Tony Lorenz

Tony Lorenz is a leader with more than 30 years of experience building, scaling, acquiring, and exiting category-defining businesses across global, tech-enabled marketing services.

Through his strategic foresight, empathetic leadership, and ability to navigate inflection points, Tony has consistently delivered transformational outcomes in founder-led and private equity-backed environments. He brings a global perspective and a proven ability to align vision, strategy, and execution to drive sustained enterprise value creation, which to date has approached $1 billion.

Professional Highlights:

• Founder of HeadSail – Guides organizations through growth acceleration, M&A readiness, and leadership alignment. Partners with leaders across industries to activate innovation, elevate brand strategy, and strengthen governance during pivotal transitions.
• Investor and Advisor at Events Venture Group, which connects visionary founders driving the future of live events, giving them the support they need to grow and succeed.
• Chief Executive Officer of PRA – Led a full-scale transformation, expanding revenue from $65M to $200M in four years, completing a successful sponsor-to-sponsor sale, and building an M&A platform that executed 20 acquisitions across North America. Tony’s leadership repositioned PRA as a leading business event management brand in the Americas, delivering consistent profitability and cultural renewal through strategy, structure, and execution.
• Founding Investor and Senior Executive at rEvolution – Played a pivotal role in scaling the global sports marketing agency’s footprint. He architected an inorganic growth strategy, executed targeted acquisitions, and helped double enterprise value in under four years through market expansion and cultural alignment. He further shaped rEvolution into a market-differentiating platform at the intersection of sport, culture, and brand innovation.
• Founder of ProActive – The award-winning global event marketing and communications agency was later acquired by Freeman. At Freeman, Tony served as Global Head of Creative, leading brand strategy, design innovation, and integrated marketing solutions for Fortune 500 clients and leading professional associations.
• Co-Founder and CEO of BOB.tv – Launched one of the industry’s first digital event platforms, serving 200K+ users across major associations and industries. He leveraged his knowledge of event technology into Apollo backed, Notified as Global Head of Event Technology Solutions.

Tony has served in several previous and current philanthropic board positions, including Lurie Hospital and the Above and Beyond Foundation. He currently serves as a board member for Cohera, a portfolio company of H.I.G. Capital and a newly merged business of 360DG and CSI DMC, market leaders in the event management industry. Tony also serves in many industry board positions, including PCMA, MPI, BMA, and others.

Tony is a graduate of the Harvard Business School OPM Program, and was inducted into the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC) Entrepreneurship Hall of Fame. He is a U.S. Coast Guard-licensed captain and a lifelong sailor.

Tony is married and has two daughters, Katie and Emily, who are both making their mark early in their careers.