Principals

When it comes to helping you make the most of the opportunity at-hand, having professionals in your corner can make all the difference. The biographies below provide some insight into the unique blend of experience, credentials, and passions that we apply to benefit our clients.

Tamara McKinney
Chief Executive Officer

For our clients, Tamara brings to bear knowledge and perspective gained from intense professional experience and academic study at some of the world's most respected firms and academic institutions. A former consultant with top-tier, global strategy firm Bain & Company, Tamara graduated with Second-Year Honors from the acclaimed MBA program at Harvard Business School where her advanced studies focused on entrepreneurial finance, change management, and the effects of information and technology on businesses and strategy. As an undergraduate, she studied corporate and international finance, computer science, and advanced honors areas at AACSB-accredited Ball State University, where she ranked first in her university class. Today, she serves, at the request of the dean, as advisor to Miller College of Business, highly-ranked nationally for its innovative work in Entrepreneurship and for the quality of teaching and research contributions of its Finance faculty.

Prior to graduate school, Tamara rose through the ranks of management of NCR Corporation, a Fortune 100 company that pioneered and deployed innovative business computing solutions and management practices in 120+ countries for the world's largest, distributed enterprises. Tamara advanced through roles in service marketing, strategy and business planning, global finance, and business unit operations. At the midpoint of her tenure, NCR merged with AT&T Corporation and Teradata Corporation. When AT&T's computer division and Teradata were absorbed simultaneously by NCR in the U.S., she oversaw plans and justification for all U.S. capital spending, cost center consolidation, and sales force productivity incentives. She championed award-winning national and global projects that deployed empowering organizational models and emergent technologies to reshape NCR's processes for customer-facing sales, support, and service roles -- improving satisfaction while saving recurring millions.

After Harvard, Tamara joined Bain & Company, considered the elite among consulting firms and known among corporate executives and private equity investors for its entrepreneurial culture and results focus that helped its clients consistently outperform the market and competitors. At Bain, she helped clients of all sizes improve their business performance and competitiveness in a variety of industries -- automotive manufacturing, high technology, consumer products, pulp and paper manufacturing, transportation, financial services, and non-profits. Her work frequently involved mergers and acquisitions and/or leveraging contemporary technologies to enhance business performance and management practices. Prior to founding The Constant Group, she advised in the mid-market and startup spaces, finding a line-of-sight to a startup’s first-ever replicable revenue. She architected cash-flow positive business models that self-funded rapid growth even as capital markets evaporated after 9/11. Tamara constructed analytical models and financial projections for a mid-market business, enabling the company to seek and secure, for the first time, bank funds to support its seasonal cash flow needs.

In addition to being a licensed business broker, Tamara holds a designation of Certified Business Intermediary (CBI) through the International Business Brokers Association (IBBA) and is a member of the Midwest Business Brokers & Intermediaries (MBBI), the Turnaround Management Association (TMA), the National Association of Women Business Owners (NAWBO), and the Midwest U.S.-China Association. Committed to advancing leadership, innovation, and education, she is also a member of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), Beta Gamma Sigma (the International Management Honorary for AACSB-accredited university programs), and the Union League Club of Chicago (ULCC) which extensively supports the ULCC Boys and Girls Clubs, the Chicago Engineers' Foundation, and the ULCC Civic and Arts Foundation.

Noel McKinney
President

Noel McKinney is a principal at The Constant Group, Inc. serving as an appraiser, business broker and information technology consultant. In this latter role, his consulting engagements have created increased revenue opportunities and operational improvements for mid-market firms in the hedge fund administration and investment data management industries. Formerly a university instructor, he taught courses in economic principles, banking and financial markets. As a corporate employee, he has worked in accounting, database administration, and software development roles.

Noel held a graduate research assistantship at Purdue University where he completed two years of doctoral coursework in accounting, economics and quantitative methods. He has two advanced degrees: a Master of Science from DePaul University in Computer Science and a Master of Science from Wright State University in Applied Economics. His Bachelor of Science is in Management, with a Finance concentration, from Purdue. He transferred there from Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, where he studied engineering and was an Army ROTC cadet.

In addition to being a licensed business broker, Noel holds a designation of Certified Machinery & Equipment Appraiser (CMEA) through the National Equipment and Business Brokers Institute (NEBBI) and Certified Senior Business Analyst (CSBA) through the Society of Business Analysts. He is also a member of the International Business Brokers Association (IBBA) and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE).