Jensen Hughes Names New CEO, Raj Arora, As It Ushers in a New Era of Growth

This leadership transition comes at a pivotal time when the firm has expanded its services across global regions and markets, addressing the spectrum of risk from fire and life safety and code compliance to security and forensics

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Jensen Hughes

Sep 10, 2019, 15:49 ET

BALTIMORE, Sept. 10, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Jensen Hughes, a global leader in safety, security and risk-based engineering and consulting, today announced an important and long-planned transition in its senior leadership with current President of Strategy + Business Development, Raj Arora, taking over as CEO effective immediately. This succession comes as the company prepares to capitalize on several years of investments at a critical and exciting stage in its growth. Retiring Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Paul Orzeske will be shifting his focus from running the company on a day-to-day basis to advancing its oversight and governance as a board member, a position he has held since 2015.

"Raj and I have been working toward today for a long time," says Paul Orzeske, CEO. "This company's growth and expansion has been exceptional over the last few years – driven by the outstanding work of our 1,250 experts across the globe. Raj has been at the center of this success. When I first began building a leadership team in 2016, I did so with a clear purpose: to establish a strong successor for me and the company as a whole. I also set out a development path for us punctuated by clearly defined challenges and milestones. Raj has achieved every one of these and it is now time to have him step up to the helm as CEO."

Arora is an experienced business leader with a track record of accomplishments across business environments, from enterprise to entrepreneurial. Most recently, at Jensen Hughes, he has led initiatives that have established new capabilities for the company in strategy, mergers and acquisitions, software innovation, and business development as well as marketing and communications. His accomplishments at Jensen Hughes have included driving year-over-year sales growth and backlog expansion, executing on high-value acquisitions, championing people and culture and positioning the company for a new phase of growth. Arora has served in a variety of positions with profit-and-loss responsibility throughout his career. Before joining Jensen Hughes, he led the billion-dollar global fire detection and special hazards products business for Johnson Controls/Tyco International, based in Zurich, Switzerland.

Over the last five years, Jensen Hughes has undergone a remarkable transformation from a merger of equals in the fire protection and life safety industry to an integrated, highly diversified global industry leader supported by a professional leadership team; a defined multi-year strategy; a new business development group; nine newly acquired businesses in complementary high-growth adjacency markets; and a scalable platform with extensive new back-office systems and processes to support growth over the next three to five years.

"This is very exciting to me personally. I'm honored by this opportunity and deeply confident in what we can achieve in the months and years ahead," says Arora. "As we accelerate into the last quarter of 2019 and begin budget planning for our 2020 fiscal year, we are in a very exciting position. Our value proposition to clients and prospects across all industries has expanded dramatically. As the global safety, security and risk landscapes continue to converge, our team is now providing a more diversified and integrated network of related services from fire and life safety and code compliance to emergency management, security and forensics."

About Jensen Hughes

Jensen Hughes is a global leader in safety, security and risk-based engineering and consulting. Every day, a team of 1,250 engineers, consultants and scientists develop and deliver innovative and cost-effective solutions to a global client base involving fire protection systems design and analysis, code consulting, emergency management services, security consulting, forensic engineering, fire research, risk-informed applications, probabilistic risk assessments, development and testing, commissioning and construction services. Operating from 90+ offices throughout the world, Jensen Hughes consulting teams have delivered more than 40,000 projects in all markets across industries. Jensen Hughes is a portfolio company of Gryphon Investors, a leading private equity firm focused on profitably growing and competitively enhancing middle-market companies in partnership with experienced management teams. For more information, visit www.jensenhughes.com.

About Gryphon Investors

Based in San Francisco, Gryphon Investors (www.gryphoninvestors.com) is a leading private equity firm focused on profitably growing and competitively enhancing middle-market companies in partnership with experienced management. The firm has managed over $4.9 billion of equity investments and capital since 1997. Gryphon targets making equity investments of $100 million to $300 million in portfolio companies with sales ranging from approximately $100 million to $500 million. Gryphon prioritizes investment opportunities where it can form strong partnerships with owners and executives to build leading companies, utilizing Gryphon's capital, specialized professional resources, and operational expertise. For more information, visit www.gryphoninvestors.com.

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