2026 ACG Charlotte March Madness M&A Panel

Alicia Bowers is Senior Vice President, Innovation & New Ventures at Advocate Health in Charlotte, where she leads innovation strategy, external partnerships, and commercialization efforts. She brings a rare blend of legal, compliance, and business experience to healthcare growth initiatives, having joined Atrium Health in 2005 as in-house counsel and later serving as Senior Vice President and Enterprise Chief Privacy and Compliance Officer. In 2023, she crossed to the business side, where she works with companies ranging from emerging startups to global industry leaders on initiatives including IRCAD North America and The Pearl Innovation District. With more than two decades inside a health system that has scaled to become the third largest nonprofit health system in the U.S., Alicia has had a front-row seat to healthcare's evolution from traditional delivery models to technology-enabled care, sophisticated data governance, and responsible AI adoption. She is a strong advocate for balancing risk and resilience in an ever-changing landscape. Alicia holds a BA in English and Chemistry from UNC Chapel Hill, where she was a Morehead Scholar, and a JD with Honors from UNC Chapel Hill School of Law.

Andrew Halverstam is Managing Director in BofA Securities' Mergers and Acquisitions group, specializing in healthcare. He brings more than 25 years of M&A experience advising public companies, entrepreneur-owned businesses, and private equity-backed platforms across healthcare services and MedTech. Since joining BofA in 2021, Andrew has announced 30 healthcare M&A transactions across the sector. His experience spans pharma services, digital health, managed care, provider and payer outsourcing, revenue cycle management, and a range of other subsectors, providing broad perspective on the trends reshaping the industry. Based in Charlotte, home to Bank of America's headquarters, Andrew combines local market insight with national and international deal experience on a leading global advisory platform. He closely follows the forces driving healthcare M&A in 2026 and beyond, including reimbursement pressure, rising regulatory scrutiny, and the expanding role of AI and data-driven analytics in diligence, valuation, and post-close integration. Andrew holds a BA in Economics from Emory University (Magna Cum Laude) and an MBA in Finance from the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University.

Jennifer Csik Hutchens is Healthcare Partner in the Charlotte office of global law firm Dechert LLP, where she leads the firm's healthcare regulated industry practice firmwide. Jennifer serves as a trusted advisor to private equity-backed healthcare funds, institutional investors, portfolio companies, and roll-up networks. With nearly two decades of transactional experience exclusively in the rapidly changing healthcare industry, she has structured, negotiated, and closed hundreds of healthcare M&A, joint venture, and collaboration transactions across the country. Jennifer is go-to counsel for PE sponsors navigating the regulatory complexity that distinguishes healthcare deals, from Anti-Kickback and Stark law compliance to corporate practice of medicine issues and value-based care arrangements. Recognized by Chambers USA for Healthcare in North Carolina since 2018, she is a frequent national speaker on healthcare transactions and dealmaking, and is particularly energized by the emerging care delivery models, technology-enabled platforms, and evolving payment structures reshaping healthcare M&A. A Duke Blue Devil twice over, undergraduate (Phi Beta Kappa) and Duke Law (Order of the Coif), Jennifer has called North Carolina her professional home for more than two decades. She also roots for Carolina, and the explanation is worth the price of admission.