Nick Leopard

Founder & CEO Accordion

Last Reviewed: September 18, 2026

Executive Summary

Nick Leopard is the founder and Chief Executive Officer of Accordion, a financial consulting firm built specifically for private equity sponsors and their portfolio companies. He launched it in 2009, at twenty-nine, with no outside capital, and has grown it to roughly 1,600 people across eleven offices in the United States, Europe, Asia, and Canada, serving more than 200 private equity firms. The firm occupies a gap the large consultancies served badly: a sponsor-backed company’s finance function must produce reporting and execute value creation plans at a standard and pace it was never built for, and the generalist consulting model was neither specialized enough nor priced for it. Leopard also co-founded Maestro, Accordion’s software platform, in 2018.

Career Highlights

• Founded Accordion in 2009 at twenty-nine with no outside capital, growing it to roughly 1,600 people across eleven offices.
• Built a client base of more than 200 private equity firms and their portfolio companies.
• Co-founded Maestro, Accordion’s first software platform, launched in 2018, and serves as its Chairman.
• Named to The M&A Advisor’s Top 40 Under 40.
• Member of the Forbes Finance Council and the CNBC CEO Council.
• Profiled by The Wall Street Journal, Fortune, Bloomberg, CNBC, and PitchBook.

Professional Journey

Leopard took a BS in Finance at Saint Joseph’s University, where he captained the Division I lacrosse programme, and began his career on the financing side of middle-market transactions. He worked in the Financial Institutions Group of Bear, Stearns & Co., joined the investment team of BHC Interim Funding, a $200 million mezzanine debt fund, and spent time at CapitalSource Finance, where he built and maintained more than 300 relationships with private equity funds, senior lenders, and investment banks.

That last detail explains a great deal about what followed. When he founded Accordion in 2009 with no outside capital, at twenty-nine and into the teeth of a financial crisis, he already knew the buyers.

The firm was built around a specific observation about private equity. When a sponsor acquires a company, the finance function it inherits is usually adequate for the business as it was and inadequate for what is now required: faster close cycles, investor-grade reporting, integration of acquisitions, and execution against a value creation plan on a defined timeline. Traditional consultancies could advise on this; what sponsors actually needed was operators who would work inside the portfolio company’s finance office and do it. Accordion positioned itself as exactly that — a firm working only for private equity and only in the CFO’s function.

That focus supported growth to roughly 1,600 people across eleven offices and more than 200 private equity firm clients. In 2018 Leopard launched Maestro, Accordion’s first software platform, addressing the same market in product form: giving sponsors a system for defining, tracking, and executing value creation plans across a portfolio rather than managing them in spreadsheets. He serves as its Chairman alongside running Accordion, writes regularly on private equity and AI-enabled finance, and has been profiled by The Wall Street Journal, Fortune, Bloomberg, and CNBC.

Education

Saint Joseph’s University

BS, Finance