Ankura, a business advisory and expert services firm that leverages integrated risk management, governance, compliance, investigations, forensics, technology, turnaround and restructuring, and management consulting capabilities, has promoted four employees to the title of senior managing director: David E. Benkert, Scott Carr, David Manek and Evelyn Ni.
“The success of our firm is rooted in our deep industry knowledge, breadth of experience, and the unique collaborative approach we employ to assist clients with their most complex challenges,” said Roger Carlile, chairman and CEO of Ankura. “It is critical to have a diversified skillset of talent and world-class expertise to provide our clients with the strategic counsel for which we have become known. Our professionals drive our collective success, and by continually enhancing our intellectual capital, we are able to provide even greater perspectives to clients. We are excited to announce these promotions and are confident that these experts will drive the continued growth of Ankura by upholding our mission of delivering differentiated solutions though a collaborative, innovative approach.”
Benkert will be based in Los Angeles as part of the Forensic Accounting & Healthcare Investigations division. He has more than 20 years of experience providing clients solutions to their financial accounting, regulatory, and compliance oversight issues. He has led a variety of forensic accounting and healthcare investigations, provided litigation support, expert witness testimony, and post investigation remediation guidance. Benkert has also served as a monitor and provided operational assistance to organizations in several industries. His engagements have been on behalf of boards of directors of public and non-public companies, legal departments, not-for-profit organizations, as well as government entities.
Based in Washington, D.C., Carr will be in Energy, Manufacturing, Supply Chain Management, Probabilistic, & Predictive Modeling. He holds a PhD in both Business Administration and Engineering and is an experienced expert consultant in energy economics, manufacturing, supply chain and distribution systems, and predictive and probabilistic modeling. With advanced expertise in modeling complex business and financial situations, his recent projects include expert testimony regarding oil pipeline tariff rates and capacity allocation policies, light rail vehicle manufacturing, infrastructure construction projects, and oil producing assets. Carr was formerly a professor at the UCLA Anderson School of Management where he performed research in industrial economics and taught courses on operations management and quantitative analysis at the MBA, PhD, and executive levels.
Based in Chicago, Manek currently serves as a data protection officer for his clients, specializing in providing expert consulting services to organizations involved in large, complex, data-intensive regulatory change management projects. He assists clients with compliance around emerging data privacy regulations and his team includes data management, information security, and data privacy experts. His professional experience includes designing and implementing privacy modernization programs driven by the requirements of the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) for multinational corporations. As of March 2019, his team has assisted over 40 organizations with GDPR readiness programs and is now focused on emerging privacy regulations such as the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA).
Ni will be based in Strategy & Operational Turnaround in New York City. She has more than 15 years of experience advising and leading global private and public companies through periods of transition. Her specialties include leading large-scale complex company integrations, creation of stand-alone companies resulting from divestitures/carve outs, negotiating and managing transition services agreements, developing and executing operating and strategic plans, creating and overhauling financial and reporting processes, lender and equity negotiations, and liquidity enhancement. She has advised companies in a variety of industries, including printing, manufacturing, real estate, healthcare, transportation logistics, and consumer products. Her professional experience includes serving in the following roles: chief transformation officer, chief financial officer, VP of finance, global head of financial planning & analysis, and corporate treasurer.
