About

FOUNDERS

Michael Ballard, MBA, MSc.

Senior Managing Partner | CEO

Rachael Benton, MBA

Managing Partner | COO

CCS Growth Partners was founded by Michael Ballard and Rachael Benton.

They both have extensive experience:

  • 20+ years of lower-middle management.
  • Family-owned businesses.
  • Experience buying and selling a company as an owner-operator. 100% IRR.
  • Worked in private equity/search funds serving on the investment committee, conducting market research and financial modeling.
  • Fortune 500 company managing a $200M+ budget.
  • $80M joint-venture negotiated.
  • $11M raised in a healthcare startup.
  • Both have MBA’s in Corporate finance and one has an additional MSc. Finance.

Reach out to michael.ballard@ccsgrowthpartners.com

(480)710-5784

ADVISORY

Jeff Ackerman | Advisory

Managing Director at Capstone Headwaters brings over 20 years of private equity experience and operating leadership within the consumer sector. 

Previously, Jeff was a Managing Director at Breakaway Ventures, a unique venture capital firm that focuses on a new generation of high growth retail and consumer-oriented businesses. On the operating front, Jeff was the founder and CEO of a 22-unit restaurant franchise company that developed restaurants in the fast casual and quick service categories.

From 1998 through 2008, he served as Vice President, Partner, and Managing Director of Orion Partners, LP, a private equity firm specializing in acquisitions and growth capital investments across a wide range of sectors.

Jeff began his career with Procter & Gamble, working on products in the Food & Beverage, and Institutional (hospital, hotel, & restaurant) categories. He then joined the strategy consulting practice at Accenture where he specialized in developing corporate and acquisition strategies for clients in the consumer products, grocery, food service, financial services, and oil and gas industries.

While at business school, he was a Specialty Retail field research analyst in the Equity Research Department at Goldman Sachs. 

Joel Litman | Advisory

President & CEO, Chief Investment Strategist, Valens Research

Joel Litman is the Chief Investment Strategist advising individual investors in equities, corporate credit, and macroeconomic strategy. He is also the President and CEO of Valens Research as well as a member of the Board of Directors of COL Financial Group, a leading brokerage firm in Asia.

Litman has been on CNBC, quoted in Barron’s and Institutional Investor, and interviewed in Forbes. He has published in Harvard Business Review, is a top contributor to Seeking Alpha, and co-authored the highly-acclaimed book, DRIVEN: Business Strategy, Human Actions, and the Creation of Wealth.

Litman has taught or guest-lectured at Harvard Business School, University of Chicago Booth, Wharton, LBS, SAIF Jiao Tong, and others. He is a Professor at Hult International Business School, a Financial Times and Economist top-ranked international MBA program. He conducts seminars regularly for financial and industry conferences around the world such as CFA and CPA chapters.