Norwest Equity Partners (NEP) has hired Nicole Strait as its new Chief of Organization Strategy. In this role, Ms. Strait will be responsible for designing and building the firm’s organization strategy and capabilities needed to execute its operations as a middle market equity investor.
In addition to her internal role at NEP, Ms. Strait will provide organization strategy and design, coaching support, and human resource functional best practices for NEP portfolio management teams, human resource teams, and Board of Managers.
Prior to joining NEP in 2014, Ms. Strait was a founding partner at River Rock Partners, a management consulting firm focused on assisting both privately- and publicly-held clients in planning and navigating through business transformations, including growth strategy planning, M&A due diligence and integration, and organization effectiveness and culture development. Ms. Strait has also worked at CNS, International Multifoods, Simondelivers.com, The Pillsbury Company, and Cargill. Ms. Strait received her BBA degree in Industrial Relations and Human Resources Management from the University of Iowa.
“On behalf of the NEP partnership, I am thrilled to have Nicole join our team as she is a proven human resource organization strategist with deep functional expertise. Our firm has been fortunate to work with Nicole over the last several years as she provided advisory consulting to our portfolio companies,” said Tim DeVries, NEP Managing General Partner. “In this newly created role at NEP, Nicole will continue providing this critical resource to portfolio company management teams as well as work with our investment staff and firm at large. She has strong business acumen and is an effective business partner across the organization.”
Norwest Equity Partners is a middle-market private equity firm. The firm makes equity investments of $30 million to $150 million in companies operating in the agriculture, applied technology, business services, consumer products and services, distribution, diversified industrials, and healthcare sectors. The firm manages $5 billion of capital through a series of equity and mezzanine limited partnerships and is currently investing NEP IX with $1.2 billion in capital. Norwest Equity Partners is headquartered in Minneapolis (www.nep.com).
© 2014 PEPD • Private Equity’s Leading News Magazine • 3-11-14
