RUN YOUR COMPANY LIKE IT'S FOR SALE TOMORROW
Even if you never sell.
Senior advisory for founders, CEOs, and boards of privately held and PE-backed companies.
MEET STEPHANIE
I'm Stephanie Batista — founder of Batista Jackson Advisory Services and a former CFO with 25+ years guiding founders, executives, and boards through growth, complexity, and transition.
I serve on the boards of Daniels Manufacturing and Deltran (Battery Tender).
I partner with privately held and PE-backed companies at the moments that matter most.
Client Focus
I am most helpful to companies that have reached a level of scale where complexity has begun to outpace structure. Typically:
- Founder-led, family-owned, or private-equity-backed companies
- $30M–$150M in revenue
- Growth, governance, or exit considerations ahead
Leaders reach out when they recognize some version of the following:
- The company has outgrown how decisions have traditionally been made
- Everyone is working hard, but progress feels harder than it should
- Strategy exists, but execution doesn’t consistently reinforce it
- Leadership alignment takes more energy than it used to
- Board expectations or exit considerations are becoming more real
- The CEO is carrying too much context personally
Expertise
I help leadership teams clarify direction and put structure around how the company is run — so decisions, priorities, and execution consistently reinforce where the business is going.
My role is senior and advisory in nature. I focus on judgment, alignment, and governance rather than day-to-day operations or functional execution.
SERVICES
Strategic Leadership
I work with leaders to clarify direction, surface real tradeoffs, and stay aligned as the company grows and evolves.
Effective Governance
I help leadership teams establish a cadence for decision-making, accountability, and review so the business moves from reactive to intentional.
Exit & Transaction Readiness
I support companies as they prepare for an eventual transaction — aligning strategy, metrics, governance, and leadership well before a process begins.
Engagement Process
- Fixed-fee advisory engagement
- Defined scope and cadence
- Senior-level review and judgment
- Not day-to-day operational management
- Additional work scoped as needed
WHat CLIENTS SAY
Partnering with Batista Jackson Advisory Services was a turning point for our company. Stephanie brought a rare combination of strategic judgment and financial insight that helped us navigate a critical transition with clarity and confidence. She worked closely with leadership to strengthen how we understood and communicated our financial story, align priorities, and prepare the organization for increased scrutiny.
Rather than simply managing a transaction, she helped us run the business intentionally through the process — shaping the narrative for investors, identifying risks early, and ensuring leadership was aligned long before we entered the market. As a result, we were well-positioned and ultimately completed a successful sale to a top-tier private equity firm.
Her impact on SEARCH during this pivotal period cannot be overstated.
— Anne Stokes, President, SEARCH
SELECTED EXPERIENCE
Highlighted below are some of my most recent engagements:
- Advised a founder through a multi-year preparation and successful sale of a ~$35M business
- Served as senior financial and strategic advisor to a $40M+ consumer products company navigating growth, governance, and board alignment
- Supported leadership teams and boards in clarifying strategy, establishing governance cadence, and shaping board-level financial narrative
- Trusted advisor during periods of organizational transition, increased complexity, and exit readiness
- Board Director, Daniels Manufacturing Corporation — aerospace and defense precision-tooling manufacturer (AS9100 / ISO 9001; DoD QPL supplier)
- Board Director, Deltran (Battery Tender) — global manufacturer of power-management products, following a five-year strategic engagement
POINT OF VIEW
Every company should be run as if it's for sale tomorrow — even the ones that will never sell.
It's my version of one of Stephen Covey's habits: begin with the end in mind. I've found nothing focuses and aligns an organization faster. And for a business, the end always comes back to one question, even when no one is saying it out loud: how do we prepare for an exit?
That isn't always what a founder wants to hear. Many intend to hold for decades, or to pass the company to the next generation. That's fine — the point isn't to sell. The point is that running the business as if you might is a discipline. It forces the structure, clarity, and accountability that every company needs and most never build.
Because the highest value belongs to the company built for the cleanest handoff — the one that doesn't depend on any single person to function, where strategy is legible and the numbers tell a true story. A company you could hand off tomorrow is, by definition, a company that's well run today.
So my goal in every engagement is the same: prepare this company for its highest valuation. And in getting it ready to sell, it becomes the best-managed, best-led, and most profitable version of itself — whether or not it's ever sold.
That perspective is grounded in 25+ years of doing the work. As SVP of Finance & CFO at Tavistock Group's $1B+ family-office portfolio, I helped execute $200M+ in private placements and $200M+ in real estate sales and negotiated a $200M joint-venture restructuring. Earlier, I led internal audit and enterprise risk for CNL Hotels & Resorts — a public REIT — through Sarbanes-Oxley, after beginning my career in audit at KPMG. Since 2020, through Batista Jackson Advisory Services, I've worked alongside founders, CEOs, and boards through growth, transition, and exit.
Connect with me on LinkedIn → https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephanie-batistajackson/
Contact
Let's Connect
If you’re navigating a meaningful transition and want senior level judgment to help you think clearly about what’s next, let’s talk.
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