Team Member

Chris Vanderzyden leads the Legacy Partners Worldwide Division of The DAK Group, one of North America’s most respected middle-market M&A advisory firms, and is the creator of the Master Exit Plan®,  a proprietary framework that helps privately held, middle-market business owners design and execute successful exit strategies that harvest and preserve wealth for future generations.

Her career reflects a rare arc from Big Four accountant to global investment banker to serial entrepreneur. She began at Coopers & Lybrand (now PricewaterhouseCoopers), broadened her experience as an asset manager at Northwest Asset Management in Los Angeles, and subsequently served as an M&A Advisor at a global investment bank. She later stepped into entrepreneurship, successfully building and selling multiple businesses, giving her an owner’s perspective that most advisors simply do not have.

With over twenty years of experience advising privately held businesses through growth and exit, Chris speaks internationally on exit planning and M&A, lectures at Harvard University’s Entrepreneurship and Innovation programme, and contributes as an expert to leading media outlets. She is the bestselling author of 7 Steps to Entrepreneurial Victory and Master Your Exit Plan: Sell Your Business, Preserve Your Legacy.

She holds a B.S. in Accounting and Economics from the State University of New York College at Oswego and is a Certified Value Growth Advisor and Certified Public Accountant (inactive).