Mergers & Acquisitions names 2021 Top 25 Most Influential Women in Mid-Market M&A, including GTCR’s Melissa Mounce Mithal.
How are you a champion for inclusion and diversity?
I have established relationships with non-profit organizations that align with GTCR’s diversity initiative, including WAVE, IVCA, Athena Alliance, WBL, Toigo and Girls Who Invest. Lily Chang at LGP, Kristin Brown Patrick at New State Capital and I created the Private Equity Network of Operating Women (PE NOW) to develop a platform of women in operating positions to share best practices, trends and insights with the specific goal of supporting and advancing women at the PE firms and portfolio companies. The inaugural event took place in the fall of 2020 and included more than 30 senior women.
Tell us more about you.
My career did not begin in human capital or human resources, and for the first half of my career, I never contemplated this career track. As a senior manager at EY, I was a road warrior consultant doing large transformation projects for blue-chip clients. I had my first child and while on maternity leave was struggling with the idea of balancing motherhood and the career I loved. Out of the blue, one of the partners I worked with who was a mentor to me (having balanced her own consulting career and motherhood) called me and offered me an operational leadership role at the firm to develop their “capacity management” processes. Being in a people business, creating and managing the operational supply chain of people for one of the Big 4 professional services companies, was incredibly appealing as it leveraged my professional skill set of process transformation and enabled me to manage and balance my new role as mom. This unexpected pivot in my career opened an entirely new functional area that I found challenging and fulfilling.
