Van Jones, MBA ’14
Deal Lead and Vice President, Wellington Management
Van is a deal lead and vice president at Wellington Management. Previously, he was a partner at Drive Capital, a firm based in Ohio and the largest Midwest-based venture capital firm with over $1.2 billion in AUM. Van invests across verticals with a particular focus on enterprise SaaS and cloud-based data infrastructure. At Drive, Van most recently lead and now sits as a board observer in the Series A investment in Meroxa, a real-time in-stream change data capture platform. Prior to Drive Capital, Van co-founded Hello Tractor an agricultural equipment SaaS platform based in Nigeria and which now operates across Africa and South Asia. While at Chicago Booth, Van launched Hello Tractor and won the 2014 Social New Venture Challenge.
Van began his career in China advising large multi-national corporations on leveraging predictive analytics to de-risk new product launches within emerging markets. Van was honored by the Chicago Booth community in 2018 as the recipient of the Chicago Booth Young Alumni Distinguished Alumni Award and currently sits on the Distinguished Alumni Awards Selection Committee. Van also serves on the Business Advisory Council for the University of Cincinnati’s Lindner College of Business. Van earned his bachelor’s degree from the University of Cincinnati and an MBA from Chicago Booth.