Corporate Development Associate

In the Corporate Development Associate role, on the highly visible Corporate Development team, you will work as part of a project team and partner with senior leaders to identify, develop, evaluate, prioritize, and deliver strategic transactions across the organization, as well as solve complex problems and develop the long-range plans for Guardian. The group is responsible for working with the businesses to develop inorganic strategic theses, and identify, source, assess, develop, and implement M&A, venture and other enterprise and business partnerships, as well as manage and optimize these transactions and relationships.

You will have the opportunity to work on a range of high-priority projects spanning across strategy, M&A transactions, venture capital, and strategic execution, with a focus on supporting transaction, venture capital and other partnership opportunities.

• Venture, partnership, and M&A transactions: Manage the execution of venture, acquisition, disposition, and partnership transactions on behalf of Guardian, including industry research, profiling of targets, assessment of specific opportunities, supporting due diligence, performing financial analysis/evaluation, and preparing PowerPoint decks for internal executives. Emphasis will be on transaction support of a variety of M&A, venture capital and other partnership efforts, including identifying, investing, and operationalizing early-stage technology companies with strategic relevance to Guardian’s businesses.  Collaborate with internal and external stakeholders to support transactions and post-closing deal integration. Oversee proof-of-concept initiatives with portfolio companies and help scale those initiatives working directly with various businesses to maximize impact.
• Innovation / new initiative incubation: In collaboration with business areas, assess and develop business cases for new ideas driving innovation, partnerships, and other areas of investment outside of BAU and incubate initial development and execution of innovation initiatives.
• Execution of cross-cutting strategic initiatives: Identify, frame and implement specific cross-cutting strategic initiatives that are critical to the success of Guardian’s overall strategy. Support in managing the business performance of executed initiatives e.g. implement and management processes to monitor business performance, develop and monitor metrics and goals for business areas aligned with strategic plan, and support decision framework to allocate and re-prioritize resources as required to achieve vision & strategy.

To successfully deliver the projects and/or workstreams, you will:

• Research, identify, and source new deal flow based on investment mandates.
• Work collaboratively and cross-functionally to identify and analyze possible acquisitions and divestitures to drive recommendations and to project financial impact on the company's portfolio and capabilities, including drafting comprehensive investment memorandums to recommend transactions and concise documents and communications for senior management.
• Provide support to deal origination efforts, including market research, competitive analysis, and financial modeling, including modeling pro forma scenarios associated with potential acquisitions and divestitures, including cash flow and return analysis.
• Participate in the reporting of current and/or prospective strategic investments, including but not limited to, meeting with management teams and industry experts to source new ideas and developing a detailed understanding of early-stage company financial performance (e.g., navigating financial documents, assessing early trends, determining product/market fit, analyzing cash flows, etc.).
• Engage with partners across the organization including business, finance, legal, tax and accounting teams to ensure transaction opportunity assessments and pre-close efforts are comprehensive and align to transaction standard methodologies.

You are

• Proactive, resourceful, impact oriented, and an excellent problem solver who can identify issues and perform analysis.
• Strong interpersonal skills, maturity, and judgment with the ability to navigate relationships up and down the organization.
• An effective communicator (both oral and written) and work well in cross-functional teams.
• A self-starter who can work independently and prioritize across multiple tasks.
• Organized with strong attention to detail and able to coordinate and lead complex workstreams.
• Passionate about innovation in financial services, insurance, and / or technology.

You have

• Bachelor’s Degree from a top institution with strong academic performance and demonstrated leadership ability required. MBA preferred.
• 5 + years’ experience working in M&A, venture capital,