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Middle Market Advisory Firm Growth Operators® Names Molly Hiller, Chief Executive Officer

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Co-Founder Rick Nordvold to Continue as Executive Chairman and Lead North Partners™ as the Firm Expands Its Platform Across Strategy, Talent, Technology and AI

MINNEAPOLIS, Sept. 30, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Growth Operators® today announced that Co-Founder Molly Hiller has been named Chief Executive Officer (CEO), marking the next chapter for the middle-market consultancy she co-founded alongside former CEO Rick Nordvold in 2010. The announcement comes as the firm broadens its platform beyond the back office and marks a sixth consecutive year on the Inc. 5000 list of the fastest-growing private companies in America.

The transition builds on Hiller’s more than 16 years helping shape Growth Operators, including serving as President, CFO and COO, and formalizes her leadership of the firm’s operations for the past two years. Nordvold will remain closely connected to Growth Operators as Executive Chairman while focusing on his role as Chairman and Managing Partner of North Partners™, the private investment partnership he co-founded with Hiller in 2026. As the long-term controlling owner of Growth Operators, along with the firm’s employee Partners, North Partners invests in and partners with companies and leaders to support leadership development and long-term value creation.

“Since the beginning, we have built Growth Operators alongside an incredibly talented team,” said Molly Hiller, Co-Founder and CEO of Growth Operators. “I’m proud of what we’ve accomplished together and excited for the opportunities ahead. We’ll continue building on that foundation, expanding our capabilities and finding new ways to support our clients as their needs evolve.”

As Growth Operators’ first female CEO, Hiller steps into the role at a moment of deliberate expansion. Over the past year, the firm has added capabilities in Strategy & Execution, Talent Intelligence, Strategic IT, and Decision Intelligence & AI, building an executable value creation agenda, aligning structure and talent to the growth plan, modernizing the platforms that power performance, and turning data into faster, better decisions. Each is delivered through the firm’s proprietary nextLEVEL® assessment and embedded model, pairing cross-functional teams with fractional and interim executives who step into leadership gaps and lead initiatives to completion alongside the business.

“Molly is a natural leader,” said Rick Nordvold, Co-Founder of Growth Operators and Executive Chairman. “I’ve seen her impact firsthand since we founded the firm, and her dedication to our employees and clients has been central to Growth Operators’ success. Through North Partners, along with our employee Partners, we’re committed to this firm and its people for the long term.”

The firm was named to the 2026 Inc. 5000 list for the sixth consecutive year, recognized for 51% three-year revenue growth, and has earned its third consecutive Minnesota Top Workplace recognition from the Minnesota Star Tribune along with a 2026 Top Workplaces Culture Excellence Award.

Before co-founding Growth Operators, Hiller began her career at Arthur Andersen, held financial management roles at Target, and founded and led her own entrepreneurial venture. She earned her undergraduate degree in accounting from the Carlson School of Management at the University of Minnesota.

Read more about Growth Operators’ next chapter here.

About Growth Operators®

Founded in 2010 by Rick Nordvold and Molly Hiller, Growth Operators® is an operator-led professional services and advisory firm that partners with private equity firms, their portfolio companies, and founder-led and other middle-market businesses to strengthen the operational and strategic capabilities that drive growth and long-term enterprise value. Its team of experienced executives and operators—known as “Growth Pros”—brings deep, hands-on operating expertise to help clients solve complex business challenges, scale efficiently, minimize risk, and enhance enterprise value.

Growth Operators provides expertise across Finance & Accounting, Human Resources, Transaction Advisory, Strategy & Execution, Talent Intelligence, Strategic IT, and Decision Intelligence & AI. From navigating complex transactions and closing leadership gaps to optimizing financial performance, modernizing technology, and turning data into clearer decisions, Growth Operators works alongside clients to deliver practical solutions tailored to their business needs.

For more information, please visit growthoperators.com

About North Partners™

North Partners™ is a private investment partnership co-founded in 2026 by Rick Nordvold and Molly Hiller. Together with Growth Operators’ employee Partners, North Partners is the long-term controlling owner of Growth Operators. The partnership invests in and partners with companies and leaders to support leadership development and long-term value creation. For more information, please visit northpartners7.com

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From Data to Action: Gong Debuts New Revenue AI Innovation at Celebrate ’26

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Featuring customers & partners from Anthropic, AT&T, Cisco, Snowflake and more showcasing real revenue AI outcomes, and keynote speaker and bestselling author Daniel Pink

LAS VEGAS and SAN FRANCISCO, Sept. 30, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Gong today unveiled several major revenue AI announcements at Celebrate ’26, its annual customer conference live from Las Vegas. Gong cofounder and CEO Amit Bendov discussed the next evolution of Revenue AI and announced the launch of several new innovations, including Gong Enrich, Agent Builder, and Deep Mode in Gong Assistant. Gong also announced Gong Activate, the next generation of Revenue AI, that allows teams to deploy the motions that win, retain, and grow accounts, with agents and reps all working from the same blueprint.

Introducing Gong Activate
Enterprises are no longer satisfied with evaluating AI; they want scalable results. While modern AI lowers the barrier to automating tasks, without deep contextual intelligence, it can’t be trusted with much of the nuanced work that drives revenue. That’s the backdrop for Gong Activate, centered on Gong’s vision for a self-improving “revenue loop”.

Gong captures your organization’s unique institutional knowledge within the Gong Revenue Graph. From buyer personas and competitive positioning to your best reps’ deal-closing strategies, it creates an ever-improving model of your business.

Gong Activate will convert this into effective action. Always-on agents continuously evaluate every account, opportunity, and revenue play, building detailed prescriptions for the best path forward. This will allow Gong Activate to orchestrate your most valuable revenue work. It delivers up-to-date, highly relevant guidance to team members and provides the context for specialized agents to work alongside them, automating time-consuming steps in full alignment with the plan.

And measurement creates constant feedback, folding outcomes back into the Revenue Graph so every decision and action sharpens the next. The result is a virtuous revenue loop that will help new reps perform like seasoned veterans, build trust in automated workflows, and consistently shift the performance bell curve.

“Gong pioneered Revenue AI in 2015. Today, we’re taking the next step with the announcement of Gong Activate – centered on Gong’s vision for a self-improving revenue loop,” said Amit Bendov, Gong Co-founder and CEO. “For years, AI told you how to win. Now, AI wins deals for you. That means faster cycles, higher win rates, and reps running proven plays instead of guessing.”

New Product Innovations
In addition to Gong Activate, Gong introduced new offerings and enhancements as part of its latest product release, Mission Callisto, built to help revenue teams move faster and with less friction. Highlights include:

Gong Enrich, a new sales enrichment offering, helps close the data gaps that slow sellers down, automatically filling in missing account and contact details so reps spend less time researching and more time acting. Enrich launch partners include Apollo, Findymail, Firmable, Kernel, LeadIQ, Lusha, RocketReach, Wiza, ZeroBounce, and ZoomInfo.Agent Builder enables teams to create custom agents that automatically run in response to the events and conditions they define, helping automate and scale your most critical, winning workflows. Define the triggers, conditions, steps, and actions, or simply describe the agent you want in natural language. Your workflows run consistently across the business whenever the right event occurs, without relying on someone to remember to start them.Deep Mode, an agent within the Gong Assistant, takes on the investigation behind hard business questions, turning what used to take hours of manual digging into a grounded, comprehensive answer.

To learn more about the latest launch and all innovations in Mission Callisto, read more here.

Showcasing customer outcomes
Live on-stage customers like AT&T Business, Anthropic, Cisco, Experian, Snowflake, Thomson Reuters and others shared how they are driving real outcomes with Revenue AI. Highlights included:

AT&T Business is driving better business outcomes with Gong. One example is via coaching. By utilizing scorecards, call reviews, and manager feedback in Gong they achieved a 54% improvement in rep productivity. Additionally, users of the 12 Gong features they are using outperformed the productivity of non-users every time.Cisco returned to the stage a year into their rollout, now with enough scale to measure real outcomes as they have deployed 18,000 Gong licenses company-wide, gained insights from over 450,000 conversations and got their entire salesforce up and running on Gong Engage. This has led to remarkable productivity, including notable incremental revenue from over 50,000 Engage flows executed. Early-adopting teams are showing roughly 32% larger deal sizes and 26% higher win rates.Experian consolidated a division built from four separate acquisitions around one AI-driven platform – not by starting with a tool, but by identifying three specific decisions to improve: coaching, continuity, and renewal risk.The result was a 25% lift in win rates, proof that AI can’t create your strategy; it can only scale it.

Additional Celebrate ’26 Highlights
Celebrate ’26 will feature a keynote from Daniel Pink, #1 New York Times bestselling author of To Sell Is Human, Drive, When, The Power of Regret, and A Whole New Mind. Pink will discuss the 5 Ways to Navigate What’s Next, and will offer a quick look at the big trends reshaping business. He will also share a set of practical, science-based tips for making progress amid the turbulence. Attendees will come away with a clearer framework for persuasion grounded in how people actually think and decide, rather than in sales tricks.

Learn More
For more information on Celebrate ’26 and to watch replays from the event, visit https://www.gong.io/events/celebrate

About Gong
Gong harnesses the power of AI to transform how revenue teams win. Gong Revenue AI unifies data, insights, and workflows into a single, trusted system that observes, guides, and acts alongside the world’s most successful revenue teams. Powered by the Gong Revenue Graph, specialized agents, and trusted applications, Gong helps more than 5,000 organizations around the world deeply understand their teams and customers, automate critical revenue workflows, and close more deals with less effort. Learn more at gong.io.

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Revenue alai by LateralCare Available on the Microsoft Marketplace

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Microsoft customers worldwide can discover and deploy revenue alai by LateralCare through Microsoft Marketplace, accessing trusted solutions that accelerate innovation and business transformation with unified integration across Microsoft products

DALLAS, Sept. 30, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — LateralCare announced the availability of revenue alai in the Microsoft Marketplace, the unified online destination for customers to buy trusted cloud solutions, AI apps, and agents to meet their business needs. Revenue alai customers can now discover and deploy trusted solutions through Microsoft Marketplace, with smooth integration and streamlined management across Microsoft Azure and other Microsoft products.

LateralCare is a healthcare technology company dedicated to responsibly applying Agentic AI to transform complex healthcare operations. Its AI-native solutions combine intelligent automation, explainable decisioning, and human-in-the-loop governance to help organizations improve efficiency, strengthen performance, and navigate operational complexity with greater confidence. Revenue alai, LateralCare’s flagship platform for revenue cycle management, brings these capabilities to financial operations, helping healthcare organizations reduce administrative burden, improve visibility, and drive stronger outcomes. Through Microsoft Marketplace, organizations can more easily discover, deploy, and integrate revenue alai within their existing Microsoft technology environments.

“The availability of revenue alai through Microsoft Marketplace marks an important milestone in our mission to transform healthcare revenue cycle management through responsible AI,” said William Reau, Chief Executive Officer of LateralCare. “Healthcare organizations need solutions that not only automate work, but also provide transparency, accountability, and measurable impact. Through Microsoft Marketplace, customers can more easily deploy revenue alai within their existing technology ecosystem and leverage AI-driven intelligence to improve revenue performance, reduce operational burden, and support better organizational outcomes.”

“We’re pleased to welcome revenue alai by LateralCare to Microsoft Marketplace,” said Cyril Belikoff, vice president, Microsoft Azure Product Marketing. “Marketplace connects trusted solutions from global partners with customers worldwide, making it easy to find and deploy apps that work seamlessly with Microsoft products.”

Microsoft Marketplace is a single destination to find, try, and buy trusted cloud solutions, AI apps, and agents to meet your business objectives. Choose from a growing collection of solutions tailored to your unique needs, available both in Marketplace and directly within Microsoft products. 

About LateralCare
LateralCare is a healthcare technology company dedicated to responsibly integrating Agentic AI to transform complex healthcare operations. Its AI-native flagship platform, revenue alai, modernizes revenue cycle management by uniting intelligent automation with explainable decisioning and human-in-the-loop governance—helping healthcare organizations improve financial performance while operating with greater clarity, confidence, and control.

For more information, visit www.lateralcare.com or follow revenue alai and LateralCare on LinkedIn for the latest updates.

For more information, press only:

Sunya Chandi, LateralCare, sunya@lateralcare.com

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Study Finds Majority of Advertisers Would Pay a Premium for More Audience Choices and Faster Campaign Delivery

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Although most advertisers are bullish on commerce media spending, 86% say slow audience fulfillment could cause them to cut spending or leave a network partner

NEW YORK, Sept. 30, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — GrowthLoop, a pioneer in agentic AI-powered marketing solutions, today released its 2026 Commerce Media Investment Index, revealing that activation speed and audience options have become decisive factors in where advertisers place retail and commerce media budgets. Conducted in partnership with Ascend2, the study surveyed nearly 300 U.S. and Canadian marketing professionals involved in retail media network (RMN) or commerce media network (CMN) advertising decisions.

The findings reveal what motivates advertisers to spend more with network partners and shed light on how execution friction could put that spend at risk:

86% say slow audience fulfillment could cause them to reduce spend or leave a network partner, while 85% say they would pay a premium for same-day fulfillment.  Nearly all respondents indicate that access to more segments would make them more likely to increase spend.32% of advertisers have reduced, paused, or reconsidered investment because of difficulty proving ROI to leadership.

“Advertisers are telling media networks how to win more budget: Provide better audiences, activate them faster, and deliver meaningful results quickly enough to inform the next campaign,” said Anthony Rotio, co-founder and co-CEO of GrowthLoop. “As we’ve seen with customers like Gopuff, a warehouse-native audience building solution is the way to fulfill these requirements and ultimately build stronger advertiser relationships.”

Key report findings

The Index shows that advertisers spread significant budget across a crowded commerce media market. The majority of advertisers allocate at least 15% of their digital advertising budgets to these networks and 90% work with two or more RMN or CMN partners. No respondents plan to decrease commerce media spend in the next year, and a full 85% plan to increase their spend.

Additional findings include:

Speed shapes spending decisions

92% would be more likely to increase spend with faster audience fulfillment.94% would likely spend more with partners offering self-service audience-building tools.Advertisers reporting the strongest ROI are five times more likely than others to receive custom audiences the same day.

Advertisers want more audience choice

Only 38% are extremely satisfied with the number of audiences available through their partners.95% say they would be more likely to increase spend with access to more segments.

Confidence in incrementality measurement drives investment and ROI

Only 40% are very confident in their partners’ incrementality measurement.Advertisers with high confidence in their partners’ measurement spend a larger share of their digital budget on RMN/CMN and are more than twice as likely to significantly exceed ROI targets.

Campaign results often arrive too late to guide the next decision

Nearly half of advertisers wait at least one week for post-campaign performance data, while only 8% receive it the same day.Just 32% say they can consistently use campaign results to optimize future audience targeting.

Putting audience scale and speed into practice

As audience speed and scale remain top of mind for advertisers, Gopuff — the leading instant commerce platform that delivers thousands of everyday products to customers in minutes — has shown how media networks can successfully address these priorities. Leveraging a composable commerce media solution, Gopuff can provide brand advertisers with a larger pool of audiences, activate campaigns quickly, and provide faster, more comprehensive visibility into campaign metrics.

“Advertisers increasingly expect both greater audience customization and faster activation, and we no longer have to trade one for the other,” said JR Crosby, director of data partnerships at Gopuff. “After implementing a warehouse-native stack, we increased our audience segments from 100 to more than 600, and expanded audiences for our subsidiary, BevMo!, from 75 to 400. These expanded audience catalogs give our internal teams and brand partners a broader range of ready-to-use targeting options and create the groundwork for more customized segment offerings.”

To download the full 2026 Commerce Media Investment Index, visit go.growthloop.com/cmn-index. To learn more about GrowthLoop’s Composable Commerce Media solution, visit https://www.growthloop.com/teams/commerce-media.

About GrowthLoop

GrowthLoop is a pioneer in composable, AI-powered marketing on the data cloud, featured on G2 by its customers as a momentum leader with the best ROI for enterprise. The GrowthLoop agentic, composable CDP drives compound growth by accelerating the marketing cycle using agentic AI powered by your enterprise cloud data. Working alongside AI agents, teams use GrowthLoop to translate customer data into precise audiences and activate those audiences across real-time customer journeys, measuring and improving performance through always-on analysis — all with zero data movement. Thousands of marketers at enterprises like Costco, Albertsons, Fanatics, and Ford rely on GrowthLoop to bring their AI strategy to life, grow faster with every experiment, personalize every customer touchpoint, and drive rapidly compounding results.

Media Contact

press@growthloop.com 

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SOURCE GrowthLoop

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