Project Executive
Mike Thiessen, a sports and entertainment, finance, and facility specialist, is a Project Executive at Hunden Partners. He brings decades of experience serving the sports, meeting, and development markets. Specialties include financial structuring and placement, strategic planning and oversight, transactional representation, and project management. Thiessen has provided services for these markets’ project development needs including feasibility studies, market research, financial analysis, alternative financing structures, naming rights agreements, and strategic planning.
Thiessen’s professional business management experience includes convention, sports and entertainment project development, financing and management. His background also includes extensive work within the political system, including campaign management and congressional staff experience. Thiessen was an investment banker at a well-known, Chicago-based financial firm where he specialized in the financing of public/private partnerships and economic development projects.
Thiessen’s experience has included involvement at all levels of professional and collegiate sports facilities, their operations, and interaction with related stakeholders. In representing team owners, elected officials, financial institutions, and master-planned developers He has provided a 360-degree assessment during the life of a project, from concept to completion, and the corresponding operations post-project turnover.
He has spoken at such industry-related events as the U.S. Conference of Mayor’s Annual Meeting; Council on Urban and Economic Development; International Association of Auditorium Managers; Mayor’s Conference on Franchise Relocation; and International City and County Management Association. He also has been an information source and quoted in numerous publications including the New York Times, Chicago Tribune, Crain’s, and the Chicago Sun-Times.