College New Venture Challenge (CNVC)

Larry Berlin, AB ’89, MBA ’94, is a founder of Blue Point Adivsory Services, a financial strategy consulting firm for younger businesses.  He is also an angel investor in about 10 businesses.  He also is a mentor for the New Venture Challenge at the Booth School of Business.  Previously, he was CFO at Freedom Fries, a search engine and news aggregator.  He was a senior vice president and general partner at First Analysis until April 2019, where he led venture  investment efforts and provided research coverage of leading private and publicly-traded companies in the financial technology and digital marketing sectors.  He serves on or has served on multiple boards including Movero, Freeosk, RiseKit and Incapital where he served on the compensation and audit committees. His work was cited for excellence in the StarMine analyst awards. Prior to joining First Analysis in 1999, he was acting CFO at Doculabs, a Chicago-based information technology consulting firm. Earlier, he was a consultant for Ganymede Corp., an associate in corporate finance at UBS, and a member of the Chicago Board Options Exchange and the Chicago Board of Trade. He earned a bachelor’s degree and an MBA from the University of Chicago. Outside of work he curls, bikes, sails, and is a photographer. He serves on multiple non-profit boards and committees.

John “JG” Chirapurath is SAP’s Chief Marketing & Solutions Officer for BTP. Prior to joining SAP, JG held senior roles across Fortune 50 companies: Vice President at Microsoft’s Azure Marketing, Chief Strategy & Product Officer at ProQuest, and Vice President at Hewlett Packard. Additionally, JG co-founded two core technology companies and led both to acquisition; one of the companies later became a case study at Harvard Business School.

Brian Coe began his entrepreneurial career in 1995 as co-founder and CEO of Litholink Corporation, a CLIA laboratory with integrated clinical decision support software that grew to serve approximately 25% of the US urology market and 10% of the nephrology market with national payer coverage before its acquisition by LabCorp in 2006. At LabCorp (NYSE: LH), Brian was promoted to Senior Vice President and led the expansion of the programs to other diseases that eventually included chronic kidney disease, cardiovascular disease, bone disease, coagulation disorders, and diabetes as the platform fully integrated into the broader organization. Litholink’s programs currently serve ~9MM pts/yr.

Brian left LabCorp to serve as co-founder and CEO of Talis Biomedical (NASDAQ:TLIS) (FKA SlipChip), a point-of-care molecular diagnostics platform for infectious disease. He led the company from conception through its IPO, led by JPM and BAML, raising approximately $500MM in equity capital over 9 years, with an additional $50MM in non-dilutive grant funding. Brian currently serves as an adjunct professor at Chicago Booth, where he previously co-created and taught Entrepreneurial Discovery course with Prof Mark Tebbe, instructs the I-Corps course at the Polsky Center, and serves as an active advisor in multiple life science start-up companies.

Waverly Deutsch created WyseHeart Advisory to continue her work with entrepreneurs and venture capital firms which includes serving on the advisory boards of several startup companies, as an Operating Partner for OCA Ventures, and as a Senior Advisor for PACE Healthcare Capital. Prior to WyseHeart, Waverly spent 22 years as a professor at Chicago Booth where she most recently taught the Global New Venture Challenge and Building the New Venture for Booth’s Executive MBA program. From 2001 to 2021, she was a full-time coach for the New Venture Challenge, a top-ranked academic accelerator program that has launched over 600 successful companies. In 2005, she received the US Association for Small Business and Entrepreneurship’s Innovative Teaching Pedagogy award for the YourCo simulation that parallels the Building the New Venture class and allows students to develop and run a mock startup through the launch process. In 2015, Deutsch was honored with the Phoenix Faculty award for her contributions to the Booth student community beyond the classroom. Her quarterly articles appeared in the Chicago Booth Review magazine from 2016 thru 2021. Before joining Chicago Booth, Waverly was managing director of NetFuel Ventures, an internet incubator. Waverly spent seven years with Forrester Research in Cambridge Massachusetts, a leading technology market research firm. Waverly holds a BS in computer science from the University of Pittsburgh and a PhD in theater history from Tufts University

Jennifer Fried is the cofounder and CEO and Co-Founder of Flow Medical.  Jennifer earned a BA in mathematical methods in the social sciences and economics, and financial economics from Northwestern University. She also earned an MBA from the Chicago Booth. While at Booth, she led ExplORer Surgical to a second place finish in the New Venture Challenge where the team earned $50,000. ExplORer Surgical was recently the recipient of a $500,000 investment from the University of Chicago Startup Investment Program as a part of its recent series A financing round.

Robert H. Gertner has been on the Chicago Booth faculty since 1986. His research interests include strategic decision-making, corporate finance, organization structure, theory of the firm, and social enterprises. He has published papers in numerous scholarly journals including the Quarterly Journal of Economics, Review of Economic Studies, and the Yale Law Journal. He is co-author, with colleagues Douglas Baird and Randy Picker, of Game Theory and the Law. Gertner teaches courses in strategic decision-making, social entrepreneurship, and impact investing.

Gertner received a National Science Foundation Research Grant, an Olin Fellowship in Law and Economics and was a Faculty Research Fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research. He has held visiting positions at CEPREMAP in Paris, Cornell Law School, The University of Chicago Law School, and the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.

Gertner is a trustee of the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago, a national organization devoted to large-scale social research in public interest

Gertner received a bachelor’s degree summa cum laude in economics from Princeton University in 1981 and a PhD in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1986. He worked as a consultant for AT&T prior to attending MIT.

Louis Goldman is the General Counsel of Bloq, Inc., a leading blockchain technology company. He is also the managing partner of Navigator Law Group, a boutique law firm focused on corporate projects including M&A, securities, and significant work with startups, blockchain technology and venture capital/angel investing groups. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the University of California, Berkeley with a degree in economics and then earned a law degree from the University of Chicago Law School (Order of the Coif and cum laude). In New York City, Goldman worked for Cleary Gottlieb and also established a merchant bank, Abacus & Associates LP, where he was a managing director. In Chicago, he was the cochairman of Altheimer & Gray where he opened 10 offices outside of the US and managed a team of 450 people. He also was on the management and investment committees of 4 private investment funds of A&G Investors. He was a cofounder of JustWrite EMR, an electronic medical records startup.

Nancy fosters the next generation of leaders launching companies that advance STEM, health, and social good. She has advised CEOs, led growth companies, and served as a board director for public and private companies. Nancy helps startup founders refine vision, advance business strategy, drive initial commercialization, recruit management, and access accelerator, angel and venture capital.

In recent years, Nancy led university-based discovery to impact. She guided research commercialization, launched venture creation and growth engines, fostered innovative cultures, and fundraised. She has served on the University of Chicago’s George Schultz Innovation Fund Advisory Committee, Chicago Biomedical Consortium’s Accelerator Award Advisory Committee, Board of Chicago Women in Bio, as a mentor with MATTER/Chicago Innovation Mentors, and as an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at the University of Chicago.

Nancy is proud of the impact of innovative initiatives like the Life Sciences Launchpad at UChicago and the progress of mentees including CancerIQ, RetMap, Loop Health, HublySurgical, UChicagoImpact, BallotReady and Praedictus Climate Solutions.

Carl Meyer is the chief executive officer and chief investment officer of Silver Rock Financial LP (“Silver Rock”), an investment management firm with offices in Los Angeles and New York.  Mr. Meyer founded Silver Rock in 2016, focusing on opportunistic investments within credit markets, including performing bonds and loans, and distressed debt. Prior to launching Silver Rock to raise outside capital, Mr. Meyer served as chief investment officer of Silver Rock’s predecessor firm, an ultra-high net worth family office based in Los Angeles, from 2010 to 2016.  Previously, Mr. Meyer worked for approximately 18 years at Citigroup or its predecessors where he ran the High Yield Syndicate business, the public side of the US High Yield business, and the Global Distressed Debt and Equity businesses.  Mr. Meyer earned a BA and MBA from the University of Chicago.

Jeb Ory, MBA ’11, is a startup founder, entrepreneur, and investor. He currently advises, consults, and invests in seed-stage startups. Prior to starting his advisory service, he cofounded Capitol Canary (previously, known as Phone2Action) and led the company from startup phase through multiple funding rounds, a private equity recap, two acquisitions, and ultimately to exit.

RoseMary Safranek founded Ninepeaks Capital Management in 2002. The firm is a specialized investment advisor with offices in Hong Kong and North Carolina.  She currently serves on the investment committees of several different family offices. She also is a senior advisor to INDF, a NYSE-listed ETF of Indian financial sector companies. RoseMary has lived and worked in New York, Hong Kong, London, Tokyo, and Chicago since setting out from Fort Smith, Arkansas to attend the University of Chicago in the 1970s.  A four-year varsity tennis player and Illinois Small College Doubles Champion, RoseMary earned an AB in economics and an MBA in finance from the Chicago Booth.

Adarsh Sarma is a Managing Director at Warburg Pincus. He joined Warburg Pincus in New York as a Principal in 2005. He moved to London in 2016 and was previously Co-Head of Europe. He is currently a Director of The AA, Norstella, Inspired Group, PTSG, Quantexa and a Board Advisor of Visma. Since joining Warburg Pincus, Adarsh has been involved in 24 platform investments, both growth and late-stage buyouts in the US and Europe, focused on technology and data, education, and business services sectors. Notable investments include Metavante/FIS, Incomm, Wall Street Systems, MLM, EFS/WEX, Stratford, Liaison International, NEOGOV, Avaloq, and Once For All. Adarsh Sarma was selected by Financial News and Private Equity News as one of the 50 Most Influential in European Private Equity from 2020-2022. He serves on the Board of Pratham USA, one of India’s largest not-for-profit organizations. He is also a member of the Chicago Booth Trustees and Polsky Private Equity Center at the University of Chicago and a member of the Dean’s Council at Weill Cornell Medicine, which is focused on advancing the goals ofmedical research, teaching, and patient care. Prior to Warburg Pincus, Adarsh worked at ChrysCapital, a leading Indian private equity fund, and prior to that Radiowave, a technology start-up whose Series A was led by Warburg Pincus, Intel and Motorola and McCown De Leeuw, a private equity fund. He received a BA from Knox College, Phi Beta Kappa, and an MBA from the University of Chicago.

David Segura is an accomplished entrepreneur and investor with experience in a wide variety of industry verticals including media, fintech, and consumer categories among others. David has developed a reputation for being a “founder friendly investor” who adds value to company operations. A cross selection of current investments include Eaze, Grove Collaborative, Hawthorne, UsageAI, and many more. David has also previously founded Giant Media, where he served as the CEO from launch through acquisition. The company was an early video advertising exchange that included Toyota, American Express, L’Oreal, and Dollar Shave Club among others. Launched in 2009, Giant Media was successfully acquired in 2014 by Adknowledge, an AdTech platform funded by TPG Growth, JMI, and Nokia. David is currently the CEO of Glassbox Media, a podcast company and is a proud graduate of the University of Chicago.

After many years of judging and mentoring Edward L. Kaplan, ’71, New Venture Challenge (NVC), Tebbe brings a wealth of successful entrepreneurial experience into the classroom by leveraging his founding of two NASDAQ-listed corporations as well as direct involvement in numerous startup and high-growth companies over the past thirty-five years. For over ten years, as both an adjunct professor of entrepreneurship and an entrepreneur-in-residence at the Polsky Center, Tebbe aids students in their entrepreneurial efforts and helps other professors enhance their classes. Outside of the classroom, Tebbe serves as chairman of World Business Chicago’s Innovation and Venture Strategy Council, a dedicated public-private effort to improve Chicago’s economic development as well as national and world competitiveness in science, technology, innovation, and entrepreneurship.