ACG Philadelphia | February Breakfast Briefing: 2024 Fundraising Outlook

Skip Maner is an executive with over 25 years of successful entrepreneurial, private equity investing, and fund leadership experience. Skip is a General Partner of NewSpring, a lower middle-market Private Equity Firm with $3 billion under management, and the founder of the Firm’s dedicated buyout strategy, NewSpring Holdings. Through a disciplined M&A process and value creation methodologies, Skip leads a team of investment and operating professionals to transform founder-led companies into institutionalized platforms of scale. Since 2013, NewSpring Holdings has completed 43 transactions into 7 platform companies, which have collectively grown from $65 million to over $780 million in revenue. In 2022, Holdings sold its Government Services platform, Avantus Federal to QinetiQ for $590 million.

Before joining NewSpring, Skip held leadership roles in a wide range of industry segments and was responsible for the formation and growth of several leading companies such as WebLogic (acquired by BEA Systems/Novell), Procurian (acquired by Accenture), SkyBitz (acquired by Telular Corp.) and ICCNexergy (acquired by Inventus Power).

Previously, Skip served as COO and Managing Principal of Inverness Graham Investments, a lower-middle-market buyout fund with $250 million under management. Before Inverness, Skip held various positions within the private equity industry where he was responsible for lead investing and actively managing several portfolio companies.

Skip currently holds board roles on Navigate, a private consulting company, NewSpring Holdings platform companies USPack, Magna5, BCore, and underdog & company, and is also on the board for three non-profit organizations, The Umbrella Open Foundation, Mastery Charter Foundation, and Sharing Excess. He received a BA from the University of Richmond and an MBA from The Wharton School of Business at The University of Pennsylvania.

David Hersh was part of Mantra's founding team in 2007 and has been based in New York since July 2011. David sits on Mantra's Investment Committee and is Head of Primary & Direct Investments. Before joining Mantra, David worked in the Paris office of PFC Energy, handling financial transactions, consulting, and mergers & acquisitions for companies operating in the energy business. David's responsibilities included financial modeling, directing due diligence, executing transactions, and monitoring performance. David was awarded a Bachelor of Commerce from McGill University (Canada). David is a French and American national.

Megan is a Principal on the Direct Equity Investment team where she leads capital formation for the firm’s direct equity platform. Megan focuses on client and product management, including investor relations, fundraising, and portfolio construction.

Megan began her career at Hamilton Lane working as an analyst in the Relationship Management Department. Megan was responsible for business development, client relations, and consultant relations efforts across the firm’s Taft Hartley benefit plan clients.

Megan received a B.S. in Business Administration from Bucknell University. 

Joshua joined 747 Capital in 2003 and is a Partner of the firm.

He has been a member of the investment team since the inception of the firm’s first fund and is responsible for sourcing and analyzing small-cap funds and direct co-investments, as well as being actively involved in portfolio management, due diligence, and manager selection. Josh also oversees reporting and fund administration as well as US business development and serves on the advisory boards of various underlying portfolio funds.

Before joining 747 Capital, Joshua was a product marketing manager at Citadel, where he managed the development of collaborative software products for the construction and engineering industries.

Joshua holds a B.A. in Molecular Biology and Biochemistry from Middlebury College, and an M.B.A. in Finance from the Columbia Business School.

Matt Swain joined Triago in 2019. As Global Chief Executive Officer, he oversees the secondary, direct, and primary practices, reporting to Executive Chairman Antoine Dréan. Formerly, he co-led the Americas introducing primary directs and GP-led transactions to the platform.

Matt spent several years at Eaton Partners, a Stifel subsidiary. There, he worked across business lines in project management and execution. He also helped lead Eaton’s origination and execution initiatives with family offices and registered investment advisors.

Matt earned his Bachelor’s Degree in Environmental Studies and Economics from Colgate University and participated in study programs at The London School of Economics and Columbia Business School. Matt is an American national and holds Series 7, 63, and 24 securities licenses.