Carl Allen has spent 35 years buying and building businesses. As a general partner in a lower-mid-market private equity firm, an investor in roughly 20 businesses and the founder of Dealmaker Wealth Society, the world’s largest mergers and acquisitions coaching platform, he built his career on practice. Now he is using the Executive Doctorate in Business Administration (Executive D.B.A.) program at the University of Miami Business School to turn that experience into research.
“The Executive D.B.A. at Miami Business School was compelling because it combines rigorous research with real-world application,” Allen said. “The depth and quality of the faculty was the key draw. I wanted to work with people who are world-class scholars and still interested in messy, practitioner questions.”
Once in the program, Allen said the faculty delivered on that promise. “They don’t just tolerate executive experience,” he said. “They help you translate it into researchable questions.”
His research takes on a question central to his field: what explains the roughly 24 percent gap in returns between top-performing and average PE investors?
Answering that kind of question requires a different way of thinking, and the program has enabled Allen to do exactly that. After decades of relying on pattern recognition and deal instinct, he is more likely to question his assumptions, test for bias and look for data before acting. With his teams and portfolio company leaders, he now thinks in terms of hypotheses and mechanisms rather than anecdotes.
“It’s shifted me from simply ‘doing more deals’ to building repeatable, research-informed ways of creating value,” he said.
Of the courses, research methods and quantitative methods were the most impactful for him, changing how he reads academic work and approaches his own research.
“You’re not just ‘going back to school.’ You begin to see your own industry through a research lens, which changes how you read, how you decide and how you design your own playbooks,” he said.
A standout moment in the program came when Allen first presented his research exploring why top private equity investors outperform their peers.
“Watching them challenge it, sharpen it and help me connect it to existing theory was both humbling and energizing,” Allen said. “It was the moment I felt the full value of the program: my practical experience in private equity meeting the intellectual horsepower of the University of Miami.”
For executives considering the program, Allen offers this perspective: “If you’re a senior executive or investor who wants more than another line on your résumé, if you want to turn experience into knowledge that others can build on, this is a very powerful path,” he said. “You need to be ready to work hard and to have your thinking challenged, but the return on that effort is real.”