Chairman and Co-Founder

Carter McClelland is the Chairman of, and a Partner at, Union Square Advisors. Prior to joining the firm, his 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. His 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.

Carter 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 and Co-Founder

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, he 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.  He also has worked with many of the most important venture capital, growth equity and private equity firms in the technology ecosystem.  Ted 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.  He also served as a corporate executive at Novell, including as Vice President of both Corporate Development and Business Development.

Ted 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, he 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.  He 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 Executive Officer

Michael Meyer is Chief Executive Officer, Partner, and Head of Capital Markets at Union Square Advisors. He has 30+ years of experience in leveraged finance, global credit and fixed income dealmaking. He has been responsible for the execution and oversight of over $200 billion of capital markets transactions and has worked with the world’s largest financial sponsors such as Blackstone, KKR & Co., Apollo Global Management and Permira. Since joining the firm in 2019, Union Square Advisors’ Capital Markets group, led by him, has advised on 28 transactions for approximately $5 billion in deal volume.

Prior to joining Union Square Advisors, Michael was Head of Global Credit and U.S. Fixed Income at RBC Capital Markets. Prior to RBC, he 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. He has also held leadership positions in the leveraged finance and high yield businesses at Morgan Stanley and Citigroup.

Michael 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. He is also a guest lecturer for the Economics Department at Duke University.

Chief Operating Officer

Wayne Kawarabayashi is a Partner, Chief Operating Officer and Head of Mergers & Acquisitions at Union Square Advisors. Prior to joining the firm, he 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. He 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, he 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.

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

Partner

Devon Ritch is a Partner at Union Square Advisors.  He has over 22 years of M&A advisory experience primarily focused on the technology sector.   During his career, he 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, he 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, he 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.  He also received a JD / MBA from Duke University / Fuqua School of Business where he was a member of the Duke Law Journal.

Managing Director

Managing Director

Managing Director

Managing Director

Todd Holman is a Managing Director at Union Square Advisors. He 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, he 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

Ezequiel (Zeke) Navar is a Managing Director and Head of HealthTech at Union Square Advisors. He 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, he was the Head of HealthTech at Crosstree Capital, JMP Securities, H2C and GCA Savvian (d.b.a., Houlihan Lokey).

Zeke 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.

Managing Director

Chris Appaneal is a Managing Director at Union Square Advisors. He has 14+ years of M&A and capital advisory experience focused primarily on the enterprise software and data & analytics sectors. Prior to joining Union Square Advisors, he was a Director in the Technology group at TD Securities, focused on covering Governance, Risk & Compliance software companies. Prior to TD Securities, He was a Director in the Technology & Services group at Raymond James, focused on M&A and debt and equity capital raises for middle-market technology companies. He began his career at Bank of America Merrill Lynch in their Global Commercial Banking Analyst Program.

Chris is originally from southern Maine and earned a B.S. in Business Administration, with a double concentration in Finance and Accounting, and a Minor in Economics, from Boston University.

Senior Advisor

Andrew Samett is a Senior Advisor at Union Square Advisors. He has over 30 years of experience advising companies in transition as well as their stakeholders and acquirors. His focus is on Special Situations Advisory activities, including Liability Management, Restructuring, distressed M&A and bespoke financing solutions. His most recently led the Capital Structure Advisory Group at Truist Securities, has led similar groups at Lazard Middle Market and Bear Stearns, and was a senior member of the Restructuring Group at Rothschild Inc.

Andrew earned an M.B.A. from Cornell University and a B.S. in Business Administration from the State University of New York at Buffalo.