Who We Are
GROW and SELL Advisors (a division of Traversi & Company, LLC) brings decades of experience helping lower middle market companies grow and sell their businesses.
David Traversi - Chief Executive Officer
David has over 30 years’ experience as a growth and sell-side M&A advisor, investment banker, entrepreneur, CEO, board member, lawyer, executive coach, executive team builder, author, and speaker.
Prior to founding Traversi & Company in 1999, David served as President of Sirrom Capital Corporation, an NYSE-listed specialty finance company. Sirrom was the nation’s leading provider of mezzanine capital to private growth companies in amounts less than $5 million. He managed the sale of the company in 1999 for $1 billion.
Prior to Sirrom, David was a General Partner and Senior Managing Director in the Corporate Finance Department of Montgomery Securities (now Banc of America Securities LLC), one of the nation’s top investment banks providing growth businesses in the 1990s with public and private offering, research, and trading services. There he founded and ran two highly successful industry groups (Real Estate and FinTech).
Over the course of seven years at Montgomery, David managed over 75 major transactions totaling over $5 billion, including initial public offerings, secondary stock offerings, private placements of debt and equity, public debt offerings and mergers and acquisitions.
Subsequent to Sirrom, in a Grow and Sell Advisors merchant banking engagement, David co-founded and served as Chief Executive Officer of PRE Solutions, Inc. With the financial backing of ITC Holding Co. (the financial sponsors of MindSpring, Telecom USA, Powertel, Intercall, HeadHunter.net, Knology, and ITC DeltaCom), PRE Solutions built the nation’s largest electronic processor of prepaid telecom products, with a distribution base of over 70,000 retail locations across the nation. PRE was sold to InComm.
Subsequent to PRE Solutions, in other merchant banking assignments, David co-founded, arranged financing for, and served various executive roles with, a fabless semiconductor manufacturing start-up and a digital media services start-up.
From 2014 through 2018, David was President of and led day-to-day operations as well as institutional fund raising for Calmwater Capital, a Los Angeles-based provider of commercial real estate debt. Founded in 2010, Calmwater provides $5 to $50 million senior and mezzanine loans to office, industrial, retail, multi-family, hospitality, and land investors across the U.S. Since inception, it has originated $4 billion in loans. Under David’s leadership, the firm doubled in size, never recorded a loss or mark-down, and raised $1.5 billion of institutional capital from name-brand endowments, foundations, public and private pension funds, family offices, and global banks in the U.S., Asia, Europe, and South America, and inculcated a culture of teamwork, inclusiveness, and integrity.
Beginning in 2012 and through 2018, David managed the launch of Karlin Ventures, hired the management team, and joined as Advisory Board Member of this Los Angeles-based early-stage investment platform. Sponsored by Karlin Asset Management, a private investment firm managing over $2 billion of unleveraged capital, Karlin Ventures invested $100,000 to $1 million in 42 investments, primarily in education technology, digital media, healthcare, IT, and financial services.
From 2021 through 2023, David headed up the sell-side M&A practice for Newport LLC, a premier national lower middle market advisory firm.
Currently, David serves on the board of Supply Chain Wizard, Inc., a private, VC-backed SaaS provider. He is also Chairman of The Boulder Field, the first rock climbing gym in the U.S. designed, built, and operated by a professional climber. He is also a Chair of a San Francisco TIGER 21 group (www.tiger21.com) and a Board Member of the Public Policy Institute of California (www.ppic.org), the premier provider of independent, objective, nonpartisan research. Finally, he is the CEO and Co-Founder of PivotUP (www.pivotup.ai), creator of a leading AI-powered mental health and relationship digital coach.
David has an M.B.A., Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley, a J.D., University of California, Davis, and B.S. in Business Administration and Finance, California State University, Chico. He has also practiced as a business lawyer and mediator in California and Alaska. He has served on a number of for-profit and non-profit boards of directors and is a frequent speaker on a variety of business and leadership topics. David’s revolutionary, highly acclaimed book on leadership, The Source of Leadership: Eight Drivers of the High-Impact Leader was released by New Harbinger Publications in 2007. He holds FINRA Series 7, 24, 27, 63, 79, and 99 licenses and a California Real Estate Broker License and is a member of the California State Bar Association and Alaska Bar Association.
In July 2025, Amazon Publishing published David’s How To GROW Your Business and his and Carl Stratton’s How To SELL Your Business.
As needed for execution, GROW and SELL Advisors engages other professionals with whom David has worked over the past 30 years.
Carl Stratton - Managing Director, Mergers & Acquisitions Advisory
Carl brings a wealth of diverse experience to bear on the challenges and opportunities facing our clients. In addition to a wealth of experience as a sell-side M&A advisor, he has over 30 years’ of CFO and entrepreneurial experience in a wide range of industries.
He has been the CFO of two public companies, raised over $700 million in debt and equity capital, and built and managed the finance and accounting functions of several start-up companies in which annual sales growth exceeded 50%. In one of his CFO positions, he was on the investment committee that approved $1 million to $5 million investments in small businesses located in the US and Canada. He has successfully sold two of his businesses, one as CFO and one he founded and operated. Before going to business school and launching his CFO career, Carl started as a Chemical Engineer working in a manufacturing plant with DuPont.
Carl holds a Bachelor of Science Degree in Chemical Engineering from Lafayette College and an MBA Degree from University of North Carolina. He is a Certified Public Accountant (inactive).
Fred Fink - Executive Advisor, Mergers & Acquisitions Advisory
Fred’s career has included senior roles in consulting and investment banking as well as an entrepreneur and CEO. His career achievements include serving as Managing Partner of the Health & Medical Division of Booz Allen, an international consulting firm, as a senior investment banker at Salomon Brothers, a New York bulge bracket investment bank, as the founder and CEO of the largest private equity backed optical laboratory network in the US., and as a Managing Director in the M&A Advisory Group at Newport LLC.
As an investment banker and business owner. Fred has participated in transactions that total more than $5 billion. He has led or assisted owners in raising private equity capital and served on the board of several private equity backed businesses. As a Managing Director at Newport LLC, Fred has worked with middle market clients on completing both sell-side and buy-side transactions.
Fred is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Stanford University with a BA in Psychology, and also holds an MS in Health Administration from the Stanford University School of Medicine, and an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business.
Lori Jean Glass - Executive Advisor, Relationship Advisory
Lori Jean works with Grow and Sell Advisors clients where there are relationship advisory needs. She is the Founder and CEO of PIVOT, a premier relationship coaching platform that helps individuals, couples, families, and organizations think, feel, and live better. She is also the author of the Amazon Best Seller #HealthyAdult, a guide to developing secure, empowered relationships through personal accountability and emotional resilience.
A dynamic and relatable speaker, Lori Jean brings both her compelling personal journey and decades of research to every stage and session. Her mission is to demystify the complexities of human relationships—whether at home or in the workplace—and to equip people with tools for meaningful change.
Prior to PIVOT, Lori Jean was Executive Director of Clinical Operations at Five Sisters Ranch, a mental health facility, where she developed an innovative curriculum focused on healing relational trauma. That curriculum became the foundation of PIVOT, which she formally launched in 2018 after years of proven success in clinical settings.
Today, PIVOT boasts a nationwide team of certified coaches and a robust training academy for professionals who want to bring the transformational PIVOT process to their own clients. Whether through private intensives, group retreats, or online sessions, PIVOT has helped thousands shift into healthier, more connected relationships.
Before entering the mental health, executive, and individual counseling space, Lori Jean founded and ran a successful image consulting firm, guiding companies in building authentic, cohesive brands.