Judd Appel has nearly 25 years of experience in accounting, finance, tax, mergers and acquisitions, corporate strategy and CFO leadership roles. He specializes in advising clients on buy-side and sell-side mergers & acquisitions (M&A) transactions. He also raises debt and equity capital, explores strategic partnerships and venture capital related situations.

Appel has worked in the Americas, Europe, Middle East and Asia handling M&A transactions in excess of $10 billion. Previously, he worked with Big 4 firms and other large global organizations, including General Electric Company, Honeywell International and ITT Corporation. Appel also consulted as an Operating Principal at Global Infrastructure Partners, a $45 billion NYC-based private equity fund.

Appel was trained and held a CPA license in Florida, New York and Georgia (currently inactive). In addition to his accounting training, he holds the Accredited in Business Valuation designation from the AICPA. Appel is a Registered Investment Advisor of Provenance Wealth Advisors (via Raymond James) and holds a Real Estate Associate license in the State of Florida.

Doug Barnard is the chief legal officer of CF Industries (NYSE: CF), an S&P 500 chemical company, having represented the company in its $750M initial public offering (CF was the top-performing company on the NYSE two years later, and outperformed Google over its first ten years as a public company); its $5B acquisition of a competitor following a fifteen-month, four-way, cross-border takeover battle; its $1.4B divestiture of a business segment; and its $3B production joint venture with a domestic customer. He was also Chairman of the Board of CF’s controlled public subsidiary Terra Nitrogen MLP (NYSE: TNH).

Doug has extensive experience in computer science, having led an enterprise-wide SAP implementation at CF, and he holds a professional certification in data science from Harvard. Doug is also coauthor of a chapter on artificial intelligence and the law, which was published in early 2019, and he spoke recently at Harvard Law School on a panel devoted to this topic.

Matthew Cantwell is an Operating Partner / Advisor / Executive focused on growth of venture-stage and middle market businesses, typically with global scope.

Matt has served as the Chief Strategy Officer for the International Division of McGraw Hill Education, responsible for strategy, business development and M&A for the $200m revenue division that sells into 130 countries. Previously, Matthew was a Manager on PwC’s M&A Advisory team where he led numerous commercial and operations due diligence exercises and value capture planning for private equity clients. Matthew was also an Associate at Battelle Ventures, a venture capital fund that commercialized intellectual property, and led strategy for 360ip, one of Battelle’s portfolio companies in Asia.

Matthew has a MBA from Columbia Business School’s EMBA-Global program, a MSc in Political Economy from The London School of Economics, and an undergraduate Finance degree from Penn State University’s Schreyer Honors College.

Desiree Castillejos is the Chief Strategy officer and VP of Corporate Development at Kimball Electronics, a publicly traded diversified manufacturer that serves the Medical, Automotive, Industrial and Public Safety markets. She is responsible for the inorganic growth of the company. She has over 15 years of experience working in corporate development and strategy in the technology industry and served most recently as Vice President, Corporate Strategy and Development, at Nokia.

Desiree received an MBA from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and a MSc and a BSc in Computer Engineering from the Université de Technologie de Compiègne in France.

Hemant Kumar is Chief Financial Officer of Sol-Millennium Medical Group. He is also a member of Sol-M Board of Directors. Sol-Millennium is a global medical device company.

Prior to Sol-M, Hemant has served in various leadership roles with Baxter, American Express, and Delphi (General Motors) in various geographies across the globe. With Baxter, he was Vice President for Global Financial Planning & Reporting for its $17B business, prior to which he served as CFO for Baxter Canada, North Asia and Controller for Asia Pacific and India. At American express, he was responsible for Financial Reporting for Asia Pacific for credit card business lines. With Delphi, he led operations finance and controllership for India operations. He started his career with Ranbaxy Laboratories.

Hemant is an Executive Scholar from Kellogg School of Management. He is also a Chartered Accountant (CPA eq.) and Management Accountant (CMA eq.) from New Delhi. He did his Bachelor’s in Commerce (Hons.) from Delhi University.

Tatyana Mosenkis served as Associate Director of Business Development in one of the divisions of former United Technologies Corporation (UTC). United Technologies Corporation was an American multinational conglomerate that merged with the Raytheon Company in April 2020 to form Raytheon Technologies, and spinoff Carrier and Otis divisions into public companies.

In her role, Tatyana was driving global M&A activities to execute on divisional growth strategy, leading end to end deal process and integration planning, as well as external relationships with financials advisers.

Prior to UTC, Ms. Mosenkis was a Business Development (M&A) Manager with GE Capital (GE Money) and GE Industrial Systems. As part of her role, she supported building and maintaining playbooks for M&A integrations.

RONALD J. PRAGUE is Executive Vice President, Chief Legal Officer and Corporate Secretary of Synchronoss Technologies, Inc., a publicly-held company based in Bridgewater, New Jersey, a position he has held since 2006, where he is responsible for all of the company’s legal affairs. Synchronoss is a provider of mobile cloud innovation, messaging, digital and IoT products, supporting hundreds hundred of millions of subscribers across the globe. Prior to joining Synchronoss, Mr. Prague was Group Counsel for Intel Corporation’s Communication Infrastructure Group. Mr. Prague also practiced law with the New York law firms of Haythe & Curley (now Torys LLP) and Richards & O’Neil (now Morgan Lewis). Mr. Prague is a frequent speaker at various legal conferences and has written several articles on various legal issues. He is a member of the Board of Advisors of ACC New Jersey, and is co-chairperson of the ACC New Jersey Technology and Small Law Committees, and a member of the Livingston Sports Council and Cornell Agriculture and Life Sciences Alumni Board. Mr. Prague is a graduate of Northwestern University School of Law and received a B.S., with distinction from Cornell University.

Paul Price is the Director of M&A Integration and Corporate Development. At IBM, he has been involved in executing more than 100 acquisitions spanning software, services, and hardware. He drives acquisition performance post close to deliver strategic and financial objectives.

He has implemented process and technology improvements across the entire M&A lifecycle, with particular focus on data-and-analytics-driven innovation and insights.

He is a recognized thought leader in M&A/Post-Merger-Integration and has participated in many conferences and contributed to multiple research initiatives and publications. He holds a patent for acquisition performance/risk prediction & mitigation.

Ed Richards is Vice President, Corporate Business Development for The Lubrizol Corporation. In this position, Mr. Richards is responsible for the company’s business development activities, including acquisitions, divestitures, investments and strategic partnerships.

Mr. Richards originally joined Lubrizol in 1985, where he held multiple roles of increasing responsibility in sales and marketing management, and business development. In 2006, he took the role of chief executive officer for Engine Control Systems Limited, where he guided the company through two ownership changes. He also served as president of EPR Consulting Services, where he supported venture capital portfolio investments by creating strategic market and business plans while occupying interim CEO roles. Mr. Richards also provided consulting services to the Energy Enterprise Division of NorTech, a technology-based economic development organization serving Northeast Ohio before accepting his current role with Lubrizol in 2012.

Mr. Richards earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Chemistry from Cleveland State University. He is a member of the American Chemistry Council, American Chemical Society, Association for Corporate Growth, ChemPharma Professional Association, Mining Diesel Emissions Advisory Committee and Society of Automotive Engineers.

Brian D. Walters serves as Senior Vice-President and General Counsel for Matthews International Corporation, Pittsburgh’s oldest company in continuous operation since 1850 and operating in over 25 countries. For over 16 years, Brian has directed all legal matters for this publicly-traded corporation both nationally and internationally, as well as serving as a member of Matthews’ executive leadership team and secretary for the nominating and corporate governance committee of Matthews’ Board of Directors.

In addition to his day-to-day legal responsibilities, Mr. Walters has led 70 domestic and foreign acquisition initiatives on behalf of Matthews, including actively negotiating deal terms, drafting definitive agreements, managing due diligence, coordinating strategies to secure transaction approval from the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, managing HSR filings, as well as filings with the competition authority of the European Union, and leading project management offices as part of integration management. Brian’s deal experience includes recent stock purchases of public and private companies in Austria, China, England, Germany, Hong Kong, Italy, Switzerland, Turkey, the United States and Vietnam. With over 11,000 employees, Matthews reported revenue of approximately of $1.5 billion in fiscal year 2020, having tripled in size during Mr. Walters’ tenure with the company, primarily through strategic acquisitions and mergers.