ACG Tennessee | 2022 Monthly June Meeting: “Independent Sponsors – A fund without a Fund”

Winston Justice is an Investment Advisor and Vice President at Bernstein. After his NFL career (2006-2015) with the Philadelphia Eagles, Indianapolis Colts and Denver Broncos, Winston entered the financial industry. Under Wells Fargo Securities, he was an analyst and managed money for   Institutions and Family Offices. Along the way, he co-founded MJC Capital, an early stage investment vehicle; Elixr, an award-winning gourmet cafe and roastery and served as the portfolio manager for PIA’s Alternative Investments Group, where he was mentored by Lloyd McAdams.

Winston holds a holds an MBA from George Washington University, BA in Public Policy from the University of Southern California and the Certified Investment Management Analyst(CIMA) designation from The Yale School of Management. His deep dedication to philanthropic work includes board member positions, 2010 Walter Payton Philadelphia Manof the Year Award, Habitat for Humanity of Collier County, Young Life Naples, and Eagles Fly for Leukemia in Philadelphia, PA. He also serves as a finance adjunct professor for The Lipscomb School of Business. He recently relocated to Nashville with his wife Dania and their three children – Selah Israel, Calais Shalom, and Talitha Nazareth.

Erik has worked in the private equity industry for over 25 years. Erik co-founded Slate Capital Group, a private equity firm based in Baltimore, MD, in 2004.  He co-founded and is the former President of Let’s Dish! Mid-Atlantic, a retail chain of meal assembly stores in Maryland and Virginia.

Prior to founding Slate, Erik was a Director with DB Capital Venture Partners, investing in enterprise infrastructure and application software companies. He joined ABS Ventures, the predecessor to DBCVP, in March 2000. During his tenure with DBCVP/ABS Ventures, Erik served on the boards of several software portfolio companies.

From 1996-2000, Erik was a Senior Vice President with Sterling Capital, Ltd., a private equity investment firm, where he acquired and ran companies in the direct marketing and e-commerce industries (although the firm acquired businesses in various industries, including education/testing, specialty distribution, and marketing services). His tenure included operating stints with two of Sterling’s portfolio companies: as the Chief Executive Officer of NLP, Inc. and as Executive Vice President-Corporate Development of ICS, Inc.

From 1993-1996, Erik was an Associate with Kirkland & Ellis in their private equity group, where he specialized in mergers and acquisitions, divestitures, leveraged buyouts and venture capital transactions. Representative clients included Bain Capital; Clipper Group; Code, Hennessy and Simmons; CIVC (Willis Stein); Dakota Capital; Liberty Partners and Madison Dearborn Partners.

Erik is a 1988 graduate of Brown University and received his J.D./M.B.A. from the University of Chicago in 1993.

John Pontius has almost twenty years of private equity experience working across various asset classes.  Since late 2019, he has served as a Director at Capital Alignment Partners (“CAP Funds”), a lower middle market private investment firm that provides debt and equity primarily to healthcare and business service companies.  He has extensive experience with consolidation strategies, business integrations, taking companies public, and turnaround situations as well as leading both public and private management teams in a Board capacity.

Mr. Pontius began his career in 2004 at Wexford Capital LP, a Greenwich based, multibillion dollar asset management firm with both hedge and private equity funds.  From 2004 through 2010, Mr. Pontius focused on early-stage homeland security technology businesses.  After executing a consolidation of seventeen different businesses, Mr. Pontius became the Head of Mergers and Acquisitions for the combined entity, ICx Technologies, Inc., and served on the team that would eventually take the company public in 2007 and in 2010 sell it to Flir Systems, now a part of Teledyne Technologies.

After the sale of ICx Technologies, Mr. Pontius rejoined the Wexford private equity team and began sourcing and executing growth equity investments with a focus on energy and mining services.  From that time until joining CAP Funds in 2019, Mr. Pontius performed various roles for Wexford and its portfolio companies, including taking short term leadership positions at various portfolio companies.  Immediately prior to joining CAP Funds, Mr. Pontius was the Interim CEO of Predator Drilling Inc., a former Wexford Capital LP portfolio company.

Mr. Pontius sits on the Board of Mako Mining Corp., a publicly listed gold mining, development and exploration company.  He holds a B.S. in Business Administration from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and resides with his family in Nashville. 

Mr. Song has a diverse background with over 30 years in principal investments, investment banking and operational experience.  Mr. Song is a Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Prodos Capital (“PC”), an investment firm focused on investments in the lower middle market.

Prior to PC, Mr. Song was the head of investments and corporate finance for Verus International, a boutique merchant banking firm that was co-founded by Citigroup.  At Verus, Mr. Song led investments in both private and public companies in the emerging growth and middle market.  Prior to Verus, Mr. Song was SVP of Corporate Development at On2 Technologies.  At On2, Mr. Song led all aspects of strategic planning, financial analysis, mergers & acquisitions, financings and the capital markets.  Prior to joining On2, Song was a Managing Director at Bluestone Capital Partners, where he was a senior banker and a manager in that firm's Corporate Finance Department.  At BlueStone, Mr. Song was responsible for the execution of public offerings and private placements as well as merger and acquisition transactions.  Mr. Song was a member of BlueStone's Management Committee and Commitment Committee.  Previously, he held positions as an investment banker at Smith Barney in the Global Energy and Power Group and Chase Manhattan Bank in the Workout and M&A Groups.

During his career as an investment banker, Mr. Song has executed over a billion dollars in public offerings, private placements, cross border mergers and acquisitions, and restructurings transactions.  Mr. Song received a B.S. Degree from the Questrom School of Management at Boston University.