Lisa Westley joined Advent in 2019 and is a Managing Director and Head of Strategy, Advent Tech in Palo Alto.
Prior to joining Advent, Lisa was a Partner and Chief Operating Officer of Brooklands Capital Strategies, a spin-out of TPG Capital that provides global fundraising and strategic advisory services to alternative asset managers. She also spent nine years at TPG Capital, initially as the Chief Operating Officer of TPG’s Asia Pacific private equity business and subsequently as the Global Head of Talent Management. Before TPG, Lisa spent 15 years as an investment banker, having been a Founding Partner, Co-Head of the Consumer Group and Head of the IT Services / Business Services Group at Thomas Weisel Partners. Previously, she was a Senior Managing Director at Montgomery Securities. Lisa began her investment banking career at Goldman Sachs and Salomon Brothers, Inc.
Lisa received a BA, Phi Beta Kappa, in Economics and Asian Studies from Amherst College and an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business.
What advice would you give to someone new to Advent?
My advice would be to go out of your way early on to build relationships throughout the firm, particularly with people outside of your group as well as across functional areas and geographies. Success at Advent very much depends upon your ability to collaborate with a broad swath of people. This is evidenced in our deal announcements that oftentimes have a dozen plus people who have actively contributed to the transaction. It’s cliché, but there is no “I” at Advent.
What inspires and drives you in your job?
Most importantly it’s all about the people, both at the firm and specifically within our team. I feel blessed to be working with such a terrific group of colleagues. Also, I love the fact that I have a job that keeps me constantly challenged. I approach my responsibilities as a whiteboard. My role at Advent isn’t sharply defined; in addition to helping manage the Advent Tech franchise, much of my mandate is simply to make the tech team and the firm better at every opportunity I can identify. Every year, I’ve had huge projects to undertake, and they’ve all been different. That’s what keeps it exciting.
“At Advent, we are one firm.”
Lisa Westley
Managing Director, Advent
How does Advent’s culture of collaboration produce better decision making?
In many GPs, the power and decision making are concentrated in one or two individuals, oftentimes the founders of the firm. This creates a dynamic within the organization in which there is less debate and more courting of favor with those few individuals who ultimately control the investment decisions. At Advent, decisions don’t rest with a couple of people; it’s truly a partnership that requires collaboration. Everyone is expected to weigh in with their opinions resulting in healthy discussions of the pros/cons of a deal and diverse perspectives that ultimately lead to better decision-making. Consequently, it’s imperative to navigate and get buy-in from a broader group of managing partners, managing directors, and others…this is collaboration at its best.
Beside the culture of collaboration, what else makes Advent so special?
A differentiating factor of Advent is that we are one of the few firms of scale that still focuses primarily on private equity with a single team. Yes, we have a Latin America fund and a Tech fund, but they are symbiotic with the Advent global fund and are staffed with the same individuals of the main fund. This too reinforces the culture that we are one firm with collaboration at its core. At Advent, we are one firm.
If you weren’t in this profession, what would you be doing?
That’s a good question – I honestly can’t think of anything I’d prefer to be doing. The last time I thought seriously about this was when my kids were very little, and I did a big reset in my career. I’d been an investment banker, but no longer wanted a job that required me to travel as much as I had been doing. After taking some time off and contemplating my life, my business school roommate introduced me to the chief operating officer role in private equity. Since then, my career has been all about embracing the whiteboard! And I haven’t looked back.
