Joe joined Quad-C in 2024 and is responsible for implementing best practices and value creation initiatives with finance, FP&A and accounting teams across the Quad-C portfolio companies. Prior to joining Quad-C, Joe was a Senior Operating Partner at Graham Partners, a middle market private equity firm, for 12 years where he assisted with implementing finance and accounting transformation activities along with value creation initiatives across the portfolio. Joe began his career at Phoenix Management Services, a turnaround management consulting and investment banking firm.
Joe, you’ve spent time in both operator and advisor roles. What was the key turning point that drew you into private equity operations, and how has that shaped your approach at Quad-C?
I’ve enjoyed being on both sides of the table over my career in several finance leadership roles, but for the past 14 years I’ve been on the PE operator side, focused on finance and accounting transformation -first at Graham Partners and now at Quad-C starting a year ago.
The common thread of my time working in PE operating roles has been the emphasis on collaboration with the portfolio companies and knowing how finance and accounting functions need to develop from a people, processes and system standpoint to be effective under PE ownership and act as a true business partner to the organization, the PE partner and board.
Once I got a taste for being in a private equity environment, I really enjoyed the fast pace that private equity brings. I’m working with about five to seven portfolio companies in various capacities, in addition to working on a few special projects on a portfolio-wide basis to drive value creation. The constant evolution of the day-to-day has always been something that’s been appealing to me and what keeps me motivated – as there’s always plenty to do.
How is Quad-C’s operating function structured today, and in what ways does it differ from other PE operating models?
I was the first person brought on from a dedicated portfolio optimization standpoint – there hadn’t been anybody prior to me. Quad-C has been investing in middle-market companies, many of them being founder-led and first-time institutional capital, for the past 35 years – and has a strong market reputation of being a true business partner to its portfolio companies with the goal of developing bigger, better and safer businesses for the next owner.
The other thing that differentiates Quad-C is they operate as an outsourced corporate development arm to portcos to drive successful M&A growth through an investment period. There was a growing need for dedicated internal support and expertise to its portfolio companies to develop strong foundational platforms that are scalable for the rapid growth many Quad-C companies experience over the investment period.
Last year, Quad-C decided to hire the firm’s first operating professional, focused on finance and accounting transformation – the area where support is needed most frequently for the portfolio companies. Quad-C invests in growing, healthy and profitable businesses, however, back-office functions tend to be an area that requires optimization from a people, processes and system standpoint. My background and expertise resonated with this collaborative, hands-on partnership approach that Quad-C embodies.
What are the top two or three levers of value creation you’re focused on right now across the portfolio, and why?
Most of my time is spent on finance and accounting transformation and support across the Quad-C portfolio – probably about 80%.
Once I was able to establish a finance & accounting optimization platform across the portfolio, over the past several months, I’ve begun to branch out and develop other areas of value creation, notably two areas. The first has been developing a portfolio-wide leveraged procurement cost savings program in connection with a group purchasing organization that I’ve used in the past. We’ve already delivered several million dollars of cost savings on an annualized basis with significant additional opportunities.
The second has been developing IT optimization and best practice sharing across the portfolio. I started with developing an IT maturity baseline assessment to know where certain companies could use support and then leveraged that information to enhance our Quad-C IT leadership forums for knowledge sharing and best practices.
Where do you see the biggest talent gaps in mid-market portfolio companies today?
At this point, all professionals – whether finance, accounting, or marketing – need to have a technology-oriented bend to them to advance their organizations and drive digital transformation change. That’s becoming table stakes as far as who you’re looking to hire.
One of the gaps I see the most when it comes to CFOs and finance leaders is not spending enough time or having the right individuals in the seats who are their direct reports – whether it’s a corporate controller or FP&A director. You need solid number twos in place because they’re the ones who can execute on key initiatives downstream.
If CFOs don’t have strong number twos, they end up dipping too far into day-to-day tactical work and can’t be the strategic CFO the organization and private equity firm expect. What I’ve seen work best is when you have very strong talent right underneath the CFO. Let them execute on a plan supported by the CFO which allows the CFO to be a true business partner to the organization and external constituents.
What qualities do you look for in a portfolio company CEO or CFO when helping management teams scale rapidly?
For those positions, having folks who have been through a private equity cycle before is really important. You can get talented people with strong fundamentals but having that PE experience is vital in my view,.
At this point, I’m only looking to hire CFOs that have been through that process at least once, if not multiple times. It significantly increases the probability of success as you can’t risk having to re-hire for the CFO position multiple times under an ownership period, and you need someone who knows what the expectations are, what levers create value and how to execute tactically.
How is Quad-C thinking about technology enablement and digital transformation in its portfolio, particularly in traditional, non-tech-heavy sectors?
For a lot of our businesses, we focus heavily on business services industries – industrial services and traditional business services – so in many cases you’re talking about a lot of employees both blue-collar and white-collar which needs to be managed effectively.
The orchestration between the portfolio company’s systems, whether it be ERP, HRIS, CRM, etc. is becoming more important. These systems have advanced features that you need to have at your fingertips to manage the employee base from both a retention and utilization standpoint, while ensuring leadership teams have the right KPIs.
We’re also focused on digitizing processes, building BI reporting output, and using that to review performance at the board or PE level. With 19 portfolio companies [which Quad-C have], there’s a huge opportunity for collaboration and sharing best practices across the portfolio. That’s where my role comes in: connecting the dots and making sure what’s working well in one company can be leveraged by another.
We know everyone’s talking about AI. Where do you see it genuinely adding value in the operating playbook, and where is it still more hype than reality?
AI is definitely the buzz across all industries, and it is starting to take shape and add value – particularly with expediting and streamlining tasks and planning exercises through LLMs like ChatGPT and Gemini, when they’re used appropriately.
Another area is optical character recognition (OCR), which is helping automate heavy transactional, paper-based activities. AI applications can digitize and automate, and the beauty is that they continue to become more effective as they learn.
We have a number of companies using AI in finance and accounting to automate AP processing and billing – tasks that used to require an army of people. If you set it up thoughtfully and manage training, it can be very efficient.
Because we do quite a bit of buy-and-build strategies, it’s about leveraging AI-enabled applications to keep processes lean and efficient as you add companies. I’ve seen a lot more acceleration in real-world AI applications over the past year, and I think it’s only going to continue. The key is to pilot quick-win case studies while also being thoughtful about BI adoption: getting systems in a good place so that when AI really matures, we’re ready to adopt effectively.
Looking ahead, how do you see the Operating Partner role evolving over the next three to five years, especially in the mid-market space?
I think there’s going to be more emphasis around having operating partners with true functional expertise – finance and accounting, supply chain, go-to-market – rather than generalist former corporate execs. Private equity firms want people on the ground who know what’s working across multiple portfolio companies and can share that insight.
A big part of the role is engaging with functional leaders at the portfolio company level and helping influence and guide them: “Company X is doing something really effective. Have you thought about this?” That kind of collaboration drives change and best practice sharing. I also think we’ll see more tactical practitioners – people who are in the weeds and know what’s going on with technology advancements – because that’s what portfolio company leadership teams are going to need. I’ve seen the model work both ways: firms that plug in operating talent directly and others, like ours, that take a broader, cross-portfolio approach and add value where opportunities exist. Both can be effective, but at the end of the day, it’s about connecting the dots and helping the portfolio company leaders drive progress for their organizations faster.
Joe April was interviewed by Monika Dowal (SVP) in October 2025.