Junko (Io) SheehanFounder

United Kingdom - ND

Junko Io Sheehan has ¬25 years of finance and corporate development experience in the media, technology, healthcare and retail sectors. During her tenure in the Technology, Media and Telecom investment banking groups at Bear Stearns, Morgan Stanley and UBS in NYC and now, as an advisor/principle on private equity investments in London, she has participated in more than $30Bn of equity, debt and M&A transactions.

Over the last several years, Ms. Sheehan has focused on identifying, gestating and managing M&A rollups in dislocated and/or fragmented sectors and devising new strategies for growth.
- Currently, Ms. Sheehan is the CEO and Chairman for the UNAVETS platform, focused on the overall strategy and growth via acquisition of veterinary clinics, as well as strategic investments in adjacent animal healthcare areas. In December 2019, funds managed and advised by Oaktree Capital Management, L.P. became a majority equity investor in the platform. By Nov 2022, the Company had integrated over 90 clinics and hospitals into the platform with 900+ employees. She brings to bear real expertise in how to build and scale platforms via M&A and has built an organization that can provide shared business services to support vet clinics and hospitals.
- Ms. Sheehan is also a Board Director for other animal healthcare groups in Europe (OneVet in Portugal, Luxvet in Poland) and a Board Director for EasyVet in the US.
- Among her prior projects was a consolidation of gas stations in the Spanish market and her application of a focused convenience retailing strategy. Ms. Sheehan served on the Board of Directors from 2016 to the end of 2020, helping to grow the company from scratch to approximately EUR 10M of EBITDA within only a few years via acquisition, synergies and retailing efficiencies.
- During the last ten years, she has also supported Cameron Companies (James Cameron), most recently in helping to structure and secure a strategic investment from a public company in the technology space.

Ms. Sheehan graduated with an MBA in Finance from the Wharton School in 2005. She also earned her BA in Physiological Psychology from UC San Diego in 1996. She is partially fluent in Spanish and Japanese, in addition to her native English. She currently resides in London with her husband, two children, dog and cat.