Elena Djakonova, Chapter Executive, ACG South Florida

In recent years, professional networking association ACG South Florida has experienced remarkable growth, driven by the influx of private equity firms, investment banking offices, and family offices into the region, particularly in Palm Beach County. This expansion has enabled the organization to broaden its reach across the tri-county area and serve a larger professional community, South Florida Chapter Executive Elena Djakonova told Invest:. “More M&A professionals and potential sponsors are realizing the impact that we are offering in the community. For us, it’s almost like growth produces growth. We’re attracting new partners and we’re attracting new members,” Djakonova said.

What is your overview of ACG South Florida’s purpose, mission, and main objectives?
ACG South Florida is a part of the ACG global community. ACG Global has over 60 chapters, most of them in North America, but we are a global association. The ACG started in 1954, and the South Florida chapter has been around for approximately 30 years. ACG South Florida is a tri-county chapter: Palm Beach, Broward, and Miami-Dade. It started primarily in Fort Lauderdale, and then over the years, we grew and now encompass four networks: ACG Palm Beach, ACG Miami, Young Professionals, and Women Connect. The ACG Palm Beach network started a little over a year ago. Of course, we’ve been hosting events in Palm Beach for the past 30 years, but now we have a dedicated committee in Palm Beach and will have a dedicated board starting in October. We are seeing incredible growth in all our regions, but specifically in Palm Beach County.

What have been the key achievements for ACG South Florida during the last year?
We are seeing continuous growth. We’re very proud that we are the premier networking association for M&A professionals in South Florida. With the addition of Palm Beach, we now serve a greater area.
In the past several years, we have seen an increase in private equity, investment banking offices, and family offices moving to Palm Beach County, and that is driving the growth of the association in general and the Palm Beach network. At ACG South Florida we host over 30 programs a year, all of them being at capacity or sold-out, so it’s fantastic. We bring together approximately 100 people every time we meet.
We’re doing multiple content-driven and thought leadership events, as well as networking and deal-making sessions.

What are the main trends that you’re seeing in the South Florida landscape?
During COVID we saw more funds and companies, even more so than before, moved to or at least opened additional offices in South Florida. A lot of their key employees and partners also moved to South Florida, or at least have two homes now.
Initially, we saw the trend of growth in Miami, but it also expanded into Palm Beach. As a result, the Palm Beach market wanted to become much more involved and have a greater presence within the ACG South Florida universe. We start hosting geographically dedicated events more often, and as I mentioned, they’ve been incredibly well-attended. We see a lot of interest and more new faces coming to our events.

Are there any particular events or programs that have been more impactful for members in terms of learning, networking, or even closing deals?
ACG is designed for the members to network, build relationships and close deals. We had a few interesting events in the past year, for example, a luncheon in May. It was spearheaded by Palm Beach Capital and Greenberg Traurig and focused on the anatomy of a deal. We took a transaction, and walked our audience through how it unfolded, discussing all the touch points of that particular deal.
We will have our first AI and PE event in October. That will be an interesting event because obviously everybody is talking about AI right now, but we’re going to discuss practical applications for private equity, their funds, and their portfolio companies. The event will look at the impact of AI on those entities.

Could you share some recent examples of partnerships that have significantly advanced your organization?
There’s no such thing as a one-on-one partnership. We have our sponsors — annual sponsors and event sponsors that support the growth and existence of ACG, which is not-for-profit. Our sponsors become our partners, so it’s really hard to narrow it down to one particular sponsor or partner. We’ve had partners who’ve been with us for a dozen years, and we have new friends and members that just joined recently, but all of them equally contribute to our growth and success. And of course, our members, and grassroots, person-to-person introductions and testimonials of ACG and our programs have been absolutely essential. We have a new initiative — Coffee Connections — that we started over a year ago with our young professionals, and that’s been successful thanks to grassroots growth. We started with 15-20 people attending and just chatting over coffee. Now it’s grown to four locations, and we attract about 50 people.

What is your overview of your organization’s growth?
More partners and members are realizing the impact that we are offering in the community. For us, growth produces growth. We’re attracting new partners and we’re attracting new members. ACG South Florida membership grew by close to 40% over the year. This is an environment where association memberships are either static or show 5% to 7% growth. So this growth is an incredible success for us. We are now among the Top 10 chapters of the 60-plus chapters in the ACG universe. We are very proud of this accomplishment.

Is there any particular trend or factor that you attribute this growth to?
In the past year, we implemented many additional events. Since we are an event-driven association, and because it’s all about connections and meeting in person, that drew additional sponsors, attendees, and members. We’re also starting to vary our events. With the growth and the variety of the events that we are offering, people can see the benefit of becoming a member and associate themselves with the strongest association on the market.
Everybody has a limited number of hours in the day and want to place their hours where they’re worth the most. ACG South Florida and our networks offer the best networking opportunity in the region for the players in the middle market M&A space.

What are your top priorities and goals for ACG in South Florida for the next two to three years?
We’re outgrowing most of the venues. Our hurdle is to keep elevating our events, but also to find the venues that can accommodate our size.