2026 ACG NY Family Office & Limited Partner Series | Spring Edition

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Michael Kaplan, Founder and CEO, BryKap Holdings Group

Michael Kaplan is the founder of BryaKap Holdings Group, a holding company that buys and builds consumer brands and entrepreneur and multi company founder. Previously, he was the co-founder and CEO of Fashion to Figure, a leading plus-size fashion company for women sizes 12-26. Kaplan graduated from Harvard Business School and Brown University and held positions in the venture capital and financial space before his passion to help others, impact community and entrepreneurial spirit led him and his brother to launch Fashion to Figure as a single store they ran themselves for two years before expanding the business.

Recently, Kaplan has been an advisor and investor in: the restructuring of Fullbeauty Brands by Goldman Sachs and Oaktree; Rue 21 by Blue Torch; Maurices by OpCapita; negotiations for a potential debt refinancing by a major US department store; partnership with a leading private equity firm to purchase a national specialty retailer and brand; investment, launch and expansion of Blue Stripes Cacao Chocolate; among other entrepreneurial and principal investing activities.

Kaplan has come to consumer investing and entrepreneurship naturally based on the concentration of consumer and brand experiences within his own family. He is great-grandson of Lena Bryant, the revolutionary dressmaker who pioneered full-figured fashion over a century ago with the launch of Lane Bryant. His paternal great grandfather was Meir Kamenstein, founder of Kamenstein a kitchenware company bought in 2000 by Lifetime Brands. His uncle was Co-Founder of the Worth Collection sold to L Catterton and other uncle was Chairman and CEO of Benjamin Moore Paint Company sold to Berkshire Hathaway. Kaplan’s cousins Charlie and Owen Merrow are eighth-generation owners and operators of Merrow Companies, second largest sewing machine company in the world and largest PPE provider in New England during the initial wave of the COVID Pandemic. Kaplan grew up in Manhattan and took an interest in Lane Bryant from a young age when he treasured time alongside his father who served as President and CEO of the brand.

Kaplan has served as a speaker at the annual Women’s Wear Daily Digital Forum and Women’s Wear Daily Beauty Forum. In the recent past, he has served as a guest speaker at The Fashion Institute of Technology, The Laboratory Institute of Merchandising, Brown University, Harvard University, Columbia Business School and Harvard Business School.
    
Kaplan is an award-winning saxophone player who studied Jazz Saxophone at The Manhattan School of Music. He graduated from Brown University in 1995 and received his MBA from Harvard Business School in 2002 where he serves as a Rock Center for Entrepreneurship Advisor. Kaplan is passionate about giving back to the community and is actively involved in initiatives like The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research where he serves on the foundation's leadership council. Kaplan is also a volunteer for Manhattan School of Music and a member of After Arts, a community of over 500 professionals in business, law, finance, healthcare, and tech who have had a formal music education growing up or were professional musicians.
 

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Nneoma Maduike, Partner, Holland & Knight 

Nneoma Maduike is a financial transactions attorney in Holland & Knight's New York office. Ms. Maduike focuses her practice on representing many of the largest U.S. and global institutional lenders, regional banks, hedge and private equity funds, commercial finance companies and numerous specialty finance companies in a wide variety of financial matters.

Ms. Maduike has extensive experience structuring, documenting and negotiating secured and unsecured loan transactions, including asset-based and acquisition financings, cash flow and structured finance, syndicated and mezzanine financings, bankruptcy financing, lender finance transactions, loan workouts and restructurings, and portfolio acquisitions and dispositions.

Prior to joining Holland & Knight, Ms. Maduike was a partner in a New York City-based financial services law firm and the co-chair of its lender finance practice. In addition to her finance practice, Ms. Maduike is a leader and advocate for numerous organizations dedicated to advancing women and people of color across a variety of professions. She is a former national director of The Coalition of Women's Initiatives in Law, having previously served as president of board of directors of the organization's New York chapter. As a leader of the committee that established the New York chapter, Ms. Maduike helped develop the organization's presence and commitment to advancing opportunities for women in law. She also was a founding advisory board member and a member of the executive committee for NYC FinTech Women, an organization dedicated to empowering women in the financial technology (FinTech) industry.

Ms. Maduike also is a dedicated contributor to the Sponsors for Education Opportunity (SEO), a pipeline nonprofit organization that enables her to guide and mentor diverse students through their journey from law school into the professional world. She devotes countless hours advising and encouraging emerging lawyers on how to navigate various adversities and to thrive in the profession.

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Corey Massella, Partner, UHY LLP

Corey Massella has more than twenty-five years of experience as an entrepreneur, tax, and business advisor, and as a specialist in SEC accounting and audit services. Additionally, Corey has experience serving as a Private Equity and Technology Industry Group Practice Leader for a Top Twenty accounting firm.

Corey has successfully guided his clients through all facets of the mergers and acquisitions transaction cycle to help them make critical decisions, while ensuring transactions are strategic and seamless. He has deep experience advising private equity funds, hedge funds, banks, broker-dealers, investor relations firms, and various other financial services companies. As a business consultant, Corey has worked with CEOs and CFOs, as well as the boards of both public and private clients. He has performed due diligence and negotiations on both the buy and sell sides. Corey also has experience preparing business plans and initial public offerings (IPO), and with cash flow and productivity analysis to help scale businesses for growth, as well as extensive knowledge and experience in complex tax structuring and planning.

In 2015, Corey was selected as the winner of the SmartCEO award for Industry CPA Leader in New York. He has served as moderator for several conferences, including ACG NY’s “M&A Landscape: Diving into Four of the Hot Industry Sectors” and “The M&A Advisor Summit,” and has authored numerous articles.