.
Sheri L. Orlowitz
Founding Partner, Artemis Holdings Group
Sheri Orlowitz is both a visionary and a practical entrepreneur. She founded Artemis Holdings Group LLC (Artemis) to bring together a team of creative professionals and advisors, some of whom she has worked with in the past, who have hands-on experience in dealing with all stages of the life cycle of a business. Sheri finds this experience to be essential to providing comprehensive advice on M&A, acquisitions, divestitures, restructuring and growth. Sheri directs the strategy behind Artemis’ international private investment fund and travels extensively to Southern and Western Europe, using her wide network of international banks, funds, government officials, CEO’s, business owners and advisors to identify opportunities.
Founding Artemis is a natural progression of Sheri’s twenty-year history of successfully acquiring, running and divesting diverse companies, both domestically and internationally. During her career, Sheri raised well over $100 million, acquired or created a dozen companies from $6 million to $70 million and, importantly, was responsible for the companies and its employees, investors and the eventual successful divestitures.
Prior to Artemis, Sheri founded and operated Shan Industries LLC, an acquisition vehicle targeting manufacturing companies. Sheri financed and led Shan in identifying companies, raising capital, negotiating and conducting the associated due diligence. When Shan acquired two companies from Tyco International, Sheri operated them as the CEO and CFO, successfully prosecuting a company crippling environmental fraud by the seller and ultimately improving the EBITDA of the effected businesses by almost 320%. Shan exited through a sale to its minority partners, Prairie Capital, a mid-market private equity company.
Before Shan, Sheri was a principal, Chief Operating Officer and Chief Financial Officer of DBI, a $70 million consortium of manufacturing companies with operations and sales offices throughout Europe, the US and in Shenzhen, China. Sheri was instrumental in securing the domestic and international financing to acquire the companies, Magnetic Data Technologies, Brumko Magnetics and AMBelgium. During Sheri’s tenure with DBI, she presided over several acquisitions, including the purchase of a disc-drive operation from Quantum and a $5 million recording device company from Eastman Kodak whose chief customers were clandestine departments of the Department of Defense and the NSA.
Sheri operates ahead of the curve and sees opportunities well before others. For example, she created Shan to acquire manufacturing companies for low multiples when, until recently, manufacturing was out of favor. Sheri acquired a dilapidated tear down building in the then very un-gentrified part of Washington, DC, known as Adams Morgan and developed the first, highly successful condominium complex in the area. This creative thinking is also apparent in Sheri’s philanthropic leadership.
While Sheri is involved in many organizations focused on children and women she counts her most noteworthy accomplishment to be the creation of the 22,000 sq. ft. Orlowitz-Lee Center in Miami. Established in 1999, the Center was Florida’s first and, indeed one of the few in the nation at that time, one-stop shops, providing comprehensive services for abused children and their families, who at that time were a chronically underserved, undervalued and largely ignored population. Sheri continued to push boundaries to extend the services to trafficked girls. In 2007, the Staff created Project GOLD, part of the initial and ongoing funding of which Sheri raised through a grant from the Queen of Sweden’s Childhood Foundation.
Kelvin Fu
President, Private Equity and Venture Capital Club at Carey | Partner, A-Level Capital
Kelvin Fu is a Global MBA candidate at the Johns Hopkins Carey Business School and serves as the President of the Johns Hopkins Private Equity and Venture Capital Club. He is also a Partner at A-Level Capital which is a student-run venture capital firm that invests in Johns Hopkins-related companies.
Prior to his MBA, Kelvin worked for the largest foreign owned private equity growth fund and was based in Shanghai. He was responsible for the deal sourcing, due diligence investment evaluation, structuring and portfolio management. He has worked on numerous deals spanning across consumer related sectors, energy, and healthcare in different geographic regions such as North Asia, Southeast Asia and Europe.
Kelvin has been invited to speak and be a moderator at numerous business and investment forums. He has co-written two books on China that were published by Wiley Finance: “Private Equity in China: Challenges and Opportunities” and “Due Diligence in China: Beyond the Checklist”. He is the Publisher of Private Equity in China (http://www.privateequityinchina.com) where he spends his time discussing about trends and opportunities in the private equity industry and due diligence topics.
Kelvin holds a Masters of Applied Finance from the Macquarie University in Australia and studied Political Science at the National University of Singapore and Technopreneurship in Fudan University, Shanghai, China. He is also pursuing a Certificate in International Development at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University.
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