Alumni Profile: Rodney Goldstein of Frontenac Company

Today: Chairman and Managing Director of Frontenac Company. In 1981, Rodney Goldstein joined the Frontenac Company, a Chicago-based private equity investment firm, as one of its principals. Frontenac raises and manages institutional capital, which it invests in privately owned companies to create market-leading organizations that, over time, attract premium prices from strategic acquirers or buy-out firms.

Rodney Goldstein

Rod and the operating executives build trust with company owners and craft solutions that meet their complex needs for estate liquidity, executive succession, and sophisticated business and capital planning.

Through a business approach called CEO1st®, Frontenac recruits, assesses, and subsequently partners with experienced operating executives. Together, they acquire and grow the size and value of mostly family or operator-owned companies in business services, technology services, health care, and light manufacturing industries.

If a company is acquired, Rod and his partners support the CEO1st leaders through both organic growth and add-on acquisitions, improvement of operating performance, and, eventually, growth in equity value.

Rod also works with Frontenac's nine other managing directors, collaborating on the general business of recruiting executives, visiting companies, conducting company assessments, closing acquisitions, and consulting with portfolio companies. He also has been an active leader in a range of civic and volunteer areas, particularly involving inner city, health care, and secondary school education organizations.

At Booz Allen & Before: Rod received a B.A. in history from Princeton and a MBA from the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School. He worked for two years for the National Endowment for the Arts, where he administered a federal grant program in photography. For a time, he contemplated a career in management of arts and is still an avid collector of photography.

After working for Salomon Brothers during the summer of 1977, Rod joined Booz Allen in 1978, where he stayed for three years.

Did your experience at Booz Allen help you build a foundation for your current position? Booz Allen was critical to my career development. It was truly my "finishing school."

I grew up with a family-owned business and developed a preference early on for working with companies with owner-operator cultures and endemic challenges. While still in business school, strategy and organization consulting became my post-graduate career plan. Booz Allen was my first choice once recruiting began.

Everything that Frontenac does involves assessing executives and teams; assessing markets and their attractiveness; determining prospective companies' potential for attaining and sustaining competitive leadership; and overseeing the execution of companies' game plans. Booz Allen was a priceless background for this work.

What were some of your favorite Booz Allen experiences? I found the strategy and organization work we did for single-purpose operating companies both challenging and enjoyable.

My informal and formal interactions with Booz Allen's senior leaders — the living legends — were invaluable to me. I was a young professional at the time, and especially benefited from senior leaders' wisdom and humor during road trips.

And the late nights we all worked to make deadlines — they were tremendous learning experiences with high-quality people. Performance under pressure is a rite of passage to business success.

What did your experiences at Booz Allen teach you? Booz Allen projects combined strategy with organizational planning. Working with operating businesses — as opposed to corporate holding companies — was most instructive. And developing the analytical frameworks for market and business assessments was priceless.

Working with senior Booz Allen team leaders, however, was the most instructive by far. I also learned the hard way — that Buffalo and Minneapolis in winter and Houston in summer are not ideal places to do business — that the keys to getting things done were in the hands of the administrative assistants — and that lots of late-night carry-out food leads to weight gain.

Would you recommend working at Booz Allen? Booz Allen is great preparation for a life in consulting, or a life utilizing consulting skills across the commercial sector of the world's economy.

What are some of your career highlights? My partners and I attempt to combine creativity, competitiveness, and a focus on results in everything we do. We also have been rewarded for making judgments that were non-conventional.

For example, at one time, no shareholder group had ever made money in the business of for-profit education. Frontenac and our executive partners purchased an orphan division of a large organization which was at the time under-managed and underperforming, and the parent enterprise sold it as a non-core business. Management subsequently repositioned the brand, made management and staff changes, and that long-ago ailing division is now a public company and a national leader in for-profit education.

This is an example of what can happen when you match superior operating talent with a company that has exceptional opportunity for material growth. In our business, creativity is important, but making judgments about which executives and market segments to select, and when to buy and sell are what helps our company move forward.

How does one develop that nuanced skill of business intuition? You gather intuition from partnering with a team that possesses experience, mileage-based judgment, maturity, and business courage. When one uses these attributes to make decisions, and then ensure that plans get executed, good things happen.

A career in business leadership requires a solid academic grounding and training in the business of business. Booz Allen was and still is grounding in analytics, market assessment, and the integration of organizational planning with execution, and this knowledge is priceless.

What do you look forward to most each day? First, being a part of a partnership that has endured successfully through numerous business cycles and is stronger today than ever. Second, I'm proud to have been a financial and business partner to companies that have endured as compelling market leaders.

But working with people with exceptional character and commitment is what I enjoy the most — the ambitious and emerging CEOs, and the owner-operators who have a complex set of problems brought on by success.

I also spend considerable time in volunteer and civic involvement, which gives richness, texture, and meaning to one's life. My family, Frontenac, and volunteer involvement most animate me.

Any advice for people just launching their careers with the firm? For new career professionals: Fully understand the breadth of the educational aspects of your careers. Develop your analytical skills, your business writing skills, and a range of supporting knowledge. Get lots of different versions of your experience, and work with as many mentors/senior professionals as you possibly can. Learning plays an important role in your career and contributes greatly to your success. Last, make decisions; take judgment-informed risks.

profile posted September 19, 2005