Alumni New Venture Challenge (ANVC)

Frank Su is the cofounder of Redhill Capital and Cofounder of TCRCure Therapeutics.  Frank has spent 24 years in the medical industry as a serial entrepreneur and veteran venture capital investor. He focuses on early medical technology investments and successfully incubated over 50 well-known Chinese leading medical enterprises, including BGI, Genetron Health, Medprin Regenerative Medical., Hocremed medical device, and Juventas Cell Therapy etc.

Jie has over a decade of experience in entrepreneurship, venture investing, product management and engineering. She is currently the cofounder of Venturous Group, a CityTech company focused on technology for real urban economy. Previously, Jie was the COO and Co-Founder of online insurance start-up Xiaobao Technology. She has also held roles as a product manager at big data company App Annie and was a software engineer at UBS Investment Bank in the US. Jie holds an MBA from University of Chicago Booth School of Business, MEng in Computer Science from Cornell University and BEng in Computer Science from Zhejiang University.

David Wu is currently a Partner of Acorn Pacific Ventures and also serves as the CEO of Taoyuan City Sports Development Foundation and the Chief strategic advisor of the PChome-eBay Co Ltd. David is also a board member and advisor to several multinational companies in Taiwan, the United States, and Singapore.

David has served as the Vice President of PChome Group, the General Manager of Tmall Taobao Taiwan for Alibaba Group, and the General Manager of the WeiChuan Dragons baseball team. David has held senior positions in the e-commerce, startup, and venture capital industries, and is actively encouraging entrepreneurship. His investment portfolio spans from Web2 to Web3, and he is dedicated to building globalized technology applications. He is also a representative figure of a cross-industry leader, from business to sports.

David holds a MS from Carnegie Mellon University.

Plato K. T. Yip is a seasoned investment professional specializing in private equity, mergers and acquisitions, and corporate management across the Asia Pacific Region and Middle East Countries. With profound expertise in strategic consulting and business development, his focus areas include clean energy, biotechnology, and environmental services.

He served as the Chief Investment Officer at Clean Energy Cluster and Vice Chairman of Elion International Investment Limited within the Elion Resources Group, played a pivotal role in overseeing a diversified conglomerate with a portfolio spanning ecological restoration, clean energy and technology, investment banking, and asset management.

In addition to these responsibilities, Mr. Yip also served as the Chief Executive Officer of the Singapore registered Treelion Foundation. Collaborating globally, the Foundation is at the forefront of developing a cutting-edge digital platform powered by blockchain technology. This platform aims to streamline global capital flows specifically for green assets, contributing significantly to the advancement of sustainable practices on a global scale.

Before joining Elion, Mr. Yip served as the Director of Environmental Investments at Olympus Capital, a leading Asia Pacific-focused middle-market Private Equity fund, where he oversaw China Environmental Investments.  As the Founding Managing Director of P & S Investment Management (HK) Limited, his focus was on facilitating funding for high-growth Chinese enterprises in the Hong Kong capital market and guiding them through the IPO process.

Mr. Yip’s extensive career also includes roles as the Head of Strategy at CK Life Sciences and as an advisor to the Cheung Kong Group, a globally renowned business conglomerate based in Hong Kong. In these positions, he successfully managed fundraising initiatives, executed mergers and acquisitions projects, and provided invaluable strategic and management counsel to portfolio companies.

Rohit is the Managing Partner at NYTCP, which is an early-stage venture capital firm and advisory firm that offers CFO/COO services for venture capital and private equity backed growth companies.  

Ellen recently joined the Catalytic Impact Foundation, a mission driven healthcare venture capital company. She has followed the healthcare industry as an analyst and institutional investor, as well as working as a consultant within the industry. She initially worked as an analyst and investor with Lord Abbett where she was a partner (investing in retail and consumer-based companies), and UBS Asset Management. Most recently she served as an executive director at Morgan Stanley Investment Management.   

Prior to that Ellen had worked in banking, at ING Barings, Chase and the French Merchant Bank, Worms et Cie.  At Worms, she developed an understanding of the unique considerations of smaller organizations and companies, investing in, structuring and negotiating bespoke private transactions.  

Ellen earned her MBA from the Chicago Booth, with a specialization in finance. At the Booth, she was a recipient of the Rockwell International Fellowship. Her BA is in economics and public policy from Duke University. She is a CFA charterholder. 

She currently serves on the advisory board of the Hot Bread Kitchen incubator, a New York city not for profit. She also is advising Carehaus, a unique senior co-housing venture led by two MIT faculty members, on healthcare and financial issues. 

Mr. Lefever joined Silver Capital Advisors as a partner in 2017 to focus on the industrials, consumer, and retail industries. Previously, Mr. Lefever was the managing partner and cofounder in 2001 of Axiom Financial Advisors, LLC, an investment banking firm specializing in mergers and acquisitions, strategic reviews, and corporate finance advisory. From 1998 to 2001, Mr. Lefever was a managing director at CIBC World Markets (formerly Oppenheimer) in New York, where he headed the Transportation Equipment & Services Investment Banking Group. His principal responsibilities included M&A and corporate finance. Prior to joining CIBC, Mr. Lefever was a managing director in corporate finance at UBS Securities in New York, where he worked as an investment banker for ten years serving companies in a broad range of industries. 

Mr. Lefever has represented numerous domestic and international clients in a variety of advisory and financing transactions with deal values totaling over $10 billion. He has completed deals on four continents. These M&A and strategic review assignments were exclusive mandates on which Mr. Lefever was the senior banker. Clients include Fortune 200 companies, smaller corporations, private equity firms, hedge funds, and not-for-profit entities. 

Before joining UBS, Mr. Lefever was an attorney with Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom in New York, where he specialized in negotiated acquisitions. Prior to graduate school, he worked in the Banking Section of the Federal Reserve Board in Washington, DC. Mr. Lefever has published in the Federal Reserve Bulletin, American Economist and University of Chicago Literary Review. Mr. Lefever earned an honors degree in economics from Bucknell University and a MBA and JD from the University of Chicago, where he was the student government representative for both the law and business schools, as well as the recipient of a merit fellowship awarded by accounting firm Peat, Marwick & Mitchell. Mr. Lefever is married with three children. He is an avid SCUBA diver and a KCBS certified BBQ judge. Mr. Lefever is a director of the Art Deco Society of Washington and a member of the New York Bar.

Jamie Li, CFA received her MBA with High Honors in 2003 from the Booth School of Business at the University of Chicago. A professional asset manager with over 25 years of direct investment experience, Jamie currently manages a multi-billion dollar international equities portfolio with an investment universe spanning across 50 countries. She has interacted with and invested in hundreds of companies from all industry backgrounds, such as technology, healthcare, consumer goods and financial services. Throughout market cycles, Jamie has maintained an industry leading performance record, generating hundreds of millions of dollars in added value. Jamie is an active volunteer with the CFA (Charted Financial Analyst) Institute, where she served as a judge on the Research Challenge, helped design the CFA exam curriculum at the Education Advisory Committee, and held frequent public speeches as a regional society President for multiple years. Jamie holds an undergraduate major in architecture and loves drawing and painting. She also enjoys contemporary music and participated in the production of a Grammy Award winning jazz album. Jamie is fluent in mandarin Chinese. She lives in New York City.

Rosana Rabiness is an impact investing leader working to close gaps in health and gender equity globally. With experience as a founder, operator, and investor, she brings entrepreneurial spirit and operational excellence as an investment manager, startup advisor, and board member. Today, she leads GWP Impact, where she partners with early stage founders building innovative technologies to address women’s health & wellness challenges. Prior to GWP, Rosana was a corporate strategist and program manager at YouTube and founded XORO Media.

Rosana is an alumna of the University of Chicago (BA) and UC Berkeley Haas (MBA).

Anjum Sayyed received a BSEE from Washington University St. Louis in 1990 and graduated from the full time MBA program at Chicago Booth in 1996.

Over the past 28 years since receiving his Booth MBA he has worked as a trader and risk manager for various banks, hedge funds, and financial analytics providers such as Bear Stearns, PNC Bank, Credit Suisse, J.P. Morgan, and Millennium Partners.  Currently he works in risk management at MSCI where he covers some of the largest asset managers in the world advising them on market risk, stress test design, liquidity risk, and counterparty credit risk.

He also has dozens of startup investments across agtech, biotech, AI, marketplaces, etc.  Anjum also is a venture scout for MBA Ventures.

He is a member of Chicago Booth Angel Network, Stanford Angels and 37 Angels.

Shubha Chakravarthy has spent over 20 years in increasingly senior roles in financial services, insurance and banking, most recently with HSBC, where she was responsible for managing credit strategy & risk for a $100 billion+ subprime mortgage portfolio to liquidation in the aftermath of the 2008 crisis. Prior to HSBC, she held multiple strategy roles in leading insurance and management consulting companies, including Allstate Financial and McKinsey & Company. She is the founder of Achiiv, focused on improving access to generative capital for women founders in climate tech, sustainability, and other STEM fields. She also hosts the Invisible Ink podcast, dedicated to helping ambitious women start, fund and scale STEM ventures. Shubha is active in advancing financial access and enablement for women founders, to help them build strong and strategically viable startups though mentoring and speaking. She also serves on the boards of two K-12 institutions.

She has an MBA (High Honors) in Finance & Strategy from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, and an MS (Honors) in Financial Markets from the Illinois Institute of Technology.

Carlos is an Associate at Hyde Park Venture Partners and has been with the firm since 2021. Prior to Hyde Park Venture Partners, Carlos was an associate at Mesirow Financial in the Private Equity Real Estate team where he focused on acquisitions and asset management. Additionally, Carlos was a Co-founder and Director at Angeles Investors and received his BBA at the University of Notre Dame.

Mia Saini Duchnowski is a journalist, engineer, investor, and a successful entrepreneur who sold her first VC-backed company, Oars + Alps, to SC Johnson. Currently, she serves as the cofounder and Board Member of Oars + Alps, a digitally native skin care brand for people who lead an active, on-the-go lifestyle. The products are made with naturally-derived, premium ingredients and are sold on Target and Amazon to name a few. The company launched in 2015 after Mia quit her high-profile job as a TV reporter/anchor with Bloomberg TV, one of the largest financial TV networks in the world.

Mia spent over three years with Bloomberg TV in Hong Kong and in New York City where she was responsible for global economic, political and business coverage. She was the first person at the network to interview the chairman of Microsoft, John Thompson, after he became chairman. She’s interviewed hundreds of CEOs and heads of states including the former CEO of Burberry, Angela Ahrendts, and Virgin founder, Sir Richard Branson. She’s routinely covered breaking news stories, such as the disappearance of MH 370, Nelson Mandela’s death, and Steve Job’s passing.

Prior to joining Bloomberg in June 2011, Mia served as an anchor and reporter for Forbes TV. She reported from the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland as well as interviewed prominent business leaders including Warren Buffett, former FDIC Chairman Sheila Bair, Blackstone co-founder Pete Peterson, former Bear Stearns CEO Ace Greenberg, SAP CEO Bill McDermott and more. Earlier in her career, Mia was a financial analyst at Goldman Sachs, working in hedge fund sales and marketing. There, she helped establish strategic relationships with hedge funds representing over $1.2 billion in portfolio value.

Mia earned an MBA from the Harvard Business School. She earned a double major from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in neuroscience and media studies, and a double minor in civil engineering and management science. While at MIT, she interned at NASA Ames Research Center doing artificial intelligence research. She was featured in Glamour Magazine as one of their Top Ten College Women in 2004.

Mia was named as one of Crain’s Magazine 40 Under 40 in 2020 and was the emcee for the 2020 TedX Wrigleyville event. Currently, she sits on the Auxiliary Board of the Chicago Lincoln Park Zoo. Mia actively interviews high school seniors looking to study STEM subjects at MIT. She is also active in the Chicago startup ecosystem and enjoys mentoring students. She loves cycling and watching film noir movies and lives in Chicago with her husband and their five kids: Tabytha, Thiesson, Kempson, Aubrienna and Sienna.

Steven Gould, MD, serves as the Consulting Director for Polsky Science Ventures and is responsible for leading the formation and launch of new science based ventures from University of Chicago faculty research. In this role, he advises faculty founders, engages the investor community, and works closely with leadership to develop future strategies for Polsky Science Ventures.

Steve is the Founder and Principal of The Gould Consulting Group, which provides advisory services to companies, universities and venture investors seeking to develop and capitalize on healthcare innovations in biotechnology and life sciences, devices, diagnostics, and healthcare IT. He is deeply engaged in the Chicago healthcare and entrepreneurial ecosystem. He is a founding member of the Board of Directors for MATTER; chair of the Advisory Board for Point B, a mentoring program formerly called Chicago Innovation Mentors (CIM); and a member of the Bioscience committee of WBC’s ChicagoNEXT. He has also previously served as a judge in the New Venture Challenge and has been an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at the Polsky Center.

He has in-depth experience raising capital for and investing in early stage companies in both clinical and scientific research in an academic environment, and as an executive for a publicly traded biotechnology company. As the scientific founder and former CEO of Northfield Laboratories, he led the company’s IPO and raised nearly $300 million in both public and private financings. Prior to Northfield, Steve was Chief of Surgery at Michael Reese Hospital and Medical Center and a professor of surgery at the University of Chicago and the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Steve received his BA from Williams College and his MD degree from Boston University School of Medicine. He completed his residency training in surgery at Yale and the University of Vermont, and a research fellowship at Michael Reese and the University of Chicago.

Chris is currently the chief information officer at Empirian Health, which he joined in 2020. Additionally, as cofounder and CEO of Goby, Chris was responsible for sales, product, and executive leadership. He grew the business from a concept built initially on energy in the real estate vertical to a disrupter in the ESG and fintech industries. The cloud based Goby platform currently processes billions in annual invoice and utility bill spend in over 100 countries, streamlining business processes through RPA, AI, all while capturing invoice data to create actionable insights. Chris earned a BS in economics from Miami University. 

Borislava Karageorgieva is a corporate finance strategist with experience in financial compliance, M&A, startup financing, and entrepreneurship. She has co-founded a couple of businesses, including a for-profit and a non-profit. Borislava is actively involved in mentoring entrepreneurs. Currently, she is the President of the Chicago Booth Angels Network of Chicago and New York. She is a Board Director and a Past President of the Chicago Booth Alumni Club of Chicago.

Borislava is an Adjunct Finance Instructor in the University of Chicago Professional Education, teaching courses on Corporate Financial Strategy and Decision-Making and Risk Management. She holds an MBA from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and is a CFA charterholder.

Jody is on a mission to transform the emotional impact of grief into a catalyst for positive change—creating connections, fostering resilience, and shaping enduring organizational cultures at The Grief Company.

As a business leader, certified grief educator, coach, and widow, Jody’s unique perspective allows her to seamlessly blend bereavement support with organizational culture while maintaining a keen eye on the bottom line. Her journey, navigating the unexpected passing of her late husband and leading ArrowStream, a third-party logistics and SaaS provider, to sustainable profitability, exemplifies this blend of leadership, management, grief awareness, and compassion.

Beyond the corporate landscape, Jody proudly served as the CEO of the nonprofit Female Strong, dedicated to instilling confidence in middle and high school girls and nurturing the leaders of tomorrow.

In addition to these meaningful initiatives, Jody extends her support to widows through “Widows in the Workplace,” guiding them through personalized Zoom coaching sessions to rediscover, reimagine, and relaunch their lives after loss.

Gabrielle is a seasoned professional at Techstars who has collaborated closely with hundreds of founders, guiding them on their journey from ideation to venture-backed powerhouses. With a proven track record of deploying over $11M across 93 startups, her holistic involvement in the investment and mentorship process is a testament to her deep commitment to entrepreneurial success. Prior to joining Techstars, Gabrielle Rudd was pivotal in the foundational stages of a startup, 17A, coming on board as the first employee and working directly alongside the founder to build the company from the ground up. Her multifaceted role encompassed developing key partnerships, creating operational processes, and establishing a robust financial infrastructure, laying the groundwork for the company’s success in the public sector consulting arena.

Gabrielle holds a BA from the University of Cincinnati.

Nima Parikh, MBA ’98, is President and Founder of Mezzanine Consulting LLC, having leveraged 25+ years of brand management and business strategy experience honed at large multinational companies such as Accenture, Nestle, Clairol, and IBM. Established in 2006, Mezzanine Consulting specializes in clarifying clients’ unique value propositions and aligning strategies and tactics to deliver customer-driven differentiators. As a fractional and full-time Chief Marketing Officer, Nima specializes in delivering immediate business impact and long term sustainable growth. Additionally, Nima serves as the current President of Chicago Booth Women’s Network and since 2020 has led successful pivots to solely virtual programming during COVID and post-COVID expanded engagement to a dual in-person/virtual events strategy to reach and serve over 13,000 Booth alumnae worldwide.

Nima holds a BBA from the University of Michigan and an MBA from Chicago Booth.

Deepak has (literally) made it his business to help others. He has spent more than two decades in Silicon Valley mentoring and being mentored by exceptional minds and has now made it his mission to pay it forward, through technology. His brain child, ProductStudio, helps several startups in USA, Australia and UK in designing, building and marketing their products.

Prior to that, he was co-founder and Chief Technology Officer of Packback (a Chicago-based startup funded by Mark Cuban & other notable angel investors) where he built their product strategy, online marketing strategy and engineering teams. Before that, he was Director of Product Management at Coupons.com where he created & grew several multi-million dollar products. It went public in 2014 – NYSE:QUOT, now called Quotient Technology Inc. He has also been a senior executive at Microsoft & Nokia.

Deepak is a serial entrepreneur and has been with three startups across stages (0-1 million, 1-10 million and 10-100 million). He has experience across domains (email, content, coupons, retail, e-commerce, real estate, maps, traffic & education), across product types (consumer, enterprise, mobile, social and platform), across functions (engineering, product management & marketing) and across levels (individual contributor, manager, director, VP and CXO).

For the last 12 years, Deepak is a mentor at 500 Startups and an angel investor in several startups in USA and India (such as TraknProtect, BlogLovin, Packback, Wishberry and Connect2India). Over the last few years, Deepak has reviewed several thousand business plans and has advised more than a thousand entrepreneurs in various areas. He is also an advisor to several startups on strategy, product, technology and marketing.

Deepak holds an MBA from Haas School of Business, UC Berkeley and a computer science graduate from IIT, Delhi, India. He is a TEDx speaker, Mensa member and has been issued 4 patents for his inventions.

Benny represents Acorn Pacific Ventures, an early-stage VC firm headquartered in San Mateo, California. Acorn specializes in seed to Series A investments, focusing on enterprise software, fintech, and AI sectors.

Prior to joining Acorn, Benny ventured into entrepreneurship in Indonesia, where he founded a fintech company dedicated to providing accessible financial services to the unbanked population. His career also includes a significant period as an investment banker at UBS Hong Kong, specializing in the TMT and consumer sectors across Greater China.

Benny earned his BSc degree from the London School of Economics and is currently pursuing an EMBA at Chicago Booth to further his education.

Ms. Miller has more than 29 years of telecommunications and computer industry experience, including senior executive, engineering management, and research roles at JetCell, an indoor wireless/VoIP company (acquired by Cisco Systems), AirNet Communications, a wireless infrastructure company, Tellabs, and AT&T Bell Laboratories.

In 2008, Ms. Miller started a west coast branch of Golden Seeds, a nation-wide angel network that invests in women-backed businesses across all sectors. In addition to her role with Golden Seeds, she also invests with SandHill Angels in the Bay Area and is a co-founder of SLO Seed Ventures, a small angel group in San Luis Obispo.

In 2011, Ms. Miller formed Brown Dog Partners, LLC to commercialize research in the growing Agricultural Technology space.

Ms. Miller has a BS in Mathematics from the University of Michigan, an MS in Computer Science from the University of Colorado and an MBA from the University of Chicago..

Charu is a tech entrepreneur and angel investor in Silicon Valley. Most recently, she was Entrepreneur-in-Residence at a $1.8B VC fund called Signalfire.

Charu entrepreneurial journey began in her college dorm room where she was building startups. She has worked at Linkedin, building a Future of Work+AI company (scaled to clients like Splunk, Twitter, Logitech, Coca-Cola). She was the founder of a healthtech API company (6M users, ~100 employees; backed by General Catalyst CEO), working with various VC funds and mentoring over 300+ startups.

To pay it forward, Charu founded Go Against the Flow in 2013 to educate 1 million women to take risks and build their own businesses. She published a book and produced a documentary film that was screened all around the world – from the Empire State building in New York to the National Gallery of Singapore. She also produced educational documentary films such as Real Moms of Silicon Valley on working mothers (screened at 1k+ locations across 75 countries) and I Want to Believe (featuring resilient founders of Tesla, Gitlab etc.).

Charu holds a BA from Mount Holyoke College and an MBA from Chicago Booth.

Tim Trampedach is an angel investor and founder of Chicago Booth Angel Network (CBAN) Silicon Valley.  Through a long career in product management at various startups, Tim has incubated, built and run various products and businesses, including gaming platforms, logistics systems and financial services infrastructure at companies like Zynga, Chariot and LendUp. He is now founder and CEO of motorsports e-commerce startup Torqued. As an active angel investor and diligence lead for CBAN Silicon Valley, he sees companies across a variety of industries and stages, choosing to invest in companies where he feels he and his network can add substantive value. Tim holds a BS in Computer Science from Columbia and an MBA from Chicago Booth.

Lynn has served as a GTM leader to B2B SaaS startups, such as Insightly and ArrowStream, and multinational companies, such as Microsoft and LinkedIn, and non-profits, such as Kiva.org. She has built, scaled and led Sales, Marketing and Customer Success teams

Lynn currently consults and advises growth-stage companies – some of which are backed by Warburg Pincus, JMI and OMERS. As a consultant and full-time leader, Lynn has helped companies grow revenue, retain customers and upskill teams.

Personally, Lynn genuinely cares about giving back and paying it forward! Lynn has a personal passion for helping under-served communities. She has advised and volunteered with JVS and Kiva.org (to name a few), and was a program manager at the World Bank.

Lynn holds a BA from the University of Chicago, and an MBA from Duke University.