Episode 59

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Published on:

12th Mar 2021

Ep. 59 Debbie Ackerman, Founder, Project Sunflower

On this episode of Investors & Operators, Jordan sits down with Debbie Ackerman, Founder of Project Sunflower and Co-Founder of Twin Bridge Capital Partners. Together, they discuss:

  • founding Project Sunflower
  • the necessity for thought-diversity
  • why supporting women in finance is so important

…and much more.

DEBBIE ACKERMAN co-founded Twin Bridge Capital partners and has specialized in middle-market investing for most of her career. In addition, she recently founded Project Sunflower.

Prior to co-founding Twin Bridge, Ms.Ackerman was Senior Partner of PPM America Capital Partners, where she was most recently responsible for managing the private equity fund-of-funds business. She also worked on various other private equity and investment activities, including underwriting equity co-investments. Earlier in her career, Ms. Ackerman worked at Heller Financial in assorted private equity and lending positions.

Ms. Ackerman currently serves on the board of Specialized Education Services and holds advisory board seats for Goldner, Hawn, Johnson & Morrison V, Calera Capital IV, and Swander Pace Capital Partners IV, as well as numerous other observer seats. She earned her MBA at Northwestern University and her BA in Finance from the University of Illinois.

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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

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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.