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TRANSACTIONS PROVIDUS CAPITAL PARTNERS ANNOUNCES GROWTH PARTNERSHIP WITH WOLD ARCHITECTS & ENGINEERS Providus Capital Partners, a growth-oriented equity partner for the architecture and engineering industry, announced that it has partnered with Wold Architects & Engineers, a leading architecture and engineering firm. The financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed. Founded in 1968 and headquartered in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Wold offers a range of architecture, advisory, engineering, planning, and interior design services to a diverse group of institutional clients in the education, government and healthcare markets. Today, Wold has over 350 highly skilled team members across offices in Colorado, Illinois, Minnesota, and Tennessee. This partnership enables the Wold team to accelerate the execution of their
growth strategy, while creating additional opportunities for team members and clients. “Providus is the ideal partner for Wold as we embark on our next phase of growth,” said Vaughn Dierks, CEO of Wold, who will continue to lead the company. “Their proven success in collaborating with management teams and building highly successful, people-first businesses made this an easy decision for us. We look forward to working together to expand our service capabilities, enter new markets, and create opportunities for our team to better serve our clients and make a difference in the communities we serve.” “We are excited to partner with the talented team at Wold” said Norm Scherr, Partner at Providus. “Wold is a trusted long-term partner with deeply embedded client relationships and clear whitespace for expansion. The firm’s
planning-first model and exposure to stable, publicly funded sectors coupled with geographic and sector tailwinds create a compelling growth story. We look forward to building upon the team’s impressive growth trajectory with additional investments in organic and acquisition initiatives.” Wold is actively seeking to acquire architecture and engineering firms in the Central and Western U.S. with at least $2 million of EBITDA. Wold Architects & Engineers is an architecture, advisory, engineering, planning, and interior design firm whose mission is to make a difference in the communities we serve. Practicing since 1968, Wold has offices in Minneapolis, Minnesota; Brentwood, Tennessee; Denver, Colorado; and Palatine, Illinois. Providus Capital Partners is a flexible capital provider exclusively focused on the A/E industry.
to the Future.” Each of these events involved two or three days at a race track of some sort combined with a round table discussion of the firm leaders in attendance. This first one was at Skip Barber Formula Car school at Moroso Raceway Park in Palm Beach, Florida. One of our instructors was an old Porsche factory team driver, the late Vic Elford. We didn’t have the internet back then so unfortunately I didn’t fully appreciate who Vic – a little guy in tennis shorts who chain smoked Marlboros – really was. He won the Rally Monte Carlo and 24 Hours of Daytona for Porsche in 1968. He won 12 Hours of Sebring in 1969. But he really became famous in the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 1972. Seeing a burning Ferrari Daytona in front of him, Elford stopped mid-race to save the driver. When opening the door, Elford found an empty cockpit, as the driver had already escaped. Cameras caught the act and Elford was named Chevalier of the National Order of Merit by French President Georges Pompidou. In any case, I distinctly remember the advice Elford gave me after several laps around the track in the Formula Dodge car I was driving. He told me, “Mark, the car is moving very rapidly but you need to be moving very slowly inside of it. That’s how you will do the right thing.” Maybe there is something to the notion that experience helps you acquire a certain wisdom and ability to remain calm under pressure? I’m sure I didn’t fully appreciate that when I was younger! Mark Zweig is Zweig Group’s chairman and founder. Contact him at mzweig@zweiggroup.com.
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museums here in the area – as well as see my wife and her sister and the rest of us. Her female cousin’s husband, “Bob,” was a military pilot and flew for Southwest Airlines for 25 years. He is now the COO of another small airline company. Somehow we started talking about flying and then this video, and that morphed into a discussion about leadership. Bob said people – when grouped closely together in a stressful situation – can quickly develop a “herd mentality,” just like the horses they had when their kids were younger. The next thing that happens is someone from the herd will quickly emerge as the “alpha” in the group to get everyone riled up. He said it’s the captain’s job to defuse and establish calm and order, and that is what you are trained to do. We then discussed how that applies to business. The leader’s job is to establish calm and order and implement the plan to deal with whatever is happening in or to the business. People who are not calm don’t make good decisions. They don’t inspire calm in other people. They cannot then lead everyone out of the mess. This morning I woke up thinking about this. The ability to stay calm under pressure is one thing that does get easier as you get older. Experience tells you that if you do the right things you will probably survive. When you haven’t had that experience of being battle-tested repeatedly it’s a lot harder to have that perspective. Back in 1997, Zweig White (the company that is today called “Zweig Group”) put on the first of a number of conferences that we did for CEOs and top managers of AEC firms called, “Racing
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THE ZWEIG LETTER OCTOBER 20, 2025, ISSUE 1606
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