Panelists

Michelle is a member of the firm’s Investment Committee and currently serves on the Board of Directors of Hardwoods Distribution Inc. (TSX: HDI). Michelle leads CapStreet’s efforts to source new platform investments.

Prior to joining CapStreet, Michelle was the Chief Strategy Officer at DistributionNOW (NYSE: DNOW), a publicly traded, global distributor of energy and industrial products and services. At DNOW, Michelle managed strategy, corporate development, and investor relations. Previously, she was the Senior Vice President of Strategy, M&A and Shared Services for the Distribution and Transmission segment of National Oilwell Varco (NYSE: NOV).

Prior to her work in energy and industrial distribution, Michelle spent 20 years in various managerial and interim management roles in Consulting and Restructuring in the public and private sectors in Houston, New Orleans, New York, San Francisco, and Washington D.C. where she worked across industries from energy to healthcare and public education.

Michelle obtained a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from The University of Texas and a Master of Business Administration from the Jesse Jones School of Business at Rice University.

Pat is the founder and general partner of Active Capital, a venture firm focused on leading seed rounds for B2B SaaS companies outside of Silicon Valley. Prior to Active Capital, Pat was an entrepreneur, operator, and angel investor.  Pat’s career started in 1999 when he dropped out of Virginia Tech to start a dot-com with some of his best friends and college roommates.  After the dot-com bubble burst, Pat and his team persevered through years of economic downturn before creating Webmail.us, a $10 million dollar software company that was recognized as one of the fastest growing private companies in America by Inc. Magazine.  In 2007, Webmail.us was acquired by Rackspace where Pat worked as an executive on the senior leadership team until 2013.  Pat has personally invested in nearly 100 startups and is an active board member of the Virginia Tech Apex Center for Entrepreneurship, Venture for America in San Antonio, and several Active Capital portfolio companies.

Mr. Dresner founded Dresner Partners in 1991 to provide Wall Street investment banking services to middle market businesses. His distinguished corporate finance career spans nearly 40 years, including mergers, acquisitions, debt and equity financing, restructuring and turnarounds, recapitalizations and international transactions. In addition to his transactional experience, Mr. Dresner has led and supervised numerous valuations, fairness opinions and strategic financial consulting engagements. He has completed or supervised transactions totaling approximately $5 billion in transaction value. He has worked extensively in several industries including healthcare, business services, food and consumer products, building products, textiles, industrial manufacturing, retail and media. Prior to founding Dresner Partners, Mr. Dresner held management positions with First Chicago Corporation (JP Morgan Chase), Arthur Andersen (corporate finance and mergers and acquisitions practices), Heller Financial and GE Capital Corporation.

A community leader, Mr. Dresner serves on the Board of Directors of the Michael Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship at the University of Chicago and the Burnham Harbor Yacht Club. Previously he has served on the Boards of North Shore Congregation Israel, the Chicago Association for Corporate Growth, Jobs for Youth, RTC Advisory Board, and The Entrepreneurship Institute. He is also a member of The Economic Club of Chicago.

Education

M.B.A. Finance, University of Chicago Graduate School of Business
B.S. Economics, with Honors, Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania

Kurt is Co-Founder and Chief Evangelist at HireBetter with broad responsibilities including strategy, client satisfaction and practice development. His 19 years of public accounting, business development and consulting leadership include advising high-growth and middle market CEO’s in a variety of industries.

Kurt is also founder of BusinessEarth, which invests in companies committed to offering products or services which profitably make a significant impact on the world and BE also encourages and educates corporations and employees on how to “Profit Responsibly” through BusinessEarth.com.

Kurt previously founded and led The Controller Group (TCG), a professional services firm focused on Accounting, Technology and Recruiting. TCG was acquired by Tatum, a $250m CFO consultancy, in 2006 after growing to $18m in revenues and 80 professionals. During his career at Tatum, Kurt provided strategic and operational leadership for Tatum’s consulting practice, which represented over $50m in revenues and a significant portion of Tatum’s EBITDA and had offices across the U.S. Kurt focused his time on business development, marketing and people initiatives, and served as a member of Tatum’s Board.