Chairman

Carter McClelland is the Chairman of, and a Partner at, Union Square Advisors. Prior to joining the firm, Mr. McClelland most recently served as President of Bank of America New York Market and Chairman of Banc of America Securities. Previously, he was President and Chief Executive Officer and member of the board of directors of Deutsche Bank North America. Mr. McClelland’s Wall Street career spans more than 50 years, including 21 years at Morgan Stanley, where he was Chief Administrative Officer and a member of the firm’s operating committee.

Mr. McClelland was formerly Chairman of the Board of the United Way of New York City and is currently a Board Co-Chair of Echoing Green. He holds a B.S. in Aeronautical Engineering and an MBA from Stanford University.

President

Ted Smith is a Partner, co-founder and the President of Union Square Advisors. With over 30 years of experience executing transactions totaling many tens of billions of dollars in value, Mr. Smith has worked with several of the largest and most influential technology companies – including IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, Google, VMware, EMC, Informatica, SAP, Citrix, Nuance and Guidewire – as well as a wide range of high-growth public and private technology companies.  Mr. Smith also has worked with many of the most important venture capital, growth equity and private equity firms in the technology ecosystem.  Mr. Smith began his career at Morgan Stanley & Co., where he was an early member of the firm’s technology investment banking group.  Prior to co-founding Union Square Advisors he was a Managing Director at Credit Suisse, where he headed the global software investment banking practice.  Mr. Smith also served as a corporate executive at Novell, including as Vice President of both Corporate Development and Business Development.

Mr. Smith received both his B.S. and M.S. degrees in Electrical Engineering from the University of Notre Dame and is a member of Eta Kappa Nu.  During 2015 Mr. Smith was selected as a member of the first-ever class of Presidential Leadership Scholars (www.presidentialleadershipscholars.org), a partnership between the presidential centers of George W. Bush, William J. Clinton, George H.W. Bush, and Lyndon B. Johnson.  This unprecedented program brings together a select group of leaders who share a desire to create positive change across our nation and the world, and enables them to enhance their leadership skills to help face the toughest challenges of the 21st century.  Mr. Smith also is a board director for Assurance Health System, serves as the Chairman of the Rife Scholarship Fund, and is the past Chairman of the Performing Arts Advisory Council for the University of Notre Dame.

Chief Operating Officer, Head of Mergers & Acquisitions

Wayne Kawarabayashi is a Partner, Chief Operating Officer and Head of Mergers & Acquisitions at Union Square Advisors. Prior to joining the firm, Mr. Kawarabayashi was a Managing Director in both the Global Mergers and Acquisitions and Global Technology groups at Barclays and Lehman Brothers (which was acquired by Barclays in 2008) working in both New York and London since 1993. Mr. Kawarabayashi has 28+ years of investment banking experience executing over $200 billion in technology mergers and acquisitions with an emphasis in software, enterprise IT, financial technology and IT services. Throughout his career, Mr. Kawarabayashi has worked with public and private corporate clients and private equity inside and outside of the technology sector, executing sell-sides, buy-sides, corporate divestitures, IPO carve-outs, cross-border, leveraged buyouts, and Reverse Morris Trust transactions, as well as rendering fairness opinions, advising special committees and providing hostile and defensive advisory services. He has advised on transactions for clients including Automatic Data Processing, Alliance Data Systems, AT&T, Blackstone, Carlyle, Cognos, EMC, General Atlantic, Guidewire, Hellman & Friedman, HP, IBM, Interactive Intelligence, KKR, L-3 Communications, Lionbridge, NeoPhotonics, Permira, Siris, SunGard and Vista.

Mr. Kawarabayashi received an M.B.A. from the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, and a B.S. in International Relations from Georgetown University.

Partner

Michael Meyer is a Partner at Union Square Advisors, responsible for the firm’s Capital Markets business. Mr. Meyer has 30+ years of experience in Leveraged Finance, Global Credit and Fixed Income. He has been responsible for the execution and oversight of over $200B of leveraged finance transactions and has worked with world class financial sponsors such as Blackstone, KKR & Co., Apollo Global Management, and Bain Capital. Several notable transactions with these financial sponsors include the LBOs of HCA Inc., Alliance Boots, Warner Music Group Inc. and Fidelity National.

Prior to joining Union Square Advisors, Mr. Meyer was responsible for the Global Credit and U.S. Fixed Income businesses at RBC Capital Markets. Mr. Meyer also ran the Leveraged Finance and Global Credit business at Bank of America and Bank of America Merrill Lynch, working both in New York and London. Earlier in his career, Mr. Meyer worked in the leveraged finance and high yield businesses at Morgan Stanley and Citigroup.

Mr. Meyer earned an MBA from the McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas, and a B.S. in Chemistry and Economics from Duke University. He has served on multiple Boards, including; Duke NY, and SIFMA in the U.S. and the UK. Mr. Meyer is also a guest lecturer for the Economics Department at Duke University.

Partner

Devon Ritch is a Partner at Union Square Advisors.  Devon has over 22 years of M&A advisory experience primarily focused on the technology sector.   During his career, Devon has managed and completed a broad range of public and private M&A transactions including sell-side, buy-side, cross-border, LBO, stock-for-stock, asset purchases, corporate divestitures, fairness opinions and hostile defense advisory.  Prior to joining Union Square Advisors, Devon was a Director in the M&A group of RBC Capital Markets having spent nearly ten years at the firm in both its San Francisco and New York offices.  Earlier in his career, Devon practiced M&A law as an Associate at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati.

Devon received a BA in History with High Honors from the University of California at Berkeley where he also served as two-time captain of the nationally ranked crew team.  Devon also received a JD / MBA from Duke University / Fuqua School of Business where he was a member of the Duke Law Journal.

Partner

Andrew Atherton is a Partner at Union Square Advisors.  Mr. Atherton has 18+ years of investment banking and principal investing experience focused primarily on the software and financial technology sectors. Prior to joining Union Square Advisors, Andrew was a Vice President in the Technology group of RBC Capital Markets, focused on M&A and debt and equity capital raises.  Prior to RBC, Andrew was an Associate in Goldman Sachs’ Special Situations Group providing debt and equity capital to middle market companies.  Andrew began his career at Shattuck Hammond Partners, a healthcare investment bank, which was acquired by Raymond James.

Andrew is originally from San Antonio, Texas and received a B.A. in Economics and History and a Minor in Financial Economics from Vanderbilt University.

Vice Chairman

Dean Riskas is a Partner at Union Square Advisors. Prior to joining the firm, Mr. Riskas was Managing Director and President, North America of TriplePoint Capital, where he leveraged long relationships with top-tier venture capitalists in Silicon Valley to originate and manage a several hundred million dollar portfolio of venture loans and leases. Prior to TriplePoint Capital, Mr. Riskas founded Atherton Vista Capital, where he developed and marketed a tax-oriented, leveraged purchase-leaseback structure to privatize US municipal infrastructure assets. Before Atherton Vista Capital, Mr. Riskas co-founded Trinity Advisors, which provided advisory services to institutional investors in connection with highly structured, domestic and cross-border leveraged lease transactions, project financings and buyouts. Prior to Trinity Advisors, Mr. Riskas was a Partner and SVP at Comdisco Financial Services where he headed the leveraged lease equity placement group.

A lifetime resident of the Bay Area, Mr. Riskas served for 18 years as the Treasurer of the COPF Foundation. He also served on both the UCLA Foundation Board of Governors and the Board of Directors of the Ronald McDonald House at Stanford. Mr. Riskas is a past President of the Menlo Circus Club, a former member of the Board of Trustees of Menlo School, and Elder of the Menlo Park Church.

Mr. Riskas is a published author of articles on tax-oriented leveraged leasing. He received both his BA in Economics and his MBA in Accounting and Finance degrees from the University of California – Los Angeles.

Managing Director

Managing Director

Managing Director

Managing Director

Todd Holman is a Managing Director at Union Square Advisors. Mr. Holman has 12+ years of investment banking and finance experience primarily focused on M&A advisory across the technology sector. Prior to joining Union Square Advisors, Todd was a Vice President in the M&A group of RBC Capital Markets, focused on transactions in the Internet, software security, semiconductor, and financial technology sectors.

Todd is originally from Honolulu, Hawaii and received a BA in Economics from UC San Diego and a JD / MBA from UCLA where he captained the graduate rugby team.

Managing Director

Michael Moore is a Managing Director at Union Square Advisors in the firm’s Capital Markets business.  Mr. Moore has over 15 years of capital markets experience, primarily focused on the technology and consumer industry verticals.  Prior to joining Union Square Advisors, he was a Director in the Leveraged Finance Group at Citi, focused on the origination, structuring and execution of capital markets transactions for corporate and sponsor-backed clients.

Michael earned a B.S. in Business Administration from Boston University’s School of Management.

Managing Director

Ezequiel (Zeke) Navar is a Managing Director and Head of HealthTech at Union Square Advisors. Mr. Navar has over 25 years of investment banking experience, with a comprehensive healthcare domain knowledge base across Providers, Patients, Payors and Pharma. Prior to joining the firm, Mr. Navar was the Head of HealthTech at Crosstree Capital, JMP Securities, H2C and GCA Savvian (d.b.a., Houlihan Lokey).

Mr. Navar earned an MBA from Wharton and a BS in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Maryland. He is an avid horseman and has competed in the Mexican Rodeo circuit.