Our team are established business professionals with extensive experience. Impact's team have built solid careers as leaders, executives, and entrepreneurs.

Mark A. Froehlich | principal

Mark served on the board of directors of Secureworks, Inc., and later served as an observer for the company until December 2005. He also served on the board of directors of CapitalSouth Bank.

Mark is an operating partner at Star Mountain Capital, a private equity and mezzanine fund based in New York, NY. Star Mountain was recently honored by Fund Intelligence as the top performing investment fund under $1 billion.

Mark Currently serves on the board, and as Co-Chair for the Integrated Systems Center at the University of Alabama Birmingham's School of Engineering. He is also the Financial Advisor to the Society of Design & Process Science, a global organization that improves engineering via the collaboration and convergence of engineers and engineering professors from all engineering disciplines.

Mark earned a Masters in Private and Public Management from Birmingham Southern College, and has a Bachelors of Science from the University of Alabama.

He has been a featured speaker to the Conference Board in Chicago and New York on the subject of managing for value.

He authored the section of the book "Regulations and Compliance," in CAIA Level II: Advanced Core Topics in Alternative Investments, 3rd edition, regarding the new AIFMD regulations for alternative fund managers in the European Union. His section is also to be published in a second book, "Advanced Topics in Alternative Investments", Editors Hossein Kazemi, Keith Black and Don Chambers.

Mark has served on many civic boards. He served on the board of the Alabama School of Fine Arts Foundation for twenty years.  He has served on the board of Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, as well as many others.

Mark currently serves on the board of The International Center, and served as its President from 2012 until 2014. 

Ed Buker | Partner

email: ed@impactpartnersglobal.com  | phone: 205-410-8988

Ed Buker has extensive business leadership experience. Ed has an engineering degree and an MBA. Ed had bottom line responsibility for one of United Technologies' automotive divisions. Ed successfully sold the division when United Technologies decided to exit that business.

In every role Ed has served, he has maximized return while minimizing risk. Ed is a strong believer in using data to assess operational risk and exposure. His experience creates effective measures to create operational excellence with minimal risk.

He has been in senior executive positions with Honda in Marysville, Ohio, and BMW in South Carolina and Munich. Ed headed up Honda's motorcycle plant, and later, promoted to heading Honda's car plant. His challenge at the car plant was to double production without any disruption to quality and output of existing production. Ed achieved such. Ed has experience in turnaround advice for companies in bankruptcy. Before joining Impact, Ed was the CEO of Tecumseh, a manufacturer of compressors and heat pumps where he was responsible for the stock price increasing by approximately 500% within eighteen months. 

Bob Jacobus | Operating Partner

email: bob@impactpartnersglobal.com  | phone: 205-639-8618

Bob’s professional background encompasses a breadth and depth of successful operational, financial, technical, and leadership experience.  Bob has led teams and entire businesses, working both in the U.S. and abroad.  After earning a mechanical engineering degree from the University of Colorado, Bob began his career in the biomedical industry with COBE Laboratories (later Gambro AB) for 8 years, where his responsibilities included R&D, manufacturing, and management responsibilities.

After completing MBA and Masters in Finance studies at University of Denver and University of Alabama, respectively, Bob was recruited to Wall Street by RBS Greenwich Capital, devising and executing complex structured finance transactions early in the development of securitization.  After returning to the Southeast, deal structuring and capital raising assignments followed at Porter White, Morgan Keegan, FTN Capital Markets, and most recently, with Brookline Investments.  Bob’s clients have included leading companies in biotech, insurance, and tech startup sectors.

For the past 15 years, Bob has also founded and invested in early stage companies, and guided founders in company development in the logistics, banking, private transit, food tech, GIS, and SaaS sectors.

In addition to professional endeavors, Bob has served high performing organizations in the non-profit sector.  Bob was a founding Board Member of Collegiate School of Memphis, a private Christian school serving one of the city’s most impoverished areas.   Bob and his family also served as economic development and church planting missionaries in Honduras for BMDMI.  Currently, Bob serves on the Board of Smile-A-Mile, an organization serving the needs of pediatric cancer patients and their families throughout Alabama.

Ed McQuigg

Ed McQuigg has enjoyed an exceptional career as a senior executive in the areas of marketing and strategic planning. Ed's has a degree in Chemical Engineering and a degree in Operations Research. 

Ed spent fifteen years at Philip Morris where he led their U.S. sales function, responsible for $7 billion in sales plus $100 million in merchandising sales. 

While at Golden Capital, he was part of a three-person leadership team that successfully resolved a $2 billion Chapter 11 bankruptcy without losing any key accounts or suppliers.

At Rothmans International, a large multi-national tobacco company, he held various roles including marketing and sales leadership in for the Pacific Region, based in Australia. He later served as Director of Brand Development, and Director Strategic Planning & Marketing Development, where he reported directly to the CEO. As Director of Strategic Planning & Marketing Development, Ed's responsibilities were global. 

Ed was instrumental in the sale of Rothmans Tobacco to British American Tobacco, and therein altering the world’s tobacco industry. Ed was then asked to take on the role of Group Vice President of marketing for Richmont International. Richmont International is one of the three largest luxury brand holding companies in the world. Richemont  owns nineteen brands including Cartier, Dunhill, A. Lange & Sohne, Montblanc, Van Cleff & Arpels, Purdey shotguns, Peter Millar and others. Many of Richmont's watch companies include watches that are priced in excess of $100,000. Ed architected Richemont's marketing strategies in China and India. 

LARRON C. HARPER 

Larry Harper has enjoyed a very successful business track record spanning over thirty years.  Larry has held roles in senior management at one of the largest utilities in the world. Larry offers a global perspective and broad experience in strategies being implemented by many entities in their efforts to meet the requirements of a changing society and marketplace.  He has a MBA, a graduate degree in Finance and bachelor’s degree in Accounting.

Larry served as a Management Board Member and Chief Financial Officer at Eskom in South Africa, which was then among the largest electric utilities in the world. He was a key member of the leadership team that rescued the company from financial ruin. They then re-positioned the organization as a business oriented and customer focused utility.  His strategy included the development and implementation of drastic changes, including building a stronger financial discipline, improving all business processes, and management talent. Larry made sure that all division managers, communicated aggressively with internal and external stakeholder groups, and negotiated attractive and appropriate financing transactions with major financial institutions around the world.

As Chief Financial Officer, Larry was responsible for managing a five billion dollar foreign exchange portfolio, and thus has experience with sophisticated hedging strategies.

Larry served as a Senior Manager with Ernst & Young’s energy consulting division in Washington, D.C. Larry moved to Birmingham in 1988 to start his own consulting practice. He has conducted many management development and consulting assignments for companies worldwide.

In addition to being part of the team at Impact, Larry serves as an Adjunct Professor in the MBA program at the Brock School of Business at Samford University. For a number of years, he served as the head of the business school's graduate programs.

Larry offers a global and broad perspective and experience in strategies being implemented by entities in their efforts to meet the requirements of a changing society and marketplace.