Scott Eisenberg, Managing Partner, Amherst Partners, LLC
For Scott Eisenberg, the guiding principle behind the firm he co-founded more than 25 years ago is helping people. The early days of his career as an advisor in Deloitte’s capital markets group gave him a solid foundation in the tools it takes to help businesses thrive and grow. But while he could have stayed in that role and advanced at that firm, he learned quickly that he was far more personally energized by transaction-based work and helping his clients navigate real-life events in real time, as they unfolded. In his career, he has worked on over 75 investment banking transactions with middle-market sized companies and has advised over 300 such companies in regards to their operations, business plans, projections and other financial matters and has advised numerous companies and their respective management teams in regards to restructurings, strategic plans, and exit strategies for lenders and investors in connection with the restructuring advisory services offered by Amherst Partners. Prior to founding the firm, Scott held a variety of roles at Deloitte & Touche from 1983 to 1991, starting out in audit services from middle-market business and, for his final two years, serving as a manager the National Office Corporate Finance Group where he was responsible for providing merger and acquisition, financing assistance and valuation services for middle market clients. After that, Scott was vice president of Onset BIDCO, Inc. (“Onset”), a subordinated debt investment company from 1991 to 1993, where he was part of the management team that built a large and successful portfolio consisting of over 20 investments in small and medium sized companies.

Scott believes that a big differentiator between Amherst and other advisory firms is our emphasis on independence and client benefit. The right solution may not always be the easy solution but this commitment to doing what is right for our clients shows in the firm’s results. Over the past six years, more than 95% of Amherst Partner’s sell-side engagements have closed. On the restructuring front, Amherst has a well-earned reputation as a tenacious and resourceful advisor that is committed to helping clients find the best solutions for their unique challenges.

Steven Fleming, US Business Recovery Services Leader, PwC
Steve Fleming is a Principal and the US Leader of PwC’s Business Recovery Services (“BRS”) practice. He has 20+ years of business advisory experience with PwC, during which he has played leading roles in the firm’s London, New York and Dubai offices, giving him a unique global perspective on transaction advisory.  Steve has provided financial advisory services to many local and international clients, spanning the whole deal spectrum from devising acquisition/disposal strategies to performing valuations and due diligence, business reviews, and negotiating with potential investors.  He has extensive experience assisting distressed companies, has served as Chief Restructuring Officer (“CRO”) in Chapter 11 cases, and is qualified as an expert witness with respect to Valuation, DIP financing, §363 transactions and other bankruptcy related matters.  Steve’s specialties include: Valuation • Mergers and Acquisitions • Due Diligence • Strategic Planning and Budgeting Negotiations • Expert Witness Testimony • Liquidity Management • Management Leadership Restructuring and Turnarounds • Financial Reporting • Risk Management • Financial Modelling

Ross Gatlin, CEO & Managing Partner, Prophet Equity
As Managing Partner of Prophet Equity, Mr. Gatlin is focused on identifying, making, managing and realizing a portfolio of control investments in strategically viable, asset intensive, middle market companies where there are significant value creation opportunities and maintaining key financial and banking relationships in order to maximize portfolio companies’ financial returns. He is also focused on driving increases in equity value by optimizing portfolio and business unit strategy while being responsible for day-to-day operations of the partnership and relations with the limited partners. He is a member of the Office of Change Management of each investment. Mr. Gatlin has 20 years of private equity investment experience. Prior to founding Prophet Equity, Mr. Gatlin was a Founding Partner and Principal of a Southlake-based private equity firm. As a Founding Partner, Chief Restructuring Officer and Managing Director, Mr. Gatlin was responsible for sourcing, structuring and closing high return investments and driving value creation post close. Prior to this experience, Ross was a founding principal of Carlyle Management Group in Dallas. Prior to Carlyle, Mr. Gatlin worked as a senior manager at Bain & Company, helping develop and successfully implement strategic and operational turnarounds primarily for well-known Fortune 500 companies and their subsidiaries. Mr. Gatlin’s work includes mergers and post-merger integration, acquisitions, recapitalizations, work-outs, turnarounds, financial restructurings, exchange offers, due diligence, business valuations, detailed financial modeling and the design and valuation of complex securities. Mr. Gatlin holds an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University where he was one of only two in his class to receive both the Dean’s Distinguished Service Award and Beta Gamma Sigma honors. He earned his BBA from the University of Texas at Austin with a concentration in finance.

Steven R. Gerbsman, Principal, Gerbsman Partners
Steven R. Gerbsman is an internationally recognized Crisis/Turnaround CEO/Restructuring Professional, Private Investment Banker and Angel Investor who has been involved in maximizing enterprise value, stakeholder and shareholder value in a broad variety of industries. He has worked with a wide spectrum of senior and junior lenders, bondholder groups, venture capital and private equity sources, private investors and institutional groups. Mr. Gerbsman has over 51 years of senior management, marketing, sales and finance experience and has been involved in various business and investment ventures as an office, director, consultant and investor, both in the US and internationally. Since 1980, he has been in the business of maximizing enterprise value for highly leveraged, under-valued, under-performing and under-capitalized technology, digital marketing, life science, medical device, cyber security, fuel cell and solar energy companies and their Intellectual Property, as well as assisting technology, digital marketing, cyber security and medical device Intellectual Property companies with access to capital markets, strategic alliances, M&A, distribution of content and licensing. To date, Mr. Gerbsman has been involved in over $2.3 billion of restructuring, financing and M&A transactions, terminating/restructuring in excess of $810 million of real estate, sub-debt and equipment lease executory contracts and since 2001, has maximized enterprise value for over 109 companies and their Intellectual Property.

Robert Goldstein, Partner, Rally Capital Advisors
Robert joined Rally Capital Advisors in 2020. For the last 20 years, Goldstein’s experience includes private equity (as an originator, investor, portfolio manager and board member), financial, operational and turnaround management advisory and capital markets transaction services in the middle market. Bob has been intimately involved in the operational turnaround of numerous middle market companies, some of which received M&A and TMA Turnaround Awards. Previously, Goldstein served as Managing Partner at Five G Capital Partners LLC, Principal at Victory Park Capital Advisors, LLC, and Managing Partner of New Trier Partners LLC. Collectively through these firms, Mr. Goldstein originated and underwrote investment opportunities, structured, acquired, managed and monetized middle- market companies and commercial real estate (all asset classes) with aggregate transaction value in excess of $1 billion. Earlier in his career, Robert practiced law at a medium sized law firm based in Chicago advising middle market companies, private equity and hedge funds as their transactional counsel and financial institutions and non-bank lenders. He also served as Managing Partner and led his firm through significant growth and transition. Robert remains actively licensed to practice law in the state of Illinois and a CPA (non-active). Goldstein has served as a moderator and panelist for myriad trade associations and other business and professional services firms. He also served on the Illinois Secretary of State Corporation Acts Advisory Committee which was responsible for drafting the Illinois Limited Liability Company Act, an Adjunct Professor at the Chicago-Kent College of Law, and was named one of 40 Under 40 Attorneys in Illinois.

Brett Hickey, Founder & CEO, Star Mountain Capital
Brett Hickey is the Founder & CEO of Star Mountain Capital, LLC, a nearly $1.5 billion AUM specialized U.S. lower middle-market investment firm. Star Mountain employs a data-driven approach to provide value-added debt and equity capital to established small & medium-sized companies leveraging its large market expertise, scale-driven resources, and longstanding relationships.

Prior to becoming a principal investor starting in the early 2000s, Mr. Hickey was an Investment Banker at Salomon Smith Barney / Citigroup Global Markets in New York City where he covered global Asset Managers and Financial Institutions. In that role, he analyzed asset managers and asset classes, ultimately working on over $20 billion in completed strategic acquisitions and capital raises.

Mr. Hickey’s board memberships include member and former Chairman of Networks for the NYC Chapter of the Young Presidents’ Organization (YPO), Global Board of Harvard Alumni Entrepreneurs, and Global Board of Help for Children (HFC).

Mr. Hickey received a Bachelor of Commerce with Distinction from McGill University (Finance Major and Accounting Concentration) and is an alumnus of Harvard Business School’s Owner/President Management executive leadership program. He is a frequent guest lecturer on industry panels and at academic institutions. Mr. Hickey is also a former Canadian national gold medalist and North American medalist in speed skating.
Mr. Hickey is married with two children and lives in New York.

Robert Milam, Director, Summit Investment Management
Robert Milam, Director, joined Summit in 2018. His responsibilities include business development, deal sourcing and underwriting. Robert previously served in a deal sourcing role for Bayside/HIG Capital. Prior to that he held various senior leadership roles in the Special Assets Departments at TD Bank, Regions Bank and SouthTrust Bank. Robert holds a bachelor’s degree in finance and a MBA from the University of Alabama. Robert is an active member of the Turnaround Management Association.

Stephen T. O’Neill, Partner, Dorsey & Whitney LLP
For over thirty years, Steve has counseled companies in bankruptcy, business reorganizations, assignments for benefit of creditors (“ABCs”), out-of-court workouts and other insolvency matters. He has represented parties in over 500 sale transactions and has guided businesses of all sizes and stages of development through the bankruptcy and restructuring process in a wide variety of industries, including energy, technology, transportation, medical devices, clean tech and hospitality. Steve is a partner in Dorsey’s Silicon Valley office and is a frequent speaker on bankruptcy issues. Steve has been Listed in Best Lawyers in America^©, (2018-2021) and Listed as a Northern California Super Lawyer by San Francisco Magazine (2006-2020).

Ira Perlmuter, Founder & Managing Partner, T-5 Equity Partners
Ira Perlmuter heads all direct private equity investing for a very large, sophisticated, international family office. He has completed ten control buyouts of companies, including four in bankruptcy (and beat out three stalking horse bidders), and also acquired a community bank. He serves as Chairman of five of these companies and also as Chairman of the bank’s Credit and Board-level Compliance Committees. Ira is also on the Board of the Bank and its holding company. He has also initiated, negotiated and concluded joint ventures with an off-shore, billionaire family office, and with the $17 billion, BYD group of companies, and with a family office-backed truck manufacturer, etc. In addition, Ira led the efforts to win multi-billion dollar oil and gas licenses in Cyprus, to acquire an eastern European truck manufacturer, a middle eastern airline, a middle eastern bank, a Mexican maquiladora, a Canadian restaurant chain, a U.S. restaurant chain, a major automotive manufacturer’s medium duty truck manufacturing business, a $2 billion real estate portfolio, etc. Mr. Perlmuter manages over $17 billion of complex, U.S. and international, restructuring, turnaround and bankruptcy/distressed M&A experience as a banker, investment banker and as a family office principal in over 50 different industries. He was selected as Emerging Private Equity Manager of the Year, 2010

David G. Rosenbaum, Founder & Managing Shareholder, Rosenbaum IP
David has developed an extensive intellectual property law practice representing a wide spectrum of clientele from start-ups to Fortune 500 corporations in intellectual rights procurement, product development, divestitures, mergers and acquisitions, monetization transactions and strategic litigation.  He counsels clients in complex intellectual property matters and supervises due diligence and positioning reviews for licensing, mergers and acquisition and strategic product development, all with the result of building and enhancing value of clients’ intellectual property assets. Mr. Rosenbaum has represented clients in well over a thousand domestic and foreign patent applications and has successfully represented companies in generating over $1.7 Billion in value from merger, acquisition, licensing and litigation activities. David is a Registered Patent Attorney with over three decades of legal experience in life science and computer related technologies, including medical devices, pharmaceuticals, chemistry, semiconductor processing, biotechnology and computer software and systems.  He holds his Juris Doctor degree, with Honors, from Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago-Kent College of Law in 1984, engaged in Ph.D. studies in Pharmacology and Toxicology at the State University of New York at Buffalo, and received his baccalaureate degree in General Science and Chemistry from Grinnell College in 1978. David is the author of the bestselling book entitled “Layman’s Law Guide to Patents, Trademarks and Copyrights”, has served on the adjunct faculty at John Marshall Law School and Grinnell College, is a co-inventor of several issued United States and foreign patents and pending patent applications, and has been a featured speaker at numerous bar association and industry meetings.David is an editor of the Intellectual Property Owners Association (IPO) Law Journal David provides pro bono legal services to several start-up companies, non-profit organizations and Universities providing mentoring for entrepreneurial start-ups.

Robert P. Sweeter, Shareholder, Polsinelli LLP
Tailoring his approach to each client’s needs, Robert Sweeter advises clients on a wide range of insolvency and financial structuring matters. He focuses on assisting lenders, unsecured creditors, investors, and companies in out-of-court workouts, distressed acquisitions and chapter 11 proceedings. He not only strives to gain a complete understanding of his clients’ businesses but also truly listens to them to appreciate their particular goals and the unique issues that impact their operations. His experience spans a broad array of industries, including health care services, technology, financial services, retail, energy, and manufacturing. Prior to joining the firm, Robert was the general counsel and founding member of the executive team of a nationwide online and mobile marketplace platform.  Earlier in his career, he was a member of the financial restructuring groups of top international law firms.