Patrick Draut

About Patrick Draut

Patrick Cornell Draut is an enterprise executive with over 20 years of experience leading platform growth, operational restructuring, and value creation across transportation and middle-market businesses.Patrick currently serves as Executive Vice President of Corporate Development at KLFM Holdings, where he has been instrumental in scaling a specialized transportation platform to over $65M in revenue and over $8min EBITDA. His work has focused on restoring margin discipline, aligning leadership accountability, and positioning the business for an anticipated institutional transaction.He has led corporatel restructuring initiatives, including executive realignment, finance function rebuilds, and implementation of disciplined reporting and operating cadence. These efforts stabilized performance and restored profitability following periods of margin deterioration.In parallel, Patrick has led acquisition sourcing, underwriting, and execution across lower middle-market targets, structuring transactions and negotiating directly with lending partners. He has developed and implemented integration and governance frameworks designed to preserve continuity, centralize financial oversight, and drive scalable EBITDA growth.Earlier in his career, Patrick was part of the leadership team at a private equity-backed dental services organization (DSO), contributing to its expansion from 8 to 31 locations through acquisition-driven growth, centralized analytics, and operational standardization.Over the past five years, Patrick founded and built an inner-city youth sports program, developing a structured, high-performance organization across baseball and football. The program produced multiple state championship teams and contributed to the assembly of the 2023 11U Pop Warner National Championship team, widely regarded as one of the most dominant in the program’s history.This experience reflects Patrick’s leadership philosophy centered on simplicity, accountability, discipline, and performance under pressure, principles he applies consistently in both organizational and team environments.Patrick brings an operator-first mindset with deep experience in financial oversight, lender relations, and executing growth strategies in complex, transitional environments.

Experience

1. Executive Vice President of Corporate Development

   K&l Freight Management

   Dec 2016 — Present · Chicago, IL, US

   Founder-owned asset-light transportation provider servicing food, manufacturing, and healthcare end markets. Constructed data centric approach to operational process and executive decision-making, with focus on expedited, high-touch, full-truckload, and specialty equipment movements. Portfolio Management and Operations• Increased annual revenue on the existing portfolio of business 5x ($10mm to $50mm) in first 24 months, improving EBITDA by 6x.• Developed Pricing Department architecture centralizing key inputs; improved Opportunity Rate (4x), Win Rate (18%), Load Count (3x), while maintaining portfolio margin percentage.• Restructured existing account management apparatus to properly incentivize account growth and enhance operational performance.$5mm of annual Gross Profit improvement across 3 enterprise customers.• Engineered and introduced an asset-based dedicated solution at corporate level for Fortune 500 customer, increasing annual customer profitability from $1mm in 2018 to $3.8mm in 2022.Corporate Development (Acquisition)• Took ownership of inorganic growth initiative resulting in a completed and transitioned acquisition, securing an enterprise value pickup of $5mm.• Built and led team sourcing and vetting over 100 new deal opportunities in 6-month period.• Work with internal and external team creating financial models, deal structures, legal, due diligence, and negotiated with seller to close at 1x EBITDA.Corporate Development (Integration)• Built and led integration team and process post-closing. Guided IT, Finance, Operations and HR roles through successful transition adding 17% EBITDA to existing platform.• Realized 55% gain in average monthly Gross Profitability within first 90 days of transaction.• Through hard synergies, reduced cost structure by ~20% within first 60 days, while increasing revenue and load count.

Education

• D'Amore-McKim School of Business at Northeastern University

  Master of Business Administration - MBA

• Illinois State University

  B.S, Commuications

  1998 — 2002

Skills

• Analytics
• Business Strategy
• Collaborative Problem Solving
• Entrepreneurship
• Emerging Technologies
• Sales Management
• Customer Service
• Project Management
• Strategic Communications
• Monetization
• Management Consulting
• Interactive Gaming
• Management
• Business Process
• Marketing
• Finance
• Start-Ups
• Marketing Communications
• Innovation Management
• New Business Development
• Business Development
• Mobile Applications
• Marketing Strategy
• Strategy
• Sales
• Leadership
• Iphone
• Negotiation