Monitor Clipper’s Evans scoops leadership award

The award's eighth winner said tax reform and the possibility of an economic downturn are the biggest challenges facing private fund managers in 2018.

April Evans, partner, CFO and CCO at Monitor Clipper Partners, was awarded the pfm Leadership Award at the 2018 PEI CFOs and COOs forum in New York on Wednesday.

Evans has been at Monitor Clipper Partners since 2005 and is a founder member of the Association of Corporate Growth’s Private Equity Regulatory Task Force, which drew up the Private Equity Regulatory and Compliance Principles and frequently lobbies Washington for the private equity cause.

Speaking to pfm ahead of the award presentation, Evans said that the biggest challenge facing the industry this year is applying the new tax rules.

“The biggest challenge is going to be internalizing the impact of the new tax law; while some aspects of it are clear, there are many more that will impact us where ambiguity is going to exist for some time to come,” Evans said.

“We’re also at a point where economists are telling us to expect a recession sometime in the near to medium term.  We should all be thinking about that in terms of supporting our portfolio companies,” she added.

Evans said her firm is evaluating the impact of the rules in real time, adding it was hard to make plans before the reform bill was passed because there were so many moving parts.

“We are analyzing each portfolio company’s structure to determine whether there are any adjustments we need to make.  As we look at new deals, we’re doing the same thing,” she said.

As well as her involvement with ACG PERT, Evans holds a number of other positions. She is also a director of the Financial Executives Alliance, a thought leadership, education and networking organization with chapters across the US and the Women’s Association of Venture and Equity, an organization dedicated to the development and advancement of women in VC/PE.

Evans has also been active with the Kauffman Fellows Program of the Center for Venture Education, which is a two-year program of education and mentoring of the next generation of venture capital leaders, and an assistant professor of the Simmons College Graduate School of Management, a women’s college focused on executive education. She has also furthered the female in venture capital cause as part of the advisory committee for the Center for Women and Enterprise Venture Center, a non-profit organization dedicated to helping people start and grow their businesses. In addition, she mentors and advises entrepreneurs starting their own businesses.

The pfm Leadership Award is an annual award given in recognition of an individual able to advance any number of key issues and causes important to the private fund CFO and COO role. The award is determined by Private Equity International and pfm‘s editorial staff. Past award recipients include Blue Wolf Capital Partners’ chief financial officer Joshua Cherry-Seto and The Riverside Company COO Pamela Hendrickson.