Mergers & Acquisitions names 2021 Top 25 Most Influential Women in Mid-Market M&A, including GenNx360 Capital Partners’ Daphne Dufresne.

How are you a champion for change?
One of the things I championed internally was limited partner outreach and cross engagement between our portfolio companies. The economy was so volatile that I felt it was really important to make sure we were keeping our LPs informed of everything going on with our portfolio companies. We held over 30 calls in a four-week period, updating each of our investors on the health of each company and our outlook for the future. We created a dashboard that we could use to allow them to track performance over time. We were transparent, open, and honest. Then three months into the pandemic, we did it all again, with great detail on each company to update our LPs on what had occurred since March and provide our revised outlook on the future.

The second initiative was creating communication forums for our portfolio companies so they could share information between them. We knew we had amazing leaders at each of our companies and knew they could benefit from sharing best practices. One of my companies had secured hand sanitizer and an EPA-approved industrial cleaner for keeping workplaces safe. The company shared access to these high-demand, out of stock items with our entire portfolio.

How are you a champion for inclusion and equality?
After the murders of George Floyd, and Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery, I formed a non-profit with nine other families in the Washington D.C., area, where I live, to foster more interaction, understanding, and meaningful connections among racially, ethnically diverse people to stand together to end racism. We built a mobile engagement platform that takes people through an interactive journey of discovery, connection and impact.