Our Team

Jim Parker is a respected healthcare financing, delivery, and regulation thought leader. He has held senior leadership roles with large national payers such as Anthem (now Elevance), IU Health, a large integrated healthcare system, and recently, a Senior Advisor to HHS Secretary Alex Azar. Jim’s gift is diagnosing the root causes of problems, communicating complexity, and navigating others through change to reach new levels of performance and effectiveness. He has led the successful resolution of several significant public policy challenges, and the transformation of many underperforming organizations, including a Medicaid plan restructuring that turned a projected loss of $80 million into a $5 million profit. With an MBA from Ohio State University and 25 years of healthcare management and public affairs experience, he is highly regarded by healthcare leaders across the United States. As a public affairs expert, Jim can help any healthcare organization navigate challenging markets by utilizing his distinctive approach to simplifying complexity, aligning stakeholders, and improving performance. Jim currently serves on the Boards of Clear Spring Health, Sidecar Health, and VoCare, Inc., and an advisor to several health care firms.

John began his career in a family business where he was responsible for product development, improving operations, business development, and building new market verticals. This is where he developed his “no excuses” attitude toward getting the job done. Growing revenue from $8m to $28m, improving margins from 35% to 55%. After a successful exit in 2007, John joined Vitec Group – RF Systems as VP of Technology, focusing on strategy, M&A, and new market growth initiatives. As lead Technologist, John developed and grew the government and foreign military line from $1m to $40m over three years. In 2014, John served as Interim CEO and performed his first PE-backed turnaround. He stabilized cash flow, reformed the company’s strategy, cultivated a new company culture and morale, and delivered a 92% IRR for the PE firm. He then joined XG Technologies (NASDAQ:XGTI) for his second turnaround, divesting one division and growing another organically and through acquisition from $8m to $58m over five years. John rebranded the company to (NASDAQ:VISL) and positioned it as a platform for additional accretive acquisitions. With a global footprint headquartered in the US and offices in Massachusetts, New Jersey, California, UK, Dubai, and Singapore, John was able to grow the company globally. As an experienced technology leader, John has a proven track record of developing and growing technology companies, creating and implementing turnaround strategies, overseeing integration, M&A and due diligence efforts, improving EBITDA margins, and developing personnel and culture. John holds a BSEE from the Rochester Institute of Technology, an MSEE from the University of Southern California, and an MBA from Cornell University.

Derek’s Financial Services career spans 30 years with roles that have been focused both domestically and internationally supporting the needs of businesses in Middle Market, Large Corporates and Small Business. Derek has held Sr Leadership roles at both Wells Fargo and Bank of America. Derek also serves as a Strategic Advisor in the FinTech space. Derek has been fortunate to work across of number of industries over the course of his career to include, FinTech, Healthcare, Manufacturing and Automotive. He has developed extensive specialized knowledge of AI, Payments, Cash Management, Lending, Software Solutions and Large Language Modeling Strategies. Derek is passionate about helping assess businesses where they are and developing comprehensive value creation plans to aid in reaching their full potential.   Some operational highlights of Derek’s career are as follows: 

• Full P&L management with consistent YOY growth of both top and bottom-line results (Largest P&L was $4 billion) 

• Derek has an example of a Middle Market Business he aided in making successful acquisitions during the pandemic that more than doubled the revenue and EBITDA of the enterprise, creating significant market position in the Southeast. 

• Derek has examples of working to evaluate capital structures to identify the best approach to increase capacity to support growth while also balancing a myriad of shorter-term objectives. These are often iterative in nature requiring 2-3 phases of deployment. 

• Derek has 2 examples of Organizational Redesign efforts he led to transform business units to meet their full potential while managing strict expense targets  

• Derek is an expert at thoroughly evaluating talent, organizational structure, competitive strengths and weaknesses and most importantly the “culture” to recast what is needed for sustained success 

• Derek is known widely for his positive energy and results driven “can do” approach to leadership. 

  Derek is a graduate of Troy University with double majors in Computer Science and Business Administration. He later received a master’s degree focused on International Business from Birmingham Southern College. 

Jim Fanning is a strategic and highly accomplished global executive with vast expertise in cross-functional and senior leadership roles in Fortune 500 as well as private equity companies. He has successfully defined strategies, developed teams and driven results in assignments in the US, China, Mexico, Singapore, India, and Brazil. Through his experiences at Whirlpool Corporation (NYSE: WHR), Overhead Door Corporation (Nikkei: SNWAF), and Daltile (NYSE: MHK), he built a long list of accomplishments from new business start-ups to multi-billion dollar, multi-channel categories. Additionally, he has successfully applied these learnings in small company settings, as CEO of 4 companies under Materials Marketing Holdings and as a strategic acquirer of lower middle market businesses across consumer and industrial durable goods, B2B and B2C verticals. Most recently, he is advising Private Equity partners and Business Owners in M&A related activities in both buy- and sell-side engagements.   Through Jim’s roots in engineering, manufacturing, and as a member of Whirlpool’s acclaimed Global Management Development Program, he exhibits a strong people orientation to problem solving and seizing opportunities, and building and developing teams to sustain initiatives beyond their genesis. He is as comfortable on the plant floor as the board room, and has been on boards including the Tile Council of North America, Regional Chambers of Commerce, Economic Development organizations, and lower middle market companies. Strategy through Execution: At Overhead Door, Daltile and Materials Marketing, Jim overhauled the strategic plan processes to specifically extend their timeline to 3-5 years, while driving tactical plans to bridge the strategic initiatives. This included M&A strategies in each of these companies. At Overhead Door, Jim led the planning and integration processes for the Wayne Dalton acquisition, driving over $40M in recurring annual synergy value. Similarly, at Daltile, following the acquisition of Marazzi and leveraging new product and technology capabilities, Jim drove the plans to grow Daltile’s #1 position at Home Depot 11% in year one, while also gaining incremental shelf space at Lowe’s and Menards. He was the main architect for the integration of products, sales teams, channel and brand management for these acquisitions.   Product Plans, Customer Acquisition and Channel Alignment: Jim’s experiences in sales, brand management, marketing and product development provide a unique combination to deliver customer facing success from the origins of market research, customer acquisition and product planning. Leading marketing, consumer segmentation and digital lead generation efforts, Jim’s teams developed unique applications in the IoT world for digitally connected appliance apps, B2C and D2C applications at Overhead Door and Materials Marketing, and a lead gen and digital marketing program for D2C and D2GC e-commerce sites for custom fabricated architectural stone products.   Success through Diverse Teams: Jim’s leadership style blends data-driven opportunity analysis with identifying and building the teams to deliver results. Through his international assignments, he sees firsthand the abilities and cultural needs of organizations and their people, having led engineering, marketing and business development teams across all regions and time zones. He has sponsored team leaders in work assignments outside their home regions, to further create technical and cultural success stories.   Beyond work, Jim continues his volunteering activities through organizations like Habitat for Humanity, local homeless shelters, regional chambers of commerce, youth sports coaching, church activities, and working with kids in the foster care system. He has been a guest lecturer at universities and industry events (NAHB, Tech HOMExpo, American Marketing Association, etc.). Jim has a BS in Mechanical Engineering and MBA, both from the University of Illinois in Champaign, as well as studied abroad at University of Dundee, Scotland and East China Institute of Technology in Nanjing.