N2Growth Appoints Leader for Private Equity Business Unit
September 10, 2019 – N2Growth, a Philadelphia, PA-based management consulting and executive search firm, has named Brian Kibby as CEO of N2Ventures, the firm’s business unit serving the leadership and talent needs of private equity companies, venture capital firms, family offices and hedge funds. In addition, he will serve as senior partner with N2Growth, focusing on the firm’s global education, technology and media practices.
“It’s not often a search firm has the chance to hire a multi-time CEO, who has worked across industries, in public companies, PE and VC backed companies, and closely-held family businesses,” said Mike Myatt, chairman of N2Growth. “Brian has been an individual investor, part of the buy-side, part of the sell-side, and is well-versed in what it takes to be successful in rapidly growing, technology-enabled companies. It’s one thing to talk about things in theory; Brian has done it himself.”
Prior to joining N2Growth, Mr. Kibby served as CEO of Knewton, where he led a team that created an AI-driven, SaaS model for higher education course materials. The success of this model led to Knewton’s acquisition by John Wiley & Sons earlier this year. Prior to that, Mr. Kibby was the CEO of MV Transportation, the nation’s largest privately-held transportation company with more than 18,000 employees. Before that, he was president of McGraw-Hill Higher Education. Earlier in his career, he held executive positions at Pearson and McGraw-Hill.
“I have been relentless about two things in my professional life: recruiting top talent, and developing leaders,” said Mr. Kibby. “Nothing brings me more joy than helping organizations achieve their full potential by empowering their people to achieve theirs.”
“During the course of my decade of experience with N2Growth, it’s become clear how closely our values are aligned,” he said. “The platform N2Growth has built speaks volumes about the importance of those values in helping its clients achieve their goals.”
N2Ventures advises businesses throughout the capital life cycle. In addition to its advisory services, the practice can be an active investor as well if a business needs assistance with capital formation, capital allocation, capital deployment, capital structure, or require buy or sell-side assistance. N2Ventures provides a set of value-added advisory services that increase the velocity of growth in EBIT and valuation of portfolio companies. “We help PE and VC firms manage investment and performance risk, shorten time to exit, and increase valuation across their portfolio companies,” the firm said.
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Growing Consultancy
N2Growth is a global leadership consultancy with practice areas in executive search, culture shaping, leadership development, strategy, organizational design, risk, digital transformation and executive coaching. The firm has more than 40 locations across the Americas, Europe, MENA and APAC.
In June, N2Growth added Dan Evans as chief marketing officer. A respected media and marketing professional, Mr. Evans has more than a decade of experience in helping strong brands create outstanding user experience. He is responsible for leading all N2Growth marketing efforts globally and will report directly to Mike Kerouac, N2Growth’s CEO
“Dan is an incredible marketing executive who understands how to engage the market across mediums and modalities, and his deep understanding new/digital media and data and analytics is invaluable,” said Mr. Myatt.
The firm also recently added Blake Lindgren as a senior director in the executive search practice, focusing on board and C-level search assignments. Mr. Lindgren was previously a management consultant at L.E.K., and was a former active duty Air Force officer.
Contributed by Scott A. Scanlon, Editor-in-Chief; Dale M. Zupsansky, Managing Editor; Stephen Sawicki, Managing Editor; and Andrew W. Mitchell, Managing Editor – Hunt Scanlon Media
