Strategic, Operational, Financial and Industry Expertise


Impetus Capital maintains financial, operational and industry expertise within our targeted sectors.


Patrick Persons

Mr. Persons, founder and President of Impetus Capital, is an experienced executive within the middle market sector. His experiences include business growth, increasing company value combined with strong operatational and captial market expertise. He has successfully led business integrations of acquired companies while enhancing sales and marketing, operational, financial and back-office efficiencies. In addition, he is skilled in mearger and acquisitions, balance sheet restructuring, turnaround management, debtor representation and negotiation.

After starting his career at Coopers & Lybrand, Mr. Persons was one of four principle operators a $60 million foundry operation where he gained considerable operational and turnaound experience. From there, he led and managed a successful start-up within the business service sector. Most recently, he was the CEO of large service organization with over 1,000 employees accross 12 domestic markets.

Mr. Persons has a B.B.A. degree in accounting from the University of Texas in Austin.


Debbie Wildrick

Ms. Wildrick is a sales, marketing, and operations executive and channel strategy specialist in the consumer packaged goods industry with 30+ years' experience. She has had leadership roles at Fortune 500 companies including 7-Eleven, Inc. and Tropicana North America (Pepsico). In addition, her experience includes a strong background in building start-up brands including her own consulting business, the CEO of BAZI®, Inc. a public company, FRS Healthy Energy and Sundance Juice Sparklers, a brand which she helped grow to 100 million dollars in the early 1990's. She has also worked with leading companies in the industry to include both retailers, distributors, and manufacturers. They include The McLane Company, Wal-mart, Target, GNC, Rite Aid, Walgreens, Safeway, Coca-Cola, Nestle Waters and many others.

Ms. Wildrick has served as an Executive Committee Chair of the Network of Executive Women for more over eight years. She is also a regular panelist, speaker and columnist. She is a graduate of the University of Texas at Dallas and the Cornell Food Executive Program.


John (Jack) Gallagher

Mr. Gallagher has over 35 years of operating experience within the healthcare industry. As President and Chief Executive Officer of North Shore LIJ Healthcare System, he transformed North Shore into the sixth largest non-profit health system in the nation, with 14 hospitals, several affiliates, 36,000 employees and $3.2 billion in revenue.

Subsequent to North Shore, Mr. Gallagher was the Chief Executive Officer of Stony Brook University Hospital. In 2002, he was also asked to serve as Deputy Executive of Nassau County to oversee health and human services. In addition, Mr. Gallagher has served on boards of several health and health-related technology companies, including Perot Systems, Netsmart Technologies and American Medical Alert. Mr. Gallagher is a graduate of Holy Cross College and Yale University School of Public Health.