Joel Martin Hartstone - Managing Director
Professional Profile
Mr. Hartstone is the founding principal of StoneGate. He is also the creator and author of the StoneGate
One Day MBA Program presented by StoneGate Training Services.
The StoneGate One Day MBA Program is a business boot camp
designed for both owner-managers of private businesses and their
professional advisors and providers, such as lawyers, IT
professionals, business lenders, and media sales
representatives.
Mr. Hartstone co-founded StoneGate’s predecessor firm, Hartstone
& Dickstein Incorporated, in 1982 when he redirected his career
from the practice of law to private investment and merchant
banking. Since that time, Mr. Hartstone has been responsible for
engineering billions of dollars of M&A and financing
transactions involving hundreds of businesses in numerous
industries. Mr. Hartstone provides clients with strategic,
management, and operating consulting, as well as transactional
structuring advice and execution. A substantial portion of Mr.
Hartstone’s activities have involved transitioning companies.
Those activities have included new venture start-ups; business
ramp-ups; companies engaged in major acquisitions; workouts,
turnarounds and restructurings; and, crisis management
situations.
From 2014-2019, Mr. Hartstone also served as
Emtrepreneur-In-Residence and counsel at Cohn Birnbaum & Shea P.C. (CB&S)
in Hartford, Connecticut. In that capacity, Mr. Hartstone provided full
business analysis, strategic business advice, start-up, ramp-up,
and operating advice to business clients participating in the
affiliated, Accelerated Ventures program. In that regard, he
provided partner companies with the business guidance needed to succeed and accelerate their
growth. Accelerated Ventures served as a seasoned business
partner, adding the experience required to create a company
ready for investment.
For two years prior to working with CB&S, under a consulting
arrangement with StoneGate, Mr. Hartstone served as the EIR at
The IP Factory, Inc. (IPF), a non-profit corporation promoted by
the State of Connecticut. IPF sponsored the formation and growth
of new, technology-based, companies in Connecticut, using
dormant or alternatively deployed Intellectual Property provided
by Connecticut’s leading corporations. In that role, Mr.
Hartstone engaged and guided student-faculty-technologist teams
to originate and explore opportunities to commercialize provided
technologies. For promising opportunities, Mr. Hartstone guided
the formation of new companies until CEOs or teams were
recruited for each venture.
For over 25 years, Mr. Hartstone also held ownership interests
in, and directly managed, numerous enterprises. In the media
area, as CEO of various private corporations, limited
partnerships, and limited liability companies, he managed over
50 radio stations in 20 markets and held ownership interests in
over a dozen television stations. He also served as the first
President and CEO of Commander Premier Aircraft Corporation. In
that role, he negotiated the acquisition of the aircraft
production assets and inventory of Commander Aircraft Company
from its Chapter 7 Bankruptcy trustee, moved all assets to
another state, and established an FAA approved quality assurance
program and new operations to provide the existing Commander
fleet with FAA certified parts and service.
Prior to his investment banking career, Mr. Hartstone was the
managing member, and head of the corporate finance and
securities department, of Hebb & Gitlin, a Hartford based law
firm that represented banks, insurance companies, commercial
finance companies, and venture capital companies across the
Nation in lending and investment transactions. In addition to
new financing transactions, Mr. Hartstone’s practice included
the representation of institutional clients in complex workouts
and reorganizations. In addition to his law practice, Mr.
Hartstone managed his firm’s growth from four to 20 lawyers.
Following the course set before his withdrawal, the firm grew to
over 50 lawyers and eventually became the Hartford office of
global law firm Morgan, Lewis & Bockius.
Before entering private practice, Mr. Hartstone was the chief
investment counsel for Aetna Life & Casualty (where he began his
professional career upon graduation from law school). There, Mr.
Hartstone had legal responsibility for the Aetna corporate
investment and loan portfolios, including closing all new loans
and investments (over $1 billion annually) and managing all
troubled assets. As Aetna’s chief investment counsel, Mr.
Hartstone managed a team of 8 corporate finance and investment
lawyers and oversaw the work of all outside deal counsel.
While practicing law earlier, Mr. Hartstone was also active in
various bar sponsored activities relating to financial and
investment transactions. In that regard, Mr. Hartstone served as
an organizer, a Founding Trustee, and the first
Secretary-Treasurer of the American College of Investment
Counsel (www.aciclaw.org). He also served as program chairman,
panelist and moderator for numerous American Law
Institute-American Bar Association programs regarding finance
and investment transactions.
Mr. Hartstone is a graduate of the Isenberg School of Management
of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst (1967), and
Cornell Law School (1970). He has also completed the Mediation
Certificate Program of Quinnipiac Law School and the University
of Connecticut Graduate School. Mr. Hartstone is an emeritus
member of the Cornell Law School Advisory Council, having served
as an active member for 20 years. He also served Cornell Law
School as a Visiting Instructor; Judge –
CLS Transactional Lawyering Competition from 2010, the
inaugural year of the competition, to 2020. While at Cornell Law
School, he was a member of the International Law Journal and the
Legal Aid Clinic. While at the University of Massachusetts, Mr.
Hartstone was Vice President of the Senior Men’s Honor Society,
Editorial Chairman of the Newspaper, Vice Chairman of the
Student Union Governing Board and President of the Flying Club.
Mr. Hartstone has served on several Isenberg School committees
and has been an occasional guest lecturer. Mr. Hartstone has
also served as a Trustee of The Forman School and Watkinson
School (independent college preparatory schools in Connecticut).
Mr. Hartstone is admitted to practice law in Connecticut and
Massachusetts and before the U.S. Supreme Court. In addition to the One Day MBA Program, Mr.
Hartstone is the author of The Way – Management Koans in
Haiku-Like Verse, a management book presenting themes of human
nature for managing oneself and others. Mr. Hartstone is also an
instrument rated private pilot (not current).
Mediation
About Us
Claudia Siegle Horn
T. Jarrett Hartstone