The team that's smart enough to listen.
Ali Tabibian
Partner, San Francisco
Ali has 30 years of experience in finance. He founded GTK, a firm focused mainly on corporate advisory. Ali’s and GTK’s clients span private growth companies to large private equity firms and corporations such as Bain Capital (buy-side M&A), Symantec (JV divestiture to Huawei), Qualcomm (e-wallet divestiture), CSAA Insurance (investments), Cerberus and IFM Advisors (private equity firms). While GTK’s transactions span many sectors, the convergence of software and hardware in innovative ways, such as the Internet of Things, autonomous vehicles and robotics, are an area of particular expertise.
Earlier in his career, Ali’s employers included Morgan Stanley’s and Merrill Lynch’s investment banking groups in the Bay Area, where he focused on technology and media transactions. Ali started his career with The First Boston Corporation (Credit Suisse) in New York. During those seven years, he was an M&A specialist with broad industry coverage.
Ali has a B.S. and an M.S. in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University. He was awarded both degrees in four years and is a member of the Tau Beta Pi engineering honor society.
James S. Turo
Partner, Los Angeles
Jay Turo is focused on the entrepreneurial marketplace. In his 15 years advising and investing in companies,
Jay has advised dozens of emerging, middle market, and corporate clients regarding their growth and capital formation strategies. His corporate clients have included Deutsche Bank, McKesson, Infospace, Samsung, Porsche, & Paramount Pictures.
He has worked with a wide host of emerging companies including Accelerant, C8 Medisensors, Dakim, DCIP,
Free Conference, Fresh Games, Green Medical, Integreon, L3D3, Mobeze, MyPublicInfo, Nolatek, Ometric, Pocketsonics, Precision Time, Raise Capital, Recoup IT, Research Scientists, Sandel Medical, Spring Medical, Telverse, Thrombovision, XCOM Wireless, and Xorbent, among others.
Jay is an active angel investor and speaker and writer regarding private equity, entrepreneurship, and technology.
Jay has an MBA from the Anderson School of Management at UCLA and earned a Bachelor's degree with Distinction and with Departmental Honors from Stanford University.
David Young
Partner, London
David, based in London, works with GTK Partners on cross-border mandates. David spent many years as an M&A professional with some of the best and most active firms in Europe, including Wasserstein Perella, Merrill Lynch (where he was head of European Healthcare M&A), JPMorgan, (as head of sell-side M&A for Europe). Before his time in London, David work for Goldman Sachs in New York, and prior to that was a consultant at Booz Allen and Bain & Company. In addition, David is the founder of Shields Corporate Finance, a firm devoted to maximizing valuation outcomes for growth companies.
David graduated from Balliol College, Oxford University, with a first in philosophy and theology, and a doctorate in political philosophy. He is fluent in German, French, and Italian.
Joseph Ziad Sarkis
Senior Advisor, San Francisco
Ziad has more than two decades of entrepreneurial and investing experience, including co-founding investment firm Great Trek Ventures with Ali Tabibian.
Prior to co-founding Great Trek Ventures, Ziad was a Founding Partner and a main shareholder of PAI Partners, the leading European private equity firm created through the buyout of the merchant banking business of BNP Paribas. During Ziad’s 10 years at PAI, the firm became one of the best-performing and largest European LBO sponsors, with assets under management in excess of €9 billion (equity value).
Before PAI, Ziad was a Founding Partner and Board Member of the Mitchell Madison Group (MMG), one of the most successful management consulting startups of the 1990s. MMG, which grew to ~650 consultants deployed across 16 offices worldwide, was sold in 1999 to USWeb for $300 million.
Ziad has a keen interest in charitable organizations. He served from 2011 to 2013 with the Geneva-based International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, as a Special Advisor to the Under Secretary General, Humanitarian Values and Diplomacy.
Ziad is a graduate of Stanford University, with a Masters degree in Industrial Engineering & Management, and Bachelors degrees in Anthropology, Economics and Mathematical & Computational Science. He also holds a doctorate in economics from Oxford University.