Our Team
Impartial Experts Specializing in Capital Raising and M&A for Privately Owned Businesses
Each member of our leadership team brings decades of successful investment banking and M&A advisory experience.
Jack Jacchino
Principal
Jack Jacchino brings with him a wealth of experience garnered from a distinguished career spanning over three decades. His expertise extends across various industries, including Information Technology, Medical Device, Pharmaceuticals, Financial Services and Business Services. His career is punctuated with a series of senior executive positions in firms dedicated to delivering global M&A, joint venture, and consulting services. Over the years, Jack has successfully completed transactions ranging from $5 million to well over $1 billion.
With an academic foundation rooted in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Maryland, Jack further honed his skills with a Master’s in Economics and an Executive MBA from the University of California and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, respectively.
He can be reached at j.jacchino@sga.us.com.
John Thompson
Managing Director, Business Development
John Thompson is a seasoned financial expert with a remarkable career marked by proficiency in managing financial assets and successfully raising capital. He is a registered Dealer Broker and holds both a Series 7 and 63 license. His journey began in the retail sector at E.F. Hutton, and he later joined Merrill Lynch, where he played a pivotal role for two decades, representing institutional money managers such as J&W Seligman, Berkeley Capital, National Asset Management, and Eaton Vance Distributors. During this tenure, John successfully raised over $5 billion in new assets.
In 2006, John founded Blakewater Consultancy, focusing on assisting clients in angel and early-round capital acquisition. Simultaneously, he collaborated with Precision Capital, a New York-based feeder fund for Bain Capital. In 2012, he assumed the role of National Sales Manager at HGK Asset Management, a $4.5 billion institutional money manager, further solidifying his standing in the financial industry.
John pursued his education at St. Thomas More School and the College of the Holy Cross. John can be contacted at j.thompson@sga.us.com
Brendan Radigan
House Legal Counsel
Brendan Radigan is a highly-skilled business attorney with over 30 years of experience as both in-house and outside counsel in the technology and financial services industries. As house counsel to Strategic Growth Advisors, he provides expert legal guidance to middle-market clients navigating complex transactions. His career focus has been on negotiating, documenting, and closing transactions and advising on business law matters generally.
Over the course of his career, Brendan has directed the legal function from term sheet to closing on a multitude of transactions, including mergers and acquisitions, asset dispositions, sales and servicing contracts, licensing agreements, major technology procurement, and other technology projects.
He is known for a style that emphasizes a collegial, analytical, and team-based approach that identifies and assesses client and counter-party interests and creatively explores deal terms and structures, all with a view toward optimizing transaction values. His senior-level private sector and in-house experience provide him with the ability, as the circumstances dictate and with equal comfort, to take the lead on transactions or provide support to a client’s in-house team. Brendan also leads a successful private practice at radiganbizlaw.com.
Barry Fay
Managing Director, Client Delivery
Barry started his career in private equity, restructuring “special investments” and equity positions, developing creative solutions to structural, financial, and management problems for companies in industries ranging from manufacturing to financial services, and corporate development through acquisitions and financing of new projects. He has extensive consulting experience providing project management, re-engineering, systems development, and new product development both domestically and internationally.
Barry is a seasoned advisor with a rich history of delivering results in various consulting capacities. His combination of financial acumen, problem-solving prowess, and a global perspective position him as a valuable asset for navigating complex business challenges and driving strategic growth initiatives.
His academic credentials include a MBA, Finance from New York University Stern School of Business and a BA, English from Simpson College.
Barry can be reached at b.fay@sga.us.com
Bob Farkas
Managing Director, Client Delivery
Bob is a resourceful, self-directed, hands on, customer focused consultant. He demonstrates exceptional interpersonal, interviewing, problem solving, analytical and organizational skills coupled with an ability to manage both internal and external customer and vendor relationships. His experience encompasses diverse and complex business planning engagements and other strategic planning initiatives from information systems outsourcing, business continuity and risk assessment, market analysis and research provides him a broad base of business knowledge and skills.
Industry experience includes Fortune 500 companies in healthcare, insurance, retail, manufacturing, pharmaceutical, chemical processing, telecommunications, utilities, information technology and business services.
He has a Master of Science in Chemical Engineering from New Jersey Institute of Technology and a Bachelor of Engineering in Metallurgical Engineering from McMaster University (Hamilton, Ontario), has held professional certifications in Project Management and Business Continuity and has completed continuing education certificates in data science and business analysis.
John Lingner
Managing Director, Technology
John is a seasoned financial and technology executive with over 30 years of diverse experience, encompassing information technology, management, sales, and marketing. Throughout his career, he has a proven track record in strategic planning, revenue generation, cost control, risk management and product development. John has successfully resolved major technology issues while accelerating time-to-market for strategic initiatives across the leading financial services firms.
John has played a pivotal role in leading significant system and data conversions, both pre and post-merger. His expertise includes vendor evaluations and contract negotiations, ensuring optimal technology partnerships. John’s unique blend of strategic vision and hands-on experience positions him as a valuable asset to SGA and our clients, especially in navigating complex technology landscapes.
John holds a B.S. from the University of Colorado at Boulder-Leeds School of Business and can be reached at j.lingner@sga.us.com
Tracey Herrick
Vice President, Operations
Tracey Herrick is a seasoned B2B Sales Executive with a rich professional background in business development, sales leadership, and business administration. With an innate ability to understand clients’ needs, she consistently delivers results and excellent client interactions. No stranger to the M&A field, her earlier roles include Interim Chief Strategy officer where she prepared two large professional services firms for a merger and Managing Director of Mergers and Acquisitions where she played a pivotal role in closing $45 million in new sell side transactions. Tracey can be contacted at t.herrick@sga.us.com.
Brian Hagen
Senior Advisor to Leadership
Dr. Brian W. Hagen is a founder and Managing Director of the Decision Empowerment Institute, an organization focused on improving decision making in commercial and governmental organizations through education, consulting services, and software applications. He is the winner of the 2011 Risk Innovator of the Year for the PRO Enterprise Management Methodology awarded by Risk & Insurance Magazine.
Dr. Hagen has been a practicing decision and risk consultant for over 30 years providing consulting, coaching, and training to more than 30 corporations in the Fortune 200 and numerous mid-size corporations for the aerospace & defense, automotive, energy, enterprise applications, high-tech, information & media, oil & gas, pharmaceutical & biotechnology, and pulp & paper industries.
As an Adjunct Professor within the Finance Department of California State University, Fullerton he teaches the graduate course on Enterprise Risk Management (ERM).
Dr. Hagen holds a Ph.D. in Management Science with emphasis in decision and risk analysis from Stanford University. He is the author of Problem, Risk, and Opportunity Enterprise Management and the coauthor of Solving the Corporate Value Enigma, and Decision Empowerment: A Parent’s Guide to Raising Good Decision Makers.