Mergers & Acquisitions names the 2022 Most Influential Women in Mid-Market M&A, including The Riverside Co.’s Pamela Hendrickson.

How did you further your firm’s ESG goals?

We appointed Dörte Höppner, chief operating officer, Riverside Europe, to spearhead this effort for Riverside. Europeans are ahead of the curve on this and for the first time this year, Riverside issued an ESG report.

In the U.S., we are very focused on measuring ESG factors across our portfolio. We also updated our responsible investing guidelines and our job is to “build back better” every company we buy. We score every company using the ESG index and we try to improve those scores over the course of our ownership.

Describe a recent dealmaking accomplishment.

To be honest, it’s not one deal specifically. Rather, I am most proud of how many lives have been improved by the investments and expertise Riverside has provided to the companies in which we invest.

The CEO of a company we owned called Arcos posted a LinkedIn message where he said, “Eight years ago, I brought in a PE firm and am proud of what we and our PE partner did to accelerate our growth. If anyone ever questions the benefit of PE, message me – PE changed my life.”

Arcos is a SAAS-based resource management tool for critical infrastructure companies like electric and gas utilities. The system enables them to dispatch and schedule maintenance crews to respond to unplanned outages.