Denise A. Carkhuff

Denise Carkhuff has been the lead lawyer on M&A and private equity transactions for more than 26 years. Her experience includes diverse industries, jurisdictions, and deal structures. Denise has experience in the full life cycle of a company (from formation, capital raising, dividend recapitalizations, IPOs, sales, and dissolutions). Denise's main focus is representing private equity funds. She has served in a general counsel function for countless private companies, including portfolio companies of private equity funds.

Denise has worked with many private equity funds, including Blue Point Capital Partners, Centre Lane Partners, Cortec Group, Morgan Stanley Private Equity, The Riverside Company, and Wellspring Capital. She also represents private companies or their management teams in their ultimate sale and has been involved with many complex M&A transactions involving public and private clients.

She is a member of the Board of the Achievement Centers for Children, a nonprofit whose mission is to empower children and adults with disabilities, and First Tee, a youth development organization introducing golf and its values to kids and teens. For 14 years, she was a member of the Board of Friends of Breakthrough Schools, a top-rated network of free public charter schools. She is a member of In Counsel With Women, an invitation-only networking group for top women leaders in Northeast Ohio and led for a dozen years, Women In Transactions, a networking group for women doing transactional work. She co-leads RRAIN, a Cleveland women lawyers group at Jones Day. Denise was a member of the 2018 Leadership Cleveland class.