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How did women executives fare in the past year of a global pandemic and what will “normal” look like when people return to work? These were the topics of a recent Women in Private Equity webinar that was sponsored by ACG Detroit.
This time last year “the world stopped” but it soon recovered to become a banner year, recalled Heather Madland, partner at Huron Capital, a Detroit-based private equity firm. Huron went from 20 active deals to zero overnight when businesses entered lockdown last March. “We did everything we could to manage the uncertainty. We were heads down during that time but the world turned around by late spring,” she said, adding that her firm closed 17 deals in August and September.
“As a team, we never worked so hard as we had in 2020 and into 2021,” Madland said.
With a robust last quarter of 2020 and start to 2021, it’s easy to forget how fraught the early days of the pandemic were, according to panelists.
Financing evaporated overnight, recalled Michelle Dear, associate with Wind Point Partners, a private equity firm headquartered in Chicago. “We had to go out and see who was going to lend and we didn’t know what was going to happen from here to there. Making sure management teams were supported was challenging and we saw leadership step up and rally the troops,” she said.