Star Mountain Capital, a specialized investment manager with over $4 billion in assets under management, added Sara Mathew as senior advisor. Mathew has 20 years of C-Suite and board-level leadership and management experience in financial services, technology, consumer products and other industries.
“We are delighted to welcome Sara as an aligned senior advisor, as we believe her industry knowledge as well as C-Suite and board-level leadership experience across four decades will be a tremendous asset to all of our stakeholders,” Brett Hickey, founder and CEO of Star Mountain Capital, said.
“Star Mountain’s distinctive business model allows it to support the growth of established essential services-oriented businesses that play a vital role in their communities,” Mathew said. “I look forward to adding value to the firm and to its portfolio of high-quality small and medium-sized businesses.”
Mathew spent 12 years at Dun & Bradstreet, most recently as chair and CEO. She joined Dun & Bradstreet in 2001 as its chief financial officer, after 18 years at Procter & Gamble. At Dun & Bradstreet, she also served as president and chief operating officer from 2007 and she was named CEO in January 2010 and assumed the role of chairman of the board in July of that year, a position she held until her retirement in 2013. Mathew was also a member of Dun & Bradstreet’s board of directors from 2008 to 2013.
During her tenure at Dun & Bradstreet, Mathew was instrumental in transforming Dun & Bradstreet from a data company to a more innovative, digital enterprise, leveraging technological advances to expand its reach to new customers and structural changes to transform the underperforming international business. She led the re-build of Dun & Bradstreet’s core technology platform and data assets, introducing data-as-a service (DaaS) to access new customers and accelerating Big Data Analytics to create new insights for its existing customer base.
Currently, Mathew serves on the boards of State Street, where she is chair of the human resources committee, and Dropbox, where she is chair of the compensation and human resources committee. She has previously served on the boards of Campbell Soup, where she served as chair of the audit committee, Avon, Shire, XOS, Reckitt Benckiser and Freddie Mac, where she served as chair and chair of the audit committee. She also spent five years on the advisory board of global insurance company Zurich Insurance Group.
Mathew has received numerous accolades. In 2012, she was named to FT’s 50 Women at the top; in 2013, top value creator in the S&P 500 by Chief Executive magazine; in 2015 NACD’s Directorship 100 list; in 2017, FWA’s Woman of the Year; in 2018 Ascend/Deloitte’s Pan Asian Director of the year. In 2019, Sara was awarded NACD Director of the Year for the New Jersey Chapter in 2019 and the recipient of P&G’s John G. Smale Award for outstanding alumni in 2020.
Mathew holds a bachelor’s degree in physics, chemistry and mathematics from the Women’s Christian College in Madras, India, and a master’s degree in business administration from Xavier University in Cincinnati, Ohio.
