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NOVO 1 ELECTS TWO BOARD MEMBERS WITH HEALTHCARE SERVICES BACKGROUNDS
Viegas, Udow-Phillips Bring Experience from Blue Cross, University of Michigan Healthcare, More
Birmingham, Michigan (February 12, 2010) Marianne Udow-Phillips and Leslie A. Viegas have been elected to the operating board of directors of Ft. Worth, Tex.-based NOVO 1, Inc., the company announced today.
NOVO 1, one of the nation's leading inbound telephone customer care and service businesses, is a portfolio company in the Michigan Opportunities Fund, managed by Birmingham, Mich.-based Glencoe Capital.
"Leslie Viegas and Marianne Udow-Phillips each bring unparalleled industry experience as well as deep operational expertise to NOVO 1," said David Evans, Chairman of the Michigan-focused investment fund. "All of us at the Michigan Opportunities Fund as well as the management team welcomes Mr. Viegas and Ms. Udow-Phillips's participation in guiding NOVO 1's future growth."
NOVO 1 is a leading provider of inbound and outbound customer interaction solutions to clients in several industries. With revenues of $43 million in 2008, the company ranked as the 25th-largest inbound services provider in the domestic US in 2008, according to Customer Inter@ction Solutions magazine.
NOVO 1 has five contact centers throughout the US, including in Texas, Montana, and Wisconsin. The company has more than 400 corporate clients and employs more than 1,100 customer-care specialists and specializes in the healthcare, service dispatch, and transportation and logistics vertical markets. Under Glencoe's ownership, NOVO 1 plans to open a customer care and contact center in western Michigan in early 2010 that will employ more than 300 personnel over the next several years.
Marianne Udow-Phillips is director of the Center for Healthcare Research & Transformation, a nonprofit partnership of the University of Michigan and Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan (BCBSM) with the mission to promote evidence-based care delivery, improve population health, and expand access to care. Previously, she was appointed as director of Michigan's Department of Human Services by Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm, serving from 2004 to 2007. Before that, Udow-Phillips served in a succession of leadership roles in a twenty-year career at BCBSM, most recently as senior vice president of health care products and provider services. She also served as senior vice president and vice president of plans and operations for Mercy Alternative and Care Choices.
Udow-Phillips earned her Master's in Health Services Administration from the University of Michigan School of Public Health. Current board memberships include the Early Childhood Investment Corporation, the United Auto Workers' Voluntary Employee Beneficiary Association, the Michigan State Housing and Development Authority, the School of Public Health Dean's Advisory Committee, and Freedom from Hunger. She has received numerous awards and recognitions, including the Anti-Defamation League's Women of Achievement Award, Crain's Detroit Business's Top 100 Most Influential Women in 2002 and 2007, and many others, including most recently the 2008 Michigan's Children's Heroes Award.
Leslie A. Viegas brings to Novo 1 extensive business and industry experience earned in an exemplary 37-year career in health insurance, property and casualty insurance, auto travel services, technology and management consulting. Most recently, until his retirement in 2008, Viegas was executive vice president of operations at BCBSM, where he served in a succession of positions of increasing responsibility during seventeen years with this $24 billion health care insurance company that insures over 4.3 million people in Michigan. His responsibilities during this period included operations, automotive and national business, federal business, marketing/product development, business intelligence and information technology.
Prior to joining BCBSM, Viegas was from 1984 to 1990 a Vice President with AAA Michigan in Dearborn, where his responsibilities included customer servicing, information technology, emergency road service and insurance processing. In addition, he was the Corporate Secretary of the organization. Before that, he was a partner in the management consulting division at Arthur Young & Co., in Detroit. Early in his career, he was Executive Vice President and COO at Cleveland-based CBM, Inc., a national software services firm.
Viegas received his M.S. in industrial engineering at West Virginia University and his B.S. in mechanical engineering at Poona University in India, and he is a Certified Management Consultant. Past board memberships include at Atlanta, Ga.-based Nasco LLC, where he served as chairman; the Consortium of Health Plans, Inc., Columbia, Md., where he served as chairman of the finance committee; and Blue Health Intelligence of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association, in Chicago. Viegas is also a former board member for nonprofit Detroit Public Television.
Glencoe Capital's Michigan Opportunities Fund represents a groundbreaking partnership between the public and private sectors, leveraging equity capital to make lead-sponsored acquisitions and growth equity investments in companies in the State of Michigan or in businesses that want to expand operations into the State. The Fund invests in growing companies that can generate attractive returns to investors while promoting business growth and fostering job creation that together help improve the economic vitality of the State of Michigan. The Fund completed three portfolio investments in 2009 and closed one new investment in January 2010.
About Glencoe Capital
Founded in 1993, Glencoe Capital is a private equity firm focused on lead-sponsored acquisitions and growth equity investments in lower middle-market companies. Glencoe Capital and its affiliates manage a number of private equity funds, including the Michigan Opportunities Fund and Glencoe Capital Partners III, L.P. The firm has over $1 billion under management.
For more information, contact:
or
Clovis, Inc.
(312) 346-1700
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