Ms. Djamshidi has over 18 years of successful experience providing fiscal, strategic, operations and M&A leadership to board members, business owners and executives of more than 200 companies on growth, merger and acquisitions and business succession plans. Ms. Djamshidi has worked with government contractors and hyper growth companies from various sectors such as: cybersecurity, biotech, chemical, nano-technology, supply chain and logistics, SaaS, IT services and solutions, data analytics, and visualization. Ms. Djamshidi is a frequent speaker at conferences and judge of numerous innovation challenges. Sarah Djamshidi is a proven and trusted business advisor. She has advised high-profile, technology-based early-stage tech companies and led public-private-partnership organizations with great success. She guides clients through a multi-faceted planning process where both financial and business goals are analyzed and optimized for business transition. Sarah assists clients in determining what options are best – stay, grow or exit their business (via PE, ESOP, MBO, or outright sale), she then helps clients execute the desired option. Ms. Djamshidi has raised more than $25M in venture capital for technology companies from various sectors such as clean-tech, cyber security and bio-tech. Hired by the Board of Directors, as the Executive Director of the Chesapeake Innovation Center (CIC), nation’s first homeland, national and cyber security accelerator, she advised technology companies nationwide and global firms from New Zealand, Finland and United Kingdom. She also launched and successfully ran a technology scouting program for the IC community (NSA, DISA, Cyber Command, and DHS). During that time, analyzed more than 600 technology companies. Her work with her client companies leads to numerous regional awards for those firms. In addition to managing her own business, she was the President of Maryland Business Incubation Association (MBIA), an association of more than 20 incubators and accelerators supporting more than 400 emerging companies throughout the State of Maryland. She also testified before U.S Senate on Role of Small Business in Defending our Nation from Cyber Attacks. Sarah holds a Series 79 – Investment Banking Representative and a Bachelor of Science degree in Management Science and Statistics with specialization in Decision Information Systems from the University of Maryland. Certified Business Exit Consultants (CBEC) training from Pinnacle Equity Solutions.