Accordion Appoints Omar Divina to CEO of Maestro
Divina to Head Accordion’s Value Creation Software Business
NEW YORK — July 22, 2020 — Accordion, a private equity-focused financial consulting and technology firm, today announced the appointment of Omar Divina as CEO of Maestro, its software business focused on maximizing value in private equity-backed companies. Divina’s appointment is a critical step in further scaling Maestro, which is fast becoming the system of record for value creation, portfolio operations, and stakeholder alignment.
Maestro has seen tremendous growth since its launch in 2019, with adoption further accelerated by the recent shift to remote work and an increasingly competitive deal environment. The company now boasts a roster of over 100 leading private equity and growth fund sponsors who are either live on the platform or are in end-stage discussions about utilizing the software. Divina heads a dedicated Maestro leadership team which also includes Amy Newlan, SVP, Head of Client Development and Michael Frey, SVP, Head of Engineering.
“Omar has worked at the intersection of technology, finance, and business performance since before that intersection existed,” said Nick Leopard, CEO of Accordion and Co-Founder of Maestro. “He’s been a pioneer at leveraging technology to further organizational collaboration, and at using automation to streamline processes for the purpose of driving greater value and returns. He’s tailor made to helm Maestro and help modernize the PE industry at large.”
Divina was at the forefront of the nascent Social Business/Enterprise 2.0 movement while at Socialtext, helping companies to collaborate and communicate more effectively across organizational and business silos. At BetterWorks, he helped scale a business built on the premise that alignment, transparency, and progress on goals would help companies, managers, and employees succeed at work.
In his most recent role, at Eigen Technologies, Divina helped some of the world’s largest and most respected Financial Services firms leverage Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and Natural Language Processing technologies to automate critical processes and make better business decisions.
“I look at all of my previous experience as important steps on a path leading me to Maestro – but more so to Maestro’s’ pivotal role in driving tech-enablement and transformation across the PE industry,” said Divina. “Financial engineering is critical – but it has a ceiling in driving value. Operational improvement elevates that ceiling and raises the bar in terms of long-term return expectations. It’s great when PE firms can achieve those operational efficiencies for individual portfolio companies. But imagine the returns when they can use software to replicate that success across their entire portfolio. That’s game changing.”
It’s also category creating: Maestro is pioneering Deal Performance Management (DPM) – the first DPM software to tech-enable the value creation process and provide PE firms with a more strategic and institutionalized way to manage their investments from diligence through exit. More specifically, Maestro helps sponsors across 5 critical areas:
- Leverage Best Practices: Funds can use Maestro to institutionalize their unique approach to value creation – or tap into a library of expert playbooks – making their approach scalable and repeatable across the portfolio.
- Track (What’s Important): Maestro promotes transparency and ensures accountability by enabling insight into portfolio company daily progress and leading performance indicators.
- Partner Seamlessly: Maestro fosters stronger alignment between sponsors and management teams by enabling real-time collaboration to develop targeted, actionable, and achievable plans to drive growth.
- Optimize Talent: Maestro empowers teams to make objective, timely, and optimal leadership decisions, providing a more measured way to evaluate whether the right leaders are in place.
- Catalogue Resources: Maestro offers a seamless way to capture and compare different resources, ensuring the right partner match per initiative.
Concluded Divina: “Capturing and harmonizing data across systems at every stage of the deal is always important. But, it’s even more critical, now, in the Covid economy, as PE sponsors seek operational efficiencies to turn their at-risk companies green, as they look to make their thriving companies greener, and as they make deals and conduct diligence in a remote work environment. Maestro is the secret sauce for creating a more optimal ‘new normal’ – one that is digitized, data-driven, and harnesses the power of collaboration to drive value creation.”
About Maestro
Maestro is a software business that is maximizing value creation in private equity-backed companies. Founded by Accordion, the PE-focused financial consulting and technology firm, Maestro has pioneered the first and only SaaS product that’s purpose-built to streamline portfolio operations and strengthen alignment between sponsors and management teams. With features that enhance collaboration, empower decision-making, and enable the codification of best practices, the Maestro platform serves as an essential solution for the private equity industry – from diligence to exit.
https://www.go-maestro.com
