Nick Lewis, CFA
Nick is a founding Partner of Woodward Partners. At Woodward Partners, he advises CEO’s and boards on strategy, capital raising, mergers, acquisitions and divestitures. Nick successfully passed the Level I, II and III Chartered Financial Analysts exams and received his CFA accreditation in 1997.
After graduating with double degrees in mechanical engineering and liberal arts with minors in nuclear engineering, psychology, Spanish and geophysics, Nick’s first job was with ABB in New York in the commercial nuclear power industry. He then joined the Peace Corps as a volunteer in Yemen to work on solar power projects. Nick then worked for an environmental consulting firm, and founded an outsource drug testing company serving the airline and maritime industries, which he sold five years later for 26x the original investment.
Nick then joined JP Morgan as the energy sector senior risk manager. Nick became responsible for setting and approving the firm’s financial exposures in the bond, secondary bank, credit and energy derivative, electricity and natural gas markets to counter-parties in the energy sector, JP Morgan’s third-largest global portfolio. He was then invited to join JP Morgan’s investment banking team, where he picked-up client coverage responsibilities for approximately 20 corporate clients. In this role, he executed M&A, equity, IPO, high yield and high grade bond underwriting, bank, structured finance, and energy derivative products.
CIBC World Markets then recruited Nick to head their energy and utility team in New York, reporting to CIBC’s Vice-Chairman in Toronto. The team specialized in the energy technology sector and lead IPO’s for emerging energy tech companies, plus lead cross-border deals between the US and Canada. He was also named to the hostile takeover defense team of a major energy client in Canada. Nick then co-founded a boutique investment banking firm in New York and won sell-side mandates from Duke Energy (2nd largest US utility) and NRG Energy. While in this role, Energy Intellect Ltd. (Ei) in Wellington retained Nick to raise capital. Ei’s Board then invited Nick to join the company as COO and promoted him to CEO within six months. Nick was then recruited to Celsias Ltd. in Wellington as CEO and led the effort to grow it into a widely-read climate change website. Celsias has achieved world-wide recognition among leading publications such as US News & World Report, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post and The Times in London.
Nick serves on the investment management committee of the Anglican Diocese of Wellington where they manage a portfolio of domestic and international securities, and is the independent Chairman of Hire things Ltd., an early-stage web-based company.
