About

Built from inside the agency industry

About Standard Proxy

Standard Proxy is a specialist M&A advisory for the agency sector. We combine operating experience, transaction judgment, and deep sector knowledge to advise founders, management teams, strategic acquirers, and investors at consequential points in the life of a business.

Our perspective comes from having worked inside agencies, across transactions, and alongside the people and businesses shaping the market.

Our mission

We believe the middle market is where many of the agency industry’s next leaders and innovators are being built. Our mission is to help those businesses grow, realize their value, and connect with the capital, partners, and opportunities that can shape the next generation of the sector.

Our values

We believe strong agency businesses deserve advice that reflects the ambition behind them. We value independence of thought, informed judgment, candor, and long-term alignment — helping clients make decisions that strengthen their businesses, create opportunity, and contribute to a more dynamic and valuable agency market.

OUR ETHOS

We approach the agency sector as operators as well as advisors. That means understanding what makes these businesses distinctive, recognizing value before it is always obvious, and bringing the right perspective to growth, ownership, and M&A decisions that can shape both individual companies and the broader market.

Our Team

Experience across agencies, transactions, and the market.

Neera Chaudhary

Managing Partner

Neera is an M&A advisor and former agency executive with more than 25 years of experience driving growth, transactions, and strategic transformation across the agency and professional services landscape. She has held CEO and President roles at agencies within Omnicom, WPP, and IPG, as well as private equity-backed platforms, where she led acquisitions, integration, growth initiatives, and enterprise transformation.

Her M&A experience spans both sell-side and buy-side mandates. She has advised on more than 20 M&A transactions and mandates representing more than $2 billion in aggregate enterprise value, working with founders, management teams, and boards on growth strategy, capital formation, transaction preparation, and exits, and with investors and acquirers on acquisition strategy, due diligence, and deal execution. Her operating background gives her a practical understanding of how agencies create value, how buyers assess them, and what drives successful outcomes before, during, and after a transaction.

Neera founded Standard Proxy after agency founders and investors increasingly sought her counsel on growth and M&A, building the firm to serve the specific needs of the agency middle market.

Neera is a Registered Dietitian and holds an MPH from the University of Toronto, where she also completed doctoral training in Epidemiology.

Cory Salmela

Partner

Cory is an M&A advisor and executive search leader with more than 25 years of experience across the agency, marketing, and communications landscape. He founded Salmela in 2006 and built it into a specialist search firm advising CEOs, founders, and boards across independent agencies, holding company networks, and private equity-backed platforms.

His experience gives him a distinctive view into the leadership and organizational factors that influence agency value, including management depth, succession, client ownership, retention, and integration. Over two decades, he has built relationships with the operators, owners, and investors who shape the agency middle market.

At Standard Proxy, Cory leads origination and advises founders and management teams on transaction readiness, and the people dimensions that can materially impact growth and value through a transaction.

Mike Bartelstone

Partner

Mike is an M&A advisor with more than 15 years of experience across investment banking, private equity, and law, advising founders, owners, boards, and management teams on mergers and acquisitions, capital transactions, and other complex strategic matters. He has worked on more than 30 transactions representing well over $20 billion in aggregate transaction value.

He previously worked in the investment banking divisions of Deutsche Bank, Cantor Fitzgerald, and Paddock Capital Markets, advising on M&A and financing transactions across business services, healthcare, technology, consumer, energy, and real estate. He later served as Managing Director at a merchant bank and single-family office focused on private equity investments, giving him experience evaluating and executing transactions from both the advisory and investor perspectives.

Mike began his career as a financial restructuring attorney at King & Spalding and Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft, bringing an additional perspective on transaction structure, negotiation, and downside risk. He holds a B.A. from Cornell University, a J.D. from Boston University School of Law, and an MBA from the Yale School of Management.

Our History

2023

The thesis takes shape. The foundations for Standard Proxy began organically, with agency founders and investors seeking our help navigating consequential decisions around growth, ownership, and M&A. Those conversations revealed a clear need for advice that combined first-hand agency experience with transaction judgment and a deeper understanding of the sector.

2024

From conversations to practice. The thesis developed through direct work with agencies, founders, executives, and investors — sharpening a view of where traditional advisory models served the sector well and where a more specialized approach could add value.

2025

A specialist model emerges. The model expanded around a clear focus: agency-sector M&A supported by deep market knowledge, senior judgment, and an operator’s understanding of the businesses being advised.

Today

Standard Proxy. Standard Proxy brings that perspective together in a specialist advisory platform spanning Sellside, Buyside, and select Growth Advisory engagements across the agency market.

Watch Video