Investors-in-Residence

Duane Jackson is the founder of Author Capital Partners, a private investment firm that provides long-term, flexible capital and strategic resources to founder- and family-led businesses.

Duane previously worked at BDT Capital Partners, a private investment firm focused on founder- and family-led businesses. At BDT, he had broad responsibilities including sourcing and executing transactions, leading research initiatives, and developing the firm’s approach to ESG. Duane also served as a Toigo Private Equity Fellow at Vista Equity Partners, a private equity firm focused on software and technology businesses. Duane first learned to creatively address complex challenges as a member of the Chief Investment Office for TARP at the U.S. Treasury Department during the global financial crisis, prior to which, Duane served as an investment banker at Merrill Lynch. Duane earned an MBA from Harvard Business School where he was an MLT Fellow and earned a BBA from the George Washington University. He proudly serves as an investor-in-residence at Chicago Booth and serves as a trustee at Lake Forest Academy.

Tim has been involved in private equity for nearly three decades in senior leadership and investment management roles with Allstate Insurance Company, Heller Financial, GE Capital, and Adams Street Partners. Tim began his career with Goldman Sachs in Chicago where he traded over-the-counter (OTC) securities and managed the office’s OTC market expansion efforts.  He went on to manage billions of dollars in private equity related investment programs and to complete hundreds of successful international partnership and direct equity and fixed income investments. He is proud of an extensive global network of general and limited partner relationships he developed throughout his career as a result of his personable interaction style, objectivity and candor, and desire to help others succeed. His vast industry knowledge and experiences transcend finance, investments, law, international business, and complex capital formation structures.

At the age of 54, Tim achieved a life-long goal when he received his PhD in organizational psychology from Northcentral University with a dissertation topic focused on how private companies become entrepreneurially oriented. He has an insatiable appetite for continuously learning as evidenced by, in addition to his psychology doctorate, an undergraduate degree in economics, magna cum laude, from Dominican University; a law degree, summa cum laude, from The John Marshall Law School; and an MBA in economics and international business from Chicago Booth. Tim has been an adjunct professor of undergraduate and graduate courses in finance, economics, and ethics, and is a writer and speaker on finance, leadership development, decision theory, organizational culture, and legal topics.

Tim retired from active private equity investment activities in 2013. He now consults in the areas of leadership development and private equity firm operational and organizational optimization, in addition to managing his family office and philanthropic endeavors.

Chris McGowan is the general partner of CJM Ventures (CJMV), a Chicago growth equity and private equity investment firm. McGowan’s private equity career began 29 years ago with AEA Investors in New York City, after earning an undergraduate degree in theoretical mathematics from Columbia University’s College of Arts and Sciences, and following two years of mergers and acquisitions training at Morgan Stanley. After completing an MBA at Harvard Business School, he joined Madison Dearborn Partners (MDP), where he co-headed their basic industries practice for the last five years of his 12-year career there. At MDP, he oversaw more than $2 billion of equity investments focused on buyouts and growth equity globally in the industrial, consumer, and energy and power sectors. In 2011, with the help of MDP leadership and mentors, McGowan formed CJMV, an investment firm focused on buyouts and growth equity investments in companies located near Chicago and London. McGowan is an active angel investor and currently serves as chairman of the limited partner advisory committee for Hyde Park Venture Partners Fund I (and a member of Fund II, III and IV’s boards), and as chairman of the advisory board for Valley Growth Ventures, and was formerly on the board of directors and portfolio advisory board of Hyde Park Angels.

Dipa Mehta leads the Corporate Venture Fund at Advocate Aurora Health, a large health system in the Midwest. She focuses her time on fund and direct investments into healthcare companies that are strategically relevant to the provider system. Mehta was formerly a managing director at Sandbox Industries, a Chicago-based venture capital firm which is the investment manager to the Blue Venture Fund, a collaborative investment platform with the BCBS plans. Prior to Sandbox, she was at Amgen Ventures, the Corporate Venture Fund of Amgen. At Amgen, Mehta worked closely with the global commercial and marketing organizations to identify companies in the digital health space for their products. She started her career in the Global Healthcare Group at UBS and the Healthcare Fund at Paul Capital Partners, which invested in late-stage pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies. She earned a bachelor’s of science degree from the New York University Stern School of Business, an MBA from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business where she received the Chicago Booth Leadership Award of Distinction, and is also a Kauffman Fellow.