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Senior Managing Director brings nearly three decades of private credit, restructuring, and operating experience to Areté’s on-demand workout platform
Houston, TX — October 7, 2026 — Adam Pollock has joined Areté as Senior Managing Director, where he will lead Workout-as-a-Service (WaaS), the firm’s credit-focused platform for lenders and other capital providers managing challenged, stressed, and transitional investments.
Pollock brings nearly 30 years of experience as an investor, advisor, and operator, including nearly two decades investing and managing credit from the lender side of the table. He was a founding member of Stellus Capital Management, a leading U.S. direct lender focused on the lower-middle market with approximately $4 billion in assets under management. As a Managing Director at Stellus, he held senior responsibilities across origination, underwriting, and portfolio management and led the firm’s West Coast origination efforts.
Prior to Stellus, Pollock served as Chief Restructuring Officer of the D. E. Shaw Direct Capital Group, where he led value-creation and restructuring initiatives across a roughly $3.5 billion portfolio of middle-market investments. Earlier in his career, he served in interim management and strategic advisory roles for sponsor-backed companies, was a Director at Ernst & Young Corporate Finance, LLC, where he helped lead North American transaction advisory efforts in the power and oil & gas sectors, and began his career in Tokyo with Mitsubishi Motors Corporation’s International Procurement & Supply Chain Division.
Building a national platform for stressed and transitional credit
“Areté offered the opportunity to take what I have learned from years of evaluating, underwriting, and managing complex credits from the lender and investor seat and turn it into a differentiated service for the broader market,” Pollock said. “I’m excited to join a highly respected and well-resourced Areté team and build a national, credit-focused portfolio performance and special situations platform designed to help capital providers navigate periods of transition, underperformance, and complexity across their investment portfolios.”
Workout-as-a-Service is Areté’s credit-focused offering for lenders, private credit funds, secondary buyers, and other debt investors managing distressed, stressed, or transitional situations within their portfolios. The platform provides access to senior restructuring, operational, underwriting, board-level, and change-of-control expertise when investors lack the internal bandwidth or specialized resources to manage a situation themselves.
Simply put, WaaS helps credit stakeholders determine what to do when a borrower or investment needs more than additional capital. It may require experienced judgment, operating support, restructuring expertise, enhanced governance, or a path to control. Increasingly, that work occurs outside a formal restructuring process, where speed, judgment, and practical execution matter more than process for its own sake.
Pollock is direct about the perspective the practice starts from.
We have been in the lender’s seat. We have underwritten the risk and had our own capital at stake, so we understand both the decisions that have to be made and the consequences of getting them wrong. Our focus is not process for the sake of process. It is identifying and executing the most practical path to preserve value and maximize recovery.
“I am most excited about building a platform that credit-oriented investors can use as a true extension of their internal teams,” Pollock said. “The goal is to provide experienced, senior-level support across the credit lifecycle — from early identification and assessment through negotiation, restructuring, documentation, change of control, and value creation/recovery — without requiring them to build permanent infrastructure for every situation they may encounter.”
Over the next year, Pollock will focus on building the WaaS platform, recruiting its team, and expanding relationships with lenders and other capital providers nationwide.
A platform built around lender experience and execution
Shawn Hassel, Managing Partner of Areté, said Pollock’s background is what makes the practice possible.
Adam has invested capital, navigated the pitfalls of corporate stress and implemented turnarounds of multiple businesses. That combination is rare, and it is exactly what lenders want on their side of the table. WaaS is the next step in our firm’s evolution, a portfolio approach to assisting our clients. Our goal is to apply our fiduciary leadership and execution acumen to build a differentiated, national platform for capital providers, one that helps them protect and grow value in stressed and transitional situations as an extension of their own teams. We are excited that Adam has joined our growing team.
Pollock is based in Houston.
About Areté
Areté is a leadership and fiduciary operating firm that steps into moments of change to bring clarity, alignment, and momentum to complex organizations. The firm works directly with boards, owners, and executives, bringing experienced judgment, independent perspective, and hands-on leadership when it matters most. Areté’s role is not to recommend. It is to lead. With offices in New York, Chicago, Atlanta, Houston, and Park City, Utah, the firm partners with clients nationwide. Learn more at aretepartners.com.
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Read Adam Pollock’s full bio here.
Media Contact:
Randi Siegel
Areté Partners
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