Dena Frith Moore was one of the earliest employees at Harris Williams and helped grow the investment bank to seven offices and more than two hundred employees over the firm’s first two decades. Dena started her career as a junior M&A investment banker and became a client-facing Managing Director before she stepped into the role of COO. In this leadership role, she helped steer the growth of the firm and establish the infrastructure needed to recruit, cultivate, and retain top talent. She left Harris Williams in 2011 to get more time with her family while her children were young, and she spent the next 10+ years serving as an advisor and consultant to numerous businesses and non-profit organizations. In late 2022, Dena returned to the finance world and currently serves as the Chief Operating Officer and Chief Compliance Officer for CAP91 Partners, a private equity investment firm in Richmond, Virginia.

We sat down with Dena to learn from the breadth and depth of her experience in M&A.

Deal Guide: What did you learn about scaling M&A talent that you do not think you would have understood had you not stepped into the COO role of a growing investment bank?

Dena: The importance of clarity in communication to employees at all levels became crystal clear to me once I took on the COO role. In that role, I interacted with lots of employees at all levels every day, and the decisions I made directly impacted them in their work lives. It can be easy for senior bankers to believe that their teammates understand via osmosis the requirements for promotion or the strategic direction of the firm or how to navigate the firm’s culture, but that just isn’t true. Taking the time to communicate clearly and often the strategic decisions that the senior team was making and why, the expectations the firm had for each role and how each was important to the whole, and the opportunities for growth and development for each individual enabled those talented employees to believe in the direction of the firm and to see their personal pathways more clearly. Also having a clear firm culture around which people could coalesce was important. Everyone wants to feel like they are part of something bigger than themselves, and if they believe they can impact an organization directly, they will work hard. Plus, as COO, it became super clear just how costly attrition could be, so investing in training, culture-building work, and talent building had a very tangible payback.

Deal Guide: The Vice President role on a deal team is critical in creating operating leverage. It is a big step for VPs to go from being a doer at the associate ranks to more of the deal’s quarterback at the VP level. What were the key traits you looked for when promoting or hiring VPs, or alternatively, what were the critical factors for someone making this transition successfully?

Dena: VPs needed to have proven their facility with the Associate role before they could credibly be promoted. Very little would impact team morale more negatively than having a VP giving direction to the junior team without really understanding what he/she was asking, how long something should take, and/or what hurdles were going to be involved in the delivery of the request. Additionally, a strong organizational skillset and an ability to “manage up” (which is really a lot about looking ahead and anticipating the needs of the senior team and the client prior to them being explicitly requested) were hallmarks of someone who would be a good VP. Lastly, we wanted to believe that our VPs had the ability to move from subject matter expert to trusted advisor in the eye of the client; this pivot required that the individual have a willingness to confidently build relationships that went beyond the Xs and Os of the deal.

Deal Guide: How can M&A organizations help in cultivating those skills in the VP ranks?

Dena: Promoting from within the Associate ranks can allow firms to have confidence in the blocking and tackling skills. For seasoned Associates, staffing them with more seasoned VPs and asking them to bridge up and take on some of the VP-level tasks (running calls, leading meetings, speaking first when team strategy discussions are happening) is a great way to prepare for the next level.

Deal Guide: What did you wish you knew earlier in your career?  How would learning this earlier have benefited you?

Dena: I wish I had understood more clearly the power of direct and thoughtful performance feedback, especially when given in close proximity to the event/effort. As a younger manager, I was not overly comfortable giving feedback—especially tough feedback. I could find any number of ways to excuse lackluster performance or to find myself too busy for the feedback meetings. I failed to understand the value of offering positive feedback as a motivational tool, as well as leveling with people about their opportunities for further development early in their tenure. I see now that I could have helped people excel more quickly and/or course correct had I sat down with them sooner to provide my observations before racing on to the next deal.

Deal Guide: Sometimes we all need to touch the hot stove to learn for ourselves it is not a good idea.  Are there any lessons you have learned the hard way or that you think is better to learn the hard way?

Dena: Related to the above, I have come to believe that it is the manager who has failed—not the employee—if an employee is ever surprised by a sub-par performance review or is unaware of where their true potential in a firm lies. These feedback conversations should be happening all along and often, to enable course correction as well as to help the employee realize their unique strengths and how those can drive their career forward. Investment banking is not for everyone for any of a myriad of reasons. And that’s okay. Finding that out and having honest conversations about performance, effort, talents, or desire gaps sooner versus later is better for the employer and much better for the individual.

Deal Guide: Everywhere you look there seems to be a podcast or a business journal article about the importance of mentors in one’s career.  What do you wish junior professionals knew about finding and establishing a successful mentorship? 

Dena: Mentorship cannot be forced; I believe that this is why formal programs where people are assigned to each other are rarely uniformly successful. There are people who have a natural gift of mentoring, and there are other very talented people who simply aren’t wired to be good mentors. They might be great investment bankers or leaders but perhaps are not well equipped for the one-on-one relationship building that mentorship requires. I would encourage junior professionals to spend their first 6-12 months in a firm getting to know the senior people around them and asking themselves questions like:  Whose interpersonal and management style feels like one you would like to emulate? Who is approachable and patient? Who has shown an interest in you? Whose career embodies the aspects that matter to you (work-life balance, running a practice area, being a subject matter expert, building great client relationships, speaking publicly at conferences, spending time recruiting and training, etc.)? If someone stands out, the junior person can approach them with a thoughtful request of what mentoring could look like (and it doesn’t have to be labelled as such…it can just be “I’d like to see if we could find a little time each month where I can pick your brain about [fill-in-the-blank] because I think you have it figured out.”). The mentor and the mentee have to co-create the relationship because it has to work for both from a time and energy perspective.  And if the senior person says they cannot do it, the junior person should not feel that they have failed. Just by asking, they have gotten themselves more firmly on that senior person’s radar. No might mean “not now” or “not in this exact way” but good things can come out of being willing to ask. And then you can continue the search for the right person.

Deal Guide: How were you shaped by the mentorship you received in your career?

Dena: This is an interesting question because I had no female mentors whatsoever in my investment banking career. But I did have a number of male colleagues whose opinions and skillsets I valued greatly and who were very generous in their gifts of time to make me a better banker and a better decision maker. I learned a lot from them and adapted their styles and approaches so that they worked authentically for me. The truth is that I had to wrestle with things that my male colleagues did not (giving birth!), and I sort of had to figure out how to handle those things myself. I would have benefitted immensely from a senior woman’s wisdom and encouragement. As a result, I try to make myself available for a conversation whenever a younger female investment banker reaches out because there just aren’t enough of us who made it work for a full career!

Deal Guide: What skills do you think are undervalued by people earlier in their careers?

Dena: People skills and the ability to contribute to firm culture are undervalued by younger finance professionals. Junior bankers are often trying very hard to prove their analytical competence, their stamina, their ability to master and retain facts. And yes…these are all important. But if you look at the bankers who end up being the leaders of their firms after many years of moving through the ranks, it is more often than not those individuals who have taken the time to get to know others, whose colleagues trust them, who are not only competent but are also enjoyable to be around, whose decisions take others’ situations into consideration, and who can use their heads AND their hearts. It’s never too early to practice being a good human along with being a sharp finance pro.

Deal Guide: What skills separate a good M&A advisor from a great one?

Dena: Being able to move from being viewed by clients as a hired gun/subject matter expert to truly being perceived as a friend and trusted advisor (in addition to being a very competent M&A banker) should be every banker’s goal.

Deal Guide: We covered a lot of ground here, but perhaps we did not cover everything that is top of mind for you?  Are there any other related topics or questions you would like to cover?

Dena: Back to being a woman in a male-dominated industry:  it took me a long time to realize that my career and my life outside work were not going to look and feel the same as they did for my male colleagues and to be okay with that. I had to architect my career in a way that worked for me and my family, which is why I took a 10-year time-out to get my kids launched and mostly through college before returning to another leadership role. There were lots of trade-offs and arrangements that my husband and I had to make throughout the past 35 years that were unique to our situation, but being willing to make them enabled me to have a satisfying and lengthy career. Women should not be afraid to admit that certain things that work for their male colleagues may need to be tweaked for them to be their best selves in all parts of their lives.