Inside Track: Hakim takes an analytical approach

Blackford Capital’s vice president follows a nontraditional path to private equity.
Inside Track: Hakim takes an analytical approach
Andrew Hakim brings an analytical perspective to his roles and projects. <strong> Courtesy Andrew Hakim </strong>

Andrew Hakim’s experiences have shown him the value in stepping out of his comfort zone to tackle complex situations.

Hakim serves as vice president at Blackford Capital, a lower middle market private equity firm based in Grand Rapids. Since joining the team in 2018, Hakim has played a key role in completing transactions, guiding deal strategy and engaging with advisers and investors.

His journey into the private equity sector, however, came by way of a nontraditional path.

Born in Richmond, Virginia, Hakim and his family moved to West Michigan when he was just 2 years old. He attended East Grand Rapids High School and then earned a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree in industrial and operations engineering from the University of Michigan, completing his studies through a five-year honors program.

His major was “a bridge between engineering and business,” Hakim said, noting how others in his current profession often have a finance degree or an MBA.

Hakim enjoyed his educational experience and the opportunities it presented. In addition to internships, he had the chance to study abroad at Shanghai Jiao Tong University in China during the summer between his sophomore and junior years.

According to Hakim, the University of Michigan’s College of Engineering has a good relationship with Shanghai Jiao Tong University, and students at both schools have opportunities to study abroad through that relationship.

ANDREW HAKIM
Organization:
Blackford Capital
Position: Vice President
Age: 32
Birthplace: Richmond, Virginia
Residence: East Grand Rapids
Family: Wife, Emily, and 2-year-old son, Robby
Business/Community Involvement: Mentorship programs associated with the University of Michigan
Biggest Career Break: “Kearney gave a lot of responsibility to 22-year-old analysts. I was given the tools, support and opportunities to drive change at the plant floor level and in the board room. Those interactions early on were humbling, but also gave me confidence in future situations.”

For Hakim, however, going to China wasn’t something that had been on his radar.

“I kind of did it on a whim — it was very out of the box for me,” Hakim said. “I actually tried to find a way to study abroad in Japan first … my mom’s mom is one hundred percent Japanese, and my mom was born in Japan, so I have an affinity toward Japanese culture. There just weren’t programs I could find there that counted toward my degree.”

Hakim had traveled to Japan with his parents and grandparents before, but the decision to study abroad in China was a bit outside of his comfort zone.

“It was very uncomfortable, but it was deliberately uncomfortable at that point in my life,” he said. “The first couple weeks were tough. I was homesick, the classes were really difficult, I didn’t like the food, and the culture was just such a shock. We were kind of on the outskirts of the city, and there was not a lot of English spoken. If you went off campus, there was no English.”

As the summer progressed, Hakim made an effort to immerse himself in the culture. He formed some local friendships and traveled to Beijing, Macao and Hong Kong. The overall experience gave him a strong global perspective and emphasized the value of branching out of his comfort zone.

After completing the rest of his bachelor’s courses and moving on through the master’s program, Hakim said he wasn’t sure what his next steps would be after graduation. Then he learned about an opportunity through recruiters and his peers.

“A lot of people I admired and respected coming out of the engineering program were going to work into management consulting as opposed to a typical engineering path or rotational program at GE or Whirlpool,” he said. “I didn’t really know I wanted to do that until it came time to start interviewing and recruiting during the fall of my grad year. But I saw management consulting as a way to experience a lot of different industries and learn a lot quickly out of college.”

After graduating, Hakim joined the team at Kearney, a global management consulting firm then called A.T. Kearney. He started as a business analyst based out of the company’s Chicago office.

According to Hakim, Kearney had a structured career progression for its employees. Employees begin as an analyst and can transition to senior analyst, associate, manager, principal and partner, respectively. 

“Every six months you’re being evaluated, and you’re either progressing and you’re on track to get promoted or you’re not, and then you get let go,” he said. “It’s a very ambitious culture, but they take care of their employees.”

The work Hakim did with Kearney was all project-based, with some lasting a few weeks and others completed after several months. For each project, Hakim got on plane every Monday and flew to the client site before spending Tuesday through Thursday dedicated to that project and flying home every Thursday night. Fridays were spent working at the local office, and then the same kind of week would take place until the project concluded. 

Kearney’s clients include national and global companies such as Kroger, the Coca-Cola Company and the U.S. Air Force — and the latter provided Hakim with a memorable learning experience and moment in his career.

In one of his first projects at Kearney, Hakim and his project team were tasked with helping the U.S. Air Force negotiate a $6 billion contract to purchase 84 cargo planes from the aerospace and defense corporation Lockheed Martin. After Lockheed developed a proposal, the U.S. Air Force hired Kearney to help evaluate the proposal and effectively negotiate the amount to something smaller.

According to Hakim, one of the key factors for negotiating that proposal was determining how many hours it takes Lockheed Martin to assemble one of the C-130 cargo planes. Coming from an engineering background, Hakim lent his analytical skills to the project as he and his team studied decades of data and various regression models to establish a realistic timeframe and potentially reduce the cost.

It was Hakim who ended up presenting the findings to a room full of Air Force colonels, senior partners at Kearney, and several Lockheed Martin engineers and leaders. At age 22, Hakim felt the pressure of the negotiation as most of the people in the room were poised to poke holes in his analysis. 

“One of senior engineers from Lockheed specifically asked why I was qualified to be giving that kind of presentation,” Hakim recalled. “But I was able to use my graduate degree with the project, and it was very much in line with a class I taught as a graduate student instructor.”

Despite the pressure, Hakim said the presentation went well overall. The outcome was successful when, months later, the contract was signed for more than $1 billion less than the original proposal.

In addition, Hakim and the rest of the team earned Kearney’s global Great Client Work Award the following year for the project. He said the experience gave him confidence in his ability to understand complex situations and communicate those complexities to a wide range of individuals.

“It really comes down to how to be a good analyst — how do you look at data and clean up data and communicate it to different types of people and get buy-in based on facts?” he said. “That’s been sort of a valuable cornerstone throughout everything.”

Today, Hakim still sees similarities between his experience in management consulting and his current role at Blackford Capital.

He works to develop relationships with the CEOs and CFOs and serves as an ad hoc resource to help them tackle their business challenges.

“A lot of times, private equity gets a bad rap because of the thought of draining a company of resources,” he said. “But our goal is quite the opposite. We want to make these more valuable organizations, and you do that by investing in the people and in the systems. And when it all comes together and you see the market of buyers see the same value that you’re marching toward, it’s just great when it all comes together like that.”

One memorable moment from his career at Blackford occurred in 2020 when the firm was in the midst of one of its biggest and most complicated transactions, according to Hakim.

He said he was relieved once the team closed the deal, but the experience also stands out in his mind because he was able to spend time with his infant son while working from home during the pandemic.

“It really was a blessing to be able to work from home and still have so much progress with what we’re trying to accomplish at Blackford and to also spend so much time with my son during his first year,” he said, adding, “He was a good coworker.”

After finding fulfillment in his own career, Hakim has a passion for developing new talent. He works closely with Blackford Capital’s internship program, assisting with interviewing, on-boarding and training each new intern class, and he serves as a mentor to University of Michigan students through the same honors program he completed when he was a student.

Outside of work, Hakim enjoys cooking, spending time outdoors and being with family. After being back in Grand Rapids since 2015, he still sees the area as a meaningful place to pursue all his professional and personal interests.

“I just love Grand Rapids. There are a lot of things that someone can do to optimize or try to maximize their careers, but I think that living and working in West Michigan is such a good balance of professional fulfillment and personal fun and family,” Hakim said. “That’s constant for the future of being in West Michigan.”

This story can be found in the Oct. 31 issue of the Grand Rapids Business Journal. To get more stories like this delivered to your mailbox, subscribe here.