OUR TEAM | SENIOR ADVISORS | GLOBAL ADVISORY COUNCIL
David Barnes is a Senior Advisor at Bridge Growth Partners. He currently serves as a Director of Syniti. He is a former Director of Solace.
Mr. Barnes previously served as the Chief Information and Global Business Services Officer of United Parcel Service, a world leader in supply chain, logistics, and transportation services. In this capacity, from 2005-2016, he served as a member of the UPS Management Committee, as a member of the company’s Finance, Risk, and Strategy Committees, and as the Chair of the Technology Steering Committee.
Mr. Barnes currently serves as a Director of DXC Technology, and is a former Director of Ingram Micro, and Hertz.
Randy Cowen is a Senior Advisor at Bridge Growth Partners. He currently serves as a Director of Solace.
Mr. Cowen has over 30 years of leadership experience in the technology and IT sectors. He has a long-tenured history at the Goldman Sachs Group, joining in 1982 and becoming a Partner in 1996, and held numerous executive leadership roles including Global Head of Technology and Operations (2004-2008), Chief Information Officer (2001-2007) and Co-Chief Administrative Officer (2007-2008).
Mr. Cowen previously served as a Director of EMC, Pivotal Software, The Depository Trust & Clearing, and GTY Technology Holdings.
He holds a B.A. in History with a minor in Mathematics from Michigan State University.
Tom Ferrando is a Senior Advisor at Bridge Growth Partners.
Previously, he was the Chief Executive Officer of Salient CRGT. Mr. Ferrando played an integral role in driving Salient CRGT’s transformative growth, resulting in its acquisition in August 2021 by GovernmentCIO, a portfolio company of Welsh, Carson, Anderson & Stowe. Prior to that, Mr. Ferrando was CEO of CRGT, which merged with Salient in 2015.
Mr. Ferrando currently serves on the Board of Directors of GovernmentCIO.
He holds a M.S. in Management from Stevens Institute of Technology and a B.S. in Computer Science from Seton Hall University.
Eric Friedberg is a Senior Advisor at Bridge Growth Partners.
Mr. Friedberg currently serves as President and Founder of Next Tier Cybersecurity, a consultancy that helps Boards and C-Suites advance and oversee their cyber maturity and security.
Prior to founding Next Tier Cybersecurity, he co-founded and served as Co-President of Stroz Friedberg (“Stroz”). During his tenure, Mr. Friedberg grew Stroz from a two-person boutique to a 550-person, category-leading cybersecurity consultancy and technical services firm through acquisitions and organic growth, eventually selling it to Aon PLC in 2016.
Prior to Stroz, Mr. Friedberg was the Lead Federal Computer Crimes Prosecutor and Narcotics Chief in the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Brooklyn. Before his 11-year career as a prosecutor, Mr. Friedberg was an intellectual property and securities litigator at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP.
He has lectured and published articles on digital forensics, incident response and electronic discovery matters, and has testified as an expert in these areas. Mr. Friedberg has been a member of the New York State Cyber Advisory Board, Sedona Conference’s Working Group 6, the International Association of Privacy Professionals, and the advisory board of The Future of Privacy Forum. He received his B.A. in Philosophy from Brandeis University and his J.D. from Brooklyn Law School.
Peter Griffiths is a Senior Advisor at Bridge Growth Partners. He is a Director of Syniti and is a former Director of Accedian.
Previously, he was the Executive Vice President of Products at CA Technologies, where he was responsible for investment and strategy across the company’s broad portfolio of products and solutions for enterprise and growth markets.
Prior to CA, Mr. Griffiths was Vice President of Worldwide Business Analytics and Applications Development of IBM, responsible for building the Business Analytics division within IBM Software.
Prior to IBM, Mr. Griffiths served as Senior Vice President of Products at Cognos, which he joined when Cognos acquired Relational Matters PLC, a data analytics company that Mr. Griffiths co-founded and led as Chief Executive Officer.
Mr. Griffiths was a former Director of Lavastorm Analytics, and is currently a member of the Board of Trustees Emeritus of the Anita Borg Institute. He earned a B.S. degree in Electronic Engineering with 1st Class Honors from Brighton University in England.
Ken Hamel is a Senior Advisor at Bridge Growth Partners. He currently serves as a Director of Syniti.
Mr. Hamel has over 38 years of operations, finance, and IT experience in the technology industry. He has a long-tenured history at SAP, joining in 2003, and held numerous leadership roles including Executive Vice President – Global Business Operations (2018-2021), Senior Vice President – Global Customer Strategy and Sales Operations (2012-2018) and Senior Vice President – Global Presales and Solutions (2009-2012).
Prior to SAP, Mr. Hamel spent 10 years at Oracle as Vice President of Oracle University – Americas, leading the Customer Education business in the US, Canada and Latin America, and Vice President of Global Sales Support. Earlier in his career, Mr. Hamel held various senior sales positions at Digital Equipment Corporation for 10 years.
Jonathan Harber is a Senior Advisor at Bridge Growth Partners. He is a former Director of Finalsite.
Mr. Harber has over 30 years of experience as a pioneer in education technology. Mr. Harber was the CEO and Co-Founder of SchoolNet, a company that helped school systems use data to increase academic achievement. In 2011, SchoolNet was acquired by Pearson, a global education and publishing company, where Mr. Harber served as CEO Pearson K12 Technology.
Mr. Harber received his M.S. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) where he completed a thesis on education technology at the MIT Sloan School of Management and the MIT Media Lab. He received his B.A. with Honors in Cognitive Science from Wesleyan University.
Dave Laverty is a Senior Advisor at Bridge Growth Partners. He is a former Director of Finalsite.
Previously, he served as Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer of IBM’s Data and Analytics Division, where he was responsible for strategy positioning and driving demand for the division and managing a global team of 400 marketing professionals.
Prior to IBM, Dave was Chief Marketing Officer for Cognos, a global business intelligence software company acquired by IBM. Before joining Cognos, Dave held senior management positions with Surebridge, a venture-backed infrastructure and SaaS provider acquired by Navisite, and with Lotus Development Corporation, acquired by IBM.
Mr. Laverty serves as a board member for the Rhode Island PBS Foundation. He is a former Director of Demand Spring, a marketing consultancy. He is a graduate of Bryant University with a B.S. in Business Administration.
Sander Levy is a Senior Advisor, and former Managing Principal and Co-Founder of Bridge Growth Partners. He is a former Director of Salient CRGT. He is the Managing Member of Lakeside Capital Holdings, a private investment firm.
He was previously a Managing Director of Vestar Capital Partners, a private equity investment firm, which at the time managed over $8 billion of equity capital, and was a founding partner at the firm’s inception. Mr. Levy was Co-Chair of Vestar’s Investment Committee, a member of the Executive Committee, and was primarily responsible for the firm’s financial services practice. Earlier in his career, Mr. Levy was a member of the Management Buyout Group of First Boston (now Credit Suisse).
He currently serves as a Director of Symetra Financial, and is a former Director of Clark Schwebel, Duff & Phelps, Gleason, Sun Apparel, Triton Container, Validus and WiltonRe Holdings, among other Vestar-related companies.
In addition, Mr. Levy previously served on the Investor Advisory Committee on Financial Markets of The Federal Reserve Bank of New York. He also previously served as a member of the Board and Executive Committee, and was Chair of the Finance Committee, of the Birthright Israel Foundation. Mr. Levy graduated summa cum laude from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and holds an M.B.A. from Columbia Business School.
Patrick Ostiguy is a Senior Advisor at Bridge Growth Partners. Mr. Ostiguy was the Founder of Accedian, a leading provider of highly accurate network performance monitoring and assurance solutions and prior portfolio company of Bridge Growth. He led two transformative acquisitions in Sweden and France, as well as the 2017 sale to Bridge Growth Partners, before handing over the CEO role and becoming Executive Chairman in early 2019. Accedian was later acquired by Cisco.
Before founding Accedian, Mr. Ostiguy co-founded Avantas and launched the first portable Ethernet telecom test-set. Avantas was acquired by EXFO in 2001. Prior to this, Mr. Ostiguy was part of the initial Positron Fiber Systems’ (PFS) team commercializing the first Ethernet Multi-Service Provisioning Platform. PFS was acquired by Reltec in 1998.
With more than 25 years in the telecom industry, Mr. Ostiguy has won numerous awards including the Mobile World Congress Glomo Award, Light Reading’s Leading Light and Ernst & Young’s Entrepreneur of the Year. He received his B. Eng. E.E. from Université de Sherbrooke.
Dr. Danny Sabbah is a Senior Advisor at Bridge Growth Partners. He is a former Director of Finalsite.
Dr. Sabbah held numerous senior executive positions at IBM, including Chief Technology Officer and General Manager of IBM Cloud and NextGen Computing, General Manager of Tivoli and Rational Software, and Chief Technology Officer of IBM Software (among others) where he oversaw more than 22,000 developers across 57 R&D centers.
He began his IBM career in 1974, focusing on telecommunications software (VTAM) in Kingston, New York. He received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Rochester in 1981, specializing in artificial intelligence and computer vision. He currently serves on the Advisory Boards of the Hajim School of Engineering and the School of Arts and Sciences at the University of Rochester.
Garrett Walls is a Senior Advisor at Bridge Growth Partners.
Previously, he was the Global Head of Investor Relations at Angelo Gordon. Prior to Angelo Gordon, Mr. Walls was the Head of the Institutional Client Group for Trust Company of the West (TCW).
Before joining TCW, Mr. Walls served as a Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of the Institutional Americas business at JPMorgan Asset Management.
Mr. Walls serves as an advisor to the Public Employees Retirement System of Idaho and served as a member of the investment committee for the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) for ten years. He was a board member of the Pacific Pension Institute
He earned a B.S. degree in Marketing from the Boston University School of Management.