Episode 18

full
Published on:

7th May 2020

Ep. 18 Ivelisse Rodriguez Simon, Managing Partner, Avante Capital Partners

  • Growing up in a challenging environment in Chicago 
  • The mentality of helping others
  • Failure is just part of the path
  • Get through difficult times as a family/couple 
  • The founding of Avante and fund raising during the financial crisis in 2009

BIO

Ivelisse Rodriguez Simon is a Managing Partner of Avante Capital Partners. Based in Los Angeles, Ivelisse is responsible for identifying, executing and managing investment opportunities. She currently manages the fund’s portfolio and new deal activities. Ivelisse joined Avante in 2009 as a founding member of the firm.  

Ivelisse has over two decades of middle-market debt and equity investment experience. Prior to Avante, she held positions at Palladium Equity Partners, Reliant Equity Partners and various investment banks including Salomon Brothers. Ivelisse serves on the board of several companies including Quest, LLC. 

Ivelisse is a longtime advocate and champion for women, minorities and the underserved and underrepresented. She holds leadership roles in several local and national non-profit organizations, including The Robert Toigo Foundation, The Hispanic Scholarship Foundation and Westside Family Health Center in Los Angeles. In 2019, the Robert Toigo Foundation honored Ivelisse with their prestigious Leadership Award recognizing her leadership in the advancement of diversity and inclusion in the financial industry. Ivelisse was also named to Mergers & Acquisitions magazine's 2020 Most Influential Women in Mid-Market M&A. In addition, Ivelisse and her two sisters launched a philanthropic organization called We Will to support and empower underserved women and minorities in the areas of healthcare, education and financial literacy. 

Ivelisse graduated with honors from the University of Illinois and holds an MBA from Harvard Business School. She lives with her husband and three children in Los Angeles and enjoys taking adventurous trips with her family to far-flung places.

Next Episode All Episodes Previous Episode

Listen for free

Show artwork for Investors & Operators

About the Podcast

Investors & Operators
A Podcast by 51 Labs
The M&A market can be boring, but everyone has a story. The Investors & Operators podcast is about discovering the stories people were holding back, didn’t know how to tell, or forgot about. The goal is simple: fresh, authentic storytelling to bring people together in the M&A community.

With over 1M organic views and counting on LinkedIn, 51 Labs is disrupting the M&A market through the use of videography and content creation. In a market that longs for authenticity, 51 Labs helps strengthen your brand and tell your story. From concept to distribution, we strategize and produce thoughtful content to be used across a multitude of channels, to help you stand out in an otherwise traditionally boring market.

New episodes every other Thursday at 6:00am Eastern.

About your host

Profile picture for Jordan Selleck

Jordan Selleck

Founder. Recovering Investment Banker. 3x Entrepreneur. Philz Coffee Enthusiast.

Jordan Selleck is a recovering investment banker turned 3x entrepreneur. While teaching English in China, Jordan met an investment banker in a bar and before he knew it he’d spent six years in cross-border investment banking advising global corporates and private equity firms on M&A deals up to $250 million.

As much as Jordan loved investment banking, he always knew he was meant to do something more. In 2016, Jordan founded Debtmaven, a deal management platform for debt financing in the lower middle market. It was while he was marketing Debtmaven on LinkedIn that Jordan found his true passion: building meaningful relationships in the lower middle market.

Seeing over 50% of Debtmaven’s $450million+ in deals come from LinkedIn, he realized he’d found an untapped market and began his journey with LinkedIn consulting. Dozens of clients and a handful of extraordinarily talented employees later, 51 Labs is a thriving marketing agency for the lower middle market that produces captivating content and generates organic traffic across LinkedIn.

Jordan was born in San Diego, grew up in North Carolina and attended UNC-Chapel Hill. He has traveled to 32 countries, lived in China for 18 months, trains Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, is a fourth-generation private pilot, SCUBA dives, speaks Mandarin Chinese, and is a husband and father of 2.