For International Women’s Day this year, Private Equity Wire spoke to Hadley Mullin, Senior Managing Director at TSG Consumer Partners.
How did you get into private equity?
I started out thinking I’d go to law school – I was a government major at Dartmouth, and that was the plan. But after a well-timed internship, I ended up pivoting to business instead.
Right out of college, I joined Bain & Company and worked across several industries – retail, consumer, software, healthcare – you name it. I was also fortunate to be one of the early members of Bain’s Private Equity Group, which gave me a front-row seat to how top-tier investors evaluate deals and create value at portfolio companies. That exposure sparked my interest in moving to the buy side.
While working in Bain’s Private Equity practice, I had the chance to work with Jamie O’Hara, now TSG’s President. Jamie left Bain to join TSG in San Francisco around the time I was starting my MBA at Stanford. I reached out for an informational interview, and that led to an internship at TSG in the summer of 2001. After business school, I joined full-time, and it’s been an incredible journey ever since. I became Senior Managing Director in 2014 and now, I’m one of the three leaders of the firm.
It’s historically been a male-dominated industry – have you faced any challenges on your way up?
Definitely. When I was expecting my first child, I was the only woman on the investment team at TSG, and there was no precedent for maternity leave. I remember feeling nervous – would it affect my career trajectory? My bonus? But my fears turned out to be unfounded. I was actually promoted from VP to Principal while pregnant with my first child and then from Principal to Managing Director & Partner while pregnant with my second.
This support from the firm’s founder, Chuck Esserman, and our President, Jamie O’Hara, made a huge difference for me. It also helped pave the way for other women at TSG who want to build successful careers in investing while also having a family.
More broadly, I’ve seen a real shift in how private equity and finance firms approach work-life balance for working parents. There’s been real progress in creating structures that allow people – especially women – to stay in the game without sacrificing their careers. I’m proud to have been part of those early changes, and my team and I remain committed to driving further progress for working mothers in private equity and beyond.
At TSG, you’ve worked to create more opportunities for women in investment and operational roles. What’s the most effective way to drive real change in this area?
One of the biggest levers for change is targeting diverse talent early – way before they enter the workforce. Too often, women self-select out of finance before they even graduate college simply because they don’t see a clear path.
Recognising this, we piloted our first high school internship programme last summer, and 80% of the participants identified as female. It’s so important to expose young women to careers in finance before they’re locked into a major or a recruiting track.
Equally important is building a real sense of community and camaraderie in the workplace – that’s why I launched an offsite specifically for women at TSG.
As our firm grew and we brought in more women, I realised we needed a space to openly discuss topics like mentorship, negotiations, and career advancement. We’ve since expanded the initiative to include expert-led discussions on issues that are top of mind for women in finance, like how to maintain influence in a male-dominated industry.
These principles are embedded in our hiring and leadership development efforts, and today, nearly 50% of TSG’s professionals are women. Representation matters – when women see senior female leaders at the table, they know they belong there, too.
Beyond that, having women involved in investment decisions is just smart business – especially in consumer investing.
Women drive about 85% of all household spending, so having diverse perspectives at the table makes us better at evaluating brands and understanding consumer behaviour. It also changes the dynamic with entrepreneurs and management teams in a really positive way.
Smashbox Cosmetics was one of your first investments in the beauty sector, and you saw impressive growth. What made it so successful, and how do you apply those lessons today?
Smashbox was a standout deal for a few key reasons.
First off, I sourced it directly through conversations with the founder, Dean Factor, and structured it as a participating preferred investment. The deal gave Dean the ability to keep control of his company while also getting to take some meaningful chips off the table.
At the time we invested, department stores made up a large portion of Smashbox’s sales. While those accounts brought in strong revenue and gross margins, the fully burdened margin just wasn’t as attractive.
After analysing the business, we shifted the company’s sales focus toward higher-margin, high-growth retailers like Sephora and Ulta. We also helped the team diversify the brand’s product mix beyond its one “hero SKU” franchise. Expanding into adjacent high-growth categories made the brand even more appealing to strategic acquirers.
That playbook worked well; Estee Lauder purchased the business in 2010, delivering a strong return to our investors and to the company’s founders.
REVOLVE is another successful investment that showcases how our team identifies and evaluates opportunities. We had long been studying the migration of consumer spend to digital channels and identified REVOLVE as a premier and incredibly “sticky” destination for millennial shoppers. A cold call to the founders led to a proprietary investment opportunity.
REVOLVE’s cutting-edge digital marketing and data-driven merchandising helped it scale quickly post-investment, and we eventually took the company public, delivering an exceptional return for our investors.
REVOLVE’s digital marketing capabilities inspired me to create TSG Vantage, our portfolio operations group, which started with a focus on digital marketing but has since expanded into several value-creation areas, including consumer insights, demand generation, talent, and operations support.
Our most recent beauty investment, Summer Fridays, followed a similar playbook. We saw a shared vision with the founders and management team, and they valued our deep experience in beauty and our track record of scaling independent brands. That kind of alignment is at the heart of great dealmaking.
As you look ahead to this year, what sectors or trends are you most focused on?
One space we’re keeping a close eye on is franchising – particularly on the franchisor side.
Franchisors tend to be incredibly cash-generative businesses that can pay down debt quickly, and we’re seeing strong revenue and earnings growth in that category, even in the current environment. It’s definitely an area to watch.
Anything else you’d like to add about your career or the role of women in PE?
While progress has been made, there’s still work to do.
The more we can encourage women to pursue finance early, support them throughout their careers, and ensure they have real leadership opportunities, the more diverse – and ultimately successful – the industry will be.
Hadley Mullin, Senior Managing Director, TSG Consumer Partners – Hadley is responsible for sourcing and evaluating new investment opportunities, structuring transactions, and collaborating with partner companies to drive growth. Additionally, she helps oversee the firm’s overall strategy and management and serves as a member of the Investment Committee. Recognised as a leader in private equity, Hadley was named one of Fortune Magazine’s 21 Most Powerful People in Private Equity in August 2023, included in WSJ’s Private Equity ‘Women to Watch’ list in 2024, and, this year, was recognised as one of Mergers & Acquisitions’ Most Influential Women in Mid-Market M&A.
