Adarsh Sarma is the Managing Partner and Founder of A3/C Partners (A3/C). Prior to founding A3/C, Mr. Sarma spent two decades at Warburg Pincus, a New York based private equity firm with more than $80 billion in AUM and was co-head of Europe and a Partner for 16 years. Mr. Sarma joined Warburg Pincus in New York in 2005 and moved to London in 2016. He has invested more than $5 billion of equity capital in 24 platform investments, both growth and late-stage buyouts in the US and Europe, focused on software and data, education, and tech enabled services sectors. He was selected by Financial News and Private Equity News as one of the 50 Most Influential in European Private Equity from 2020-2022. He serves on the Board of Pratham USA, one of India’s largest not-for-profit organizations. He is also a member of the Chicago Booth Trustees and Polsky Private Equity Council at the University of Chicago and a member of the Dean’s Council at Weill Cornell Medicine, which is focused on advancing the goals of medical research, teaching, and patient care. Prior to Warburg Pincus, he worked at ChrysCapital, a leading Indian private equity fund with over $5 billion in AUM, and prior to that Radiowave, a technology start-up whose Series A was led by Warburg Pincus, Intel and Motorola and prior to that McCown De Leeuw, a middle market focused private equity fund. He received a BA from Knox College, Phi Beta Kappa, and an MBA from the University of Chicago.

Andrea Auerbach is the global head of private investments and a partner at Cambridge Associates. Andrea’s career with CA spans more than two decades. She leads a 50-person team sourcing and underwriting private equity, growth equity, distressed, and venture capital funds, as well as direct, co-investment, and secondary investment opportunities. She also heads the firm’s discretionary private investments practice. As a long-time leader in the private investment business, she founded the co-investment and secondaries practices and is the chair of the co-investment and secondaries investment committees. She is also a member and former chair of the firm’s private investment ratings committee. Andrea has co-authored a significant amount of in-depth private investment research and is also a faculty member at the Institutional Limited Partner Association (ILPA) Institute, where she has taught classes for over a decade. As a frequent keynote speaker at industry events worldwide, she has also received many industry accolades over the course of her career. Outside of work, Andrea is a trustee of Smith College and a board member of the UCLA Investment Company. Andrea began her career at Prudential Insurance, where she worked in the private equity and leveraged buyout groups. She received her BA in economics from Smith College and her MBA from Harvard Business School.

Tony Davis is the cofounder and president of Linden Capital Partners. He has been involved in private equity and consulting since 1992. He currently serves on the board of Smile Doctors and is chairman of the board of Sage Dental. He previously served on the boards of directors for Advarra, Behavioral Centers of America, Drayer Physical Therapy Institute, Focused Health Solutions, ProPharma, Ranir, Spear Education, Virtus Pharmaceuticals, and Young Innovations. Tony is a trustee of the Museum of Science and Industry and is a director on the Northwestern Medicine NMG board of directors. Tony was selected by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Deputy Secretary as a member of the Deputy Secretary’s Innovation and Investment Summit. Tony holds a bachelor of arts with honors in economics from Northwestern University and an MBA with honors from Chicago Booth, where he was a Rosett Scholar. At Chicago Booth, he currently serves on the Polsky Center Private Equity Council and as a guest lecturer on private equity.

Duane Jackson is the founder of Author Capital Partners, a private investment firm that provides long-term, flexible capital to founder- and family-led businesses with less than $20M in EBITDA.

Duane previously worked at BDT Capital Partners, a private investment firm focused on larger founder- and family-led businesses. At BDT, he had broad responsibilities including sourcing and executing transactions, leading research initiatives, and developing the firm’s approach to ESG. Duane also served as a Toigo Private Equity Fellow at Vista Equity Partners, a private equity firm focused on software and technology businesses.

He came to appreciate the role families have in building businesses over the long-term by working alongside several notable families, supporting their direct investments ranging from pre-revenue angel stage companies to small but mature, lower middle market companies. Duane first learned to creatively address complex problems as a member of the Chief Investment Office for TARP at the US Treasury Department during the global financial crisis and as an investment banker to financial institutions at Merrill Lynch.

Duane earned an MBA from Harvard Business School, where he was an MLT Fellow, and a BBA from the George Washington University. He serves as an investor-in-residence at Chicago Booth and a trustee at Lake Forest Academy.

Chris McGowan is the general partner of CJM Ventures (CJMV), a Chicago growth equity and private equity investment firm. McGowan’s private equity career began 29 years ago with AEA Investors in New York City, after earning an undergraduate degree in theoretical mathematics from Columbia University’s College of Arts and Sciences, and following two years of mergers and acquisitions training at Morgan Stanley. After completing an MBA at Harvard Business School, he joined Madison Dearborn Partners (MDP), where he co-headed their basic industries practice for the last five years of his 12-year career there. At MDP, he oversaw more than $2 billion of equity investments focused on buyouts and growth equity globally in the industrial, consumer, and energy and power sectors. In 2011, with the help of MDP leadership and mentors, McGowan formed CJMV, an investment firm focused on buyouts and growth equity investments in companies located near Chicago and London. McGowan is an active angel investor and currently serves as chairman of the limited partner advisory committee for Hyde Park Venture Partners Fund I (and a member of Fund II, III and IV’s boards), and as chairman of the advisory board for Valley Growth Ventures, and was formerly on the board of directors and portfolio advisory board of Hyde Park Angels.

Steven Neil Kaplan is the Neubauer Family Distinguished Service Professor of Entrepreneurship and Finance at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and Kessenich E.P. Faculty Director of the Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation. Kaplan cofounded the Polsky Center and the entrepreneurship program at Chicago Booth. He also started the New Venture Challenge (NVC), which is recognized as one of the top accelerator programs in the nation.

He teaches advanced MBA and executive courses in entrepreneurial finance and private equity, corporate finance, corporate governance, and wealth management. BusinessWeek named him one of the top 12 business school teachers in the country. Kaplan conducts research on issues in private equity, venture capital, entrepreneurial finance, corporate governance, and corporate finance. He has published papers in a number of academic and business journals. Kaplan is a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research and an associate editor of the Journal of Financial Economics.

He is the co-creator of the Kaplan-Schoar PME (Public Market Equivalent) private equity benchmarking approach. A Fortune Magazine article referred to him as “probably the foremost private equity scholar in the galaxy.”