Entrepreneurship Through Acquisition Program

Entrepreneurship Through Acquisition Program

Steven Kaplan

Steven Kaplan

Neubauer Family Distinguished Service Professor of Entrepreneurship and Finance, Chicago Booth; Kessenich E.P. Faculty Director, Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation

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Steven Kaplan

Neubauer Family Distinguished Service Professor of Entrepreneurship and Finance, Chicago Booth; Kessenich E.P. Faculty Director, Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation

Steven Neil Kaplan is the Neubauer Family Distinguished Service Professor of Entrepreneurship and Finance at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and Kessenich E.P. Faculty Director of the Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation. Kaplan cofounded the Polsky Center and the entrepreneurship program at Chicago Booth. He also started the New Venture Challenge (NVC), which is recognized as one of the top accelerator programs in the nation.

He teaches advanced MBA and executive courses in entrepreneurial finance and private equity, corporate finance, corporate governance, and wealth management. BusinessWeek named him one of the top 12 business school teachers in the country. Kaplan conducts research on issues in private equity, venture capital, entrepreneurial finance, corporate governance, and corporate finance. He has published papers in a number of academic and business journals. Kaplan is a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research and an associate editor of the Journal of Financial Economics.

He is the co-creator of the Kaplan-Schoar PME (Public Market Equivalent) private equity benchmarking approach. A Fortune Magazine article referred to him as “probably the foremost private equity scholar in the galaxy.”

Mark Agnew, MBA ’06

Mark Agnew, MBA ’06

Adjunct Associate Professor of Entrepreneurship, Chicago Booth

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Mark Agnew, MBA ’06

Adjunct Associate Professor of Entrepreneurship, Chicago Booth

Mark is an Adjunct Associate Professor of Entrepreneurship at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, teaching a class called “Entrepreneurship Through Acquisition.” Mark is the cofounder and chairman of Pickles Group, a non for profit that supports kids that are impacted by a parents cancer.  Prior to founding Pickles, Mark rejoined Lou Malnati’s Pizzeria in 2011 after working there in high school and led the company through significant growth for almost a decade. When Mark was CEO and President, the company employed more than 4,000 people and operated 58 company-owned locations throughout Chicagoland and Phoenix, along with an eCommerce company Tastes of Chicago. Lou Malnati’s was ranked as a top workplace eight years in a row by the Chicago Tribune.

Prior to joining Lou Malnati’s in 2011, Mark spent five years as a Vice President at Dixon Midland Company, a Chicago-based private investment firm. In his role at Dixon Midland, Mark helped source platform and add-on investments as well as provide hands-on operational duties at portfolio companies. Before Dixon Midland, Mark was a private equity Associate at Glencoe Capital specializing in basic industries and an investment banking Analyst at Deutsche Bank with an emphasis on leveraged finance and MA.

Mark has a BS from Cornell University and an MBA with honors from the University of Chicago. Mark resides in Winnetka with his wife Carolyn, and their four children Molly, Elinor, James and Henry.

Keith Burns

Keith Burns

Adjunct Assistant Professor of Entrepreneurship, Chicago Booth

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Keith Burns

Adjunct Assistant Professor of Entrepreneurship, Chicago Booth

Keith is the Co-Chairman and CEO of Lullwater & Co., a private investment firm specializing in building companies for the long term.  He is also the Co-Executive Chairman of Apex Physics Partners, the largest medical physics services company in the United States, and previously served as its President. His search fund, Seneca Creek Partners LLC, resulted in a successful exit for his initial investors in 2019 after launching a programmatic acquisition strategy that resulted in 15 add-on acquisitions to date.

Prior to founding Seneca Creek, he was in the Compliance Department at Goldman, Sachs & Co. covering principal investing businesses and also spent several years as a corporate attorney with Latham & Watkins and Jones Day.

In addition to his role at Lullwater & Co., Keith is a search fund investor and board member of PalCare and AQC Traffic Control.  He is also serves on the Executive Committee of the Board of Counselors for Oxford College of Emory University.

Keith earned a BBA from Emory University, a MS in Real Estate Development from Columbia University and a JD from Columbia Law School.

Michael Curry, MBA ’13

Michael Curry, MBA ’13

Adjunct Assistant Professor of Entrepreneurship, Chicago Booth

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Michael Curry, MBA ’13

Adjunct Assistant Professor of Entrepreneurship, Chicago Booth

Michael Curry is the Chief Executive Officer of Apex Physics Partners. He began his career as an investment-banking analyst in London with Morgan Stanley, where he provided financial analysis and project management for media and communications acquisitions totaling over $6 billion.

Curry received his BBA from Emory University and his MBA from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, where he was a recipient of both the Charles M. Harper Scholarship and the Robert Toigo Fellowship.

Catherine Littel, MBA ’08

Catherine Littel, MBA ’08

Adjunct Assistant Professor of Entrepreneurship, Chicago Booth

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Catherine Littel, MBA ’08

Adjunct Assistant Professor of Entrepreneurship, Chicago Booth

Catherine Littell is Vice President of Operations at Halstatt Legacy Partners. Halstatt is an alternative investment house with initiatives spanning real estate, private equity, sponsored buyouts, venture capital, and specialty lending.

Prior to Halstatt, Littell worked extensively with start-ups and small businesses to support funding, scaling, and growth. Additionally, she has held a variety of leadership roles at Redbox Automated Retail and Starwood Hotels International.

Littell holds an MBA from the Booth School of Business at the University of Chicago with a focus in entrepreneurship and a BS in Hospitality Administration from Cornell University.

Brian O’Connor, MBA ’08

Brian O’Connor, MBA ’08

Adjunct Associate Professor of Entrepreneurship, Chicago Booth

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Brian O’Connor, MBA ’08

Adjunct Associate Professor of Entrepreneurship, Chicago Booth

Brian O’Connor is the Founder and Managing Partner of NextGen Growth Partners (“NGP”), a lower-middle market private equity firm that partners with talented entrepreneur-operators to acquire and build great companies in growing industries. The firm was founded in 2015 on the belief that there is significant opportunity for value creation when fundamentally sound small businesses are led by the best and brightest entrepreneurial-minded operators.

Prior to founding NGP, Brian served as co-CEO and Head of Business Development of Innflux, a hospitality-focused IT service company, where he oversaw sales / marketing, business development, M&A and investor relations functions. Innflux was sold to strategic buyer Thing5 in January 2015, after 3.5 years of significant growth. Brian became involved with Innflux after acquiring the business, through his search fund Fellowship Capital Partners (“FCP”) in 2011.

Prior to founding FCP, Brian was a vice president with Equity International, a middle market growth private equity fund. Brian was responsible for sourcing, evaluating, underwriting and closing new investment opportunities, as well as working closely with portfolio companies post-acquisition on operations and business strategy.

Brian also serves as Board Member and Treasurer for Distinctively College Bound, a non-profit focused on creating opportunities for students to participate in extracurricular activities that cater to their individual talents and interests and promote continued education.

Brian holds an MBA from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business with concentrations in entrepreneurship, finance, accounting and international business. He is also a graduate of Miami University (Ohio) with a double major in finance and management information systems.

Anthony Walker, MBA ’14

Anthony Walker, MBA ’14

Adjunct Assistant Professor of Entrepreneurship, Chicago Booth

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Anthony Walker, MBA ’14

Adjunct Assistant Professor of Entrepreneurship, Chicago Booth

Anthony Walker is General Partner at Next Coast Legacy and sits on the Investment Committee. Next Coast participates in the small/medium sized buyout market by making minority investments in later stage companies acquired through the Search model. Anthony has been in the investment management industry for nearly 20 years.

Prior to joining Next Coast, Walker was a Vice President in the Global Investment Research Division at Goldman Sachs. While at Goldman, Anthony was responsible for idea generation, client engagement, financial modeling, and marketing the views and opinions of Goldman Sachs related to investments in the Chemicals industry. Prior to Goldman, Walker spent five years managing long/short equities portfolios for Millennium Management and Citadel LLC, trading stocks and managing portfolios across a number subsectors within the Industrial industry.

While at Citadel, he produced the second highest Sharpe Ratio (a measure of risk-adjusted returns) within the firm’s flagship Global Equities business unit. Throughout his career Walker has held several other senior level investment professional positions, including Vice President and Research and Investment Committee Member at Ariel Investments, and Assistant Vice President at Barclays Capital.

Walker received his MBA from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business (Finance and Entrepreneurship) and a BA in Economics and Political Science from Columbia University. He currently a Board of Directors member for eight businesses. Anthony is a resident of Austin where he lives with his wife and two daughters.

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