Shawn is a Managing Director with Lazear, leading the Northeast Ohio/Cleveland market while extending his expertise to business owners nationwide. He helps middle-market companies explore ownership transition options, with a particular focus on ESOP transactions, guiding owners to structure deals that create value, preserve culture, and empower employees.

A Cleveland-area native, Shawn brings over 30 years of corporate finance, investing, operations, and advisory experience to Lazear. On the principal side, he has spent more than 15 years sourcing, evaluating, and managing middle-market private equity investments with The Edgewater Funds (Chicago), South Franklin Street Partners, and Cyprium Partners (fka Key Principal Partners). Several of these investments were in ESOP companies, where he saw firsthand the compelling “win-win-win” benefits of ESOP transactions.

On the investment banking and advisory side, Shawn has worked with founders, families, and middle-market companies for more than 15 years, helping them navigate capital raises, restructurings, sales, and mergers. It was in this arena that he was first introduced to ESOP transactions, working with Carleton, McCreary, Holmes & Co. (nka Key Capital Markets) and Loughlin-Meghji & Company.

Shawn also gained hands-on operating experience as Senior Vice President of Operations and Administration at Big Rock Sports, a North Carolina-based distributor of hunting, fishing, camping, and marine products. He oversaw six warehouses totaling over 500,000 square feet, managed 300 associates, and supervised 110,000 SKUs, ensuring operational efficiency across the company.

He earned his B.S., cum laude, from the undergraduate division of the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, where he was a member of the undefeated freshman football team, and his M.B.A., with honors, from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.

What do you think is unique about Lazear’s approach to working with clients?

Our entire focus is on doing what’s best for our client and finding that ‘right answer’ for them. Certainly, we have a nationally-renown ESOP practice and we do outstanding work in the ESOP space, but we aren’t an “ESOP hammer,” where every company and client should be an ESOP. Sometimes, the better choice for the client is to sell to PE or a strategic, which is fine by us. We do both traditional 3rd-party sales as well as ESOPs, so we are agnostic in terms of which path our clients ultimately choose. We want to present the tradeoffs between each choice and find what works best for our clients. That singular focus of doing what’s best for the client and then delivering outstanding results is what sets us apart.