How Alpine and Shore Capital build CEOs instead of hiring them

How Alpine and Shore Capital build CEOs instead of hiring them

Jessica Hamlin

Thu, September 17, 2026 at 10:40 PM GMT+3 4 min read

Become a CEO after your MBA: that's the promise some private equity firms are using to recruit top operating talent.

This promise propels the best and brightest into top executive roles without requiring them to climb the corporate ladder, underpinned by the belief that cultivating talent is a better bet than making semi-blind bets on external hires.

Alpine Investors and Shore Capital Partners have each built separate pipelines to funnel operational talent, aiming to equip executives to take charge of their portfolio companies.

Lower-middle-market buyout firm Shore Capital Partners runs what it calls its CXO program, a two-year training scheme that places early- to mid-career talent and recent MBA grads into C-suite-adjacent roles at its portfolio companies—typically chief of staff or vice president of business operations or strategic initiatives.

Top-performing CXO graduates then have the chance to be promoted to C-level positions. So far, Shore has produced four CEOs from the CXO program. This includes Mark Larsen, who has been CEO of medical software business Connexure since 2024.

"We have hunters that go hunt for executives, and we also have a farming engine that develops future executives internally," said Jacob Balley, a principal at Shore Capital Partners who leads the CXO program. "Most firms just do the hunting."

Balley spent years building the CEO-in-Training program at software and services buyout firm Alpine Investors, before leaving for Shore in 2023.

Alpine's CIT program is perhaps the most widely recognized in the PE industry. It places early-career talent, typically straight out of MBA programs, into portfolio companies, with promotion into the C-suite the eventual aim. The firm received 750 applications for 12 slots in its 2024 CIT program, a lower acceptance rate than Harvard, Business Insider reported.

Instead of buying a company and looking for the right person to run it, Alpine looks for people with the right attributes—such as team spirit, competitiveness and "curious candor"—and acquires companies to match, what Managing Partner Graham Weaver calls a "people-first approach."

Weaver founded the San Francisco-based PE firm in 2001, shortly after graduating with an MBA from Stanford University. In the early days, he and his partners personally took over the management of their portfolio companies, which often led to more successful outcomes than companies where they hired external candidates, Weaver wrote in a blog post in August.

The CIT training program allows Alpine to collect data on these would-be leaders, a much more in-depth predictor of success than external hires allow for.

"You can only learn so much in five or six interviews if you're hiring someone from the outside," said Matt Moore, a partner at Alpine Investors who joined in 2016 to help grow the firm's hiring and training programs. "If you've worked with someone for two, three, four, five, six years, imagine the depth of insights you have about that person."

The firms measure "graduating" from the program a little differently. Shore counts only platform CEOs, defined as the person at the helm of the entire portfolio company who reports to its board.

Alpine's CIT program casts a wider net, also counting "vertical CEOs" who run an operating company within a platform and report to the board. By that measure, Alpine has promoted 75 of 157 total CIT participants into CEO roles since the program's 2015 inception, and 37 CITs currently hold other senior roles, like regional president, CXO and head of M&A, the firm said.

CIT graduates who have climbed to the highest level include Adam Jones, the CEO of government IT services and software business Cedar Solutions Group, and Keri Dixon, who got the top job at Wilson Language Training.

Both Alpine and Shore's programs remain anomalies in the industry, said Kate O'Sullivan, an executive coach and co-founder of CoachSelect, an executive coaching firm that works primarily with private equity firms. O'Sullivan was previously a senior manager at Bridgewater Associates, where she worked in talent management.

"This is a retention tool," she added. "Firms are losing top talent. [These programs] are showing them that the firm is investing in you, because people will leave when they feel like there isn't investment in their career progression."

This article originally appeared on PitchBook News