Kellie Bauer

Kellie Bauer is a finance executive with more than 25 years of experience in private equity finance and small-business advisory. For much of her career she served as Partner and Chief Financial Officer at LFE Capital, a growth-equity firm founded in 2001 by Leslie Frécon that invests in high-growth, consumer-oriented health and wellness companies. LFE Capital manages multiple funds and provides expansion capital and operating support to businesses with revenues in the $5–50 million range, with a distinctive focus on backing women-owned and women-led companies.

In her CFO role, Bauer was responsible for the internal and external financial reporting of both the firm and the funds it manages. Beyond fund accounting, she was actively involved on the investment side — participating in deal evaluation, financial modeling, deal structuring, and documentation, and serving on the firm's investment committees. She also worked directly with portfolio-company CFOs to strengthen their financial reporting, forecasting, and internal controls, effectively acting as a finance partner to management teams across the portfolio.

In 2024, Bauer closed her long chapter at LFE Capital and launched her own advisory practice. She is now the founder of FaithForward Finance (operating as Kellie A. Bauer, PA / CPA), a fractional-CFO and business-advisory firm based in Zimmerman, Minnesota, serving small-business owners. Her practice offers CFO-level advisory, fractional finance oversight, private-equity fund administration, and tax and financial guidance, with a faith-based positioning ("Kingdom impact") that reflects her personal mission in this next stage of her career.

• Invests through LFE Capital in consumer-oriented health and wellness companies — spanning healthcare/health tech, health & fitness, tech-enabled business services, and consumer products.
• Targets growth-stage / expansion-stage companies with existing revenue (roughly $5M–$50M), not pre-revenue seed or angel deals.
• Deploys flexible capital structures — both equity and debt, and both minority and control positions — typically in the $3M–$22.5M range per transaction.
• Demonstrates a clear, stated preference for women-owned and women-led businesses, a hallmark of LFE Capital's strategy.
• As the firm's CFO, her lens on a deal emphasized financial rigor: modeling, deal structuring, controls, and the quality of a company's financial reporting and forecasting.