Nick Leopard is the founder and CEO of Accordion, the New York financial consulting firm for private equity sponsors and their portfolio companies that he started in 2009 and has grown to more than 1,700 professionals across 11 offices (Accordion; National Law Review).
Early career in finance
He began his career at CapitalSource Finance, then worked in the financial institutions investment banking group at Bear Stearns and on the investment team at BHC Interim Funding. He holds a bachelor’s degree in finance from Saint Joseph’s University (Accordion).
Founding and growing Accordion
He founded Accordion at 29, four months after his first child was born. The firm grew organically and through data, technology, and AI acquisitions, and under him it completed two private equity-backed transactions and returned 4.7 times the money of its first institutional investor (Accordion).
In October 2026 Accordion joined Anthropic’s Claude Partner Network as a Select Services Partner. Leopard said finance is becoming “one of the most consequential proving grounds for enterprise AI” and that “every dollar we spend on AI has to show up in the numbers a buyer will underwrite” (National Law Review).
He also co-founded Maestro, a software platform for value creation in private equity-backed companies (Accordion). Our Accordion review covers the firm.
Writing and service
He is a regular Forbes contributor and a member of the Forbes Finance Council and the CNBC CEO Council. He sits on the board of the SEAL Future Foundation, a nonprofit that helps Navy SEALs build careers after military service (Accordion).