Entrepreneurship Through Acquisition Program

Steve Kaplan conducts research on private equity, venture capital, entrepreneurial finance, corporate governance and corporate finance. He has published papers in a number of academic and business journals.  He was elected to the Society of Fellows of the American Finance Association in 2025 in recognition of distinguished contributions to the field of finance.

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.”

Kaplan 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.

Professor Kaplan co-founded the entrepreneurship program at Booth. With his students, he helped start Booth’s business plan competition, the New Venture Challenge (NVC), which has included over 800 companies that have raised over $1.5 billion and created over $10 billion in value including GrubHub, Braintree/Venmo, Tovala and Simple Mills.

Kaplan serves on the board of Morningstar and several fund and company advisory boards. He has been a member of the faculty since 1988.

He received his AB, summa cum laude, in applied mathematics and economics from Harvard College and earned a PhD in business economics from Harvard University.

Mark is an adjunct associate professor of entrepreneurship at Chicago Booth, teaching a class called “Entrepreneurship Through Acquisition”. Mark is a cofounder and chairman of Pickles Group, a non for profit that provides kids free resources and community who are navigating a parent’s cancer. 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. Under Mark’s leadership, Lou Malnati’s was ranked as a top workplace nine 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 Chicago Booth. Mark resides in Winnetka with his wife Carolyn, and their four children Molly, Elinor, James and Henry.

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 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.

Cat Littell is a Co-Founder of Legacy 41 (“L41”), a holding company focused on search-acquired companies. She and her team partner with talented entrepreneurs to buy, grow, and build small to medium size businesses for the long term. Cat is an active board member at her portfolio companies and supports add-on acquisitions, deal sourcing, and diligence. She also leads financial reporting and strategic operational initiatives with the portfolio teams. Previously, Cat served as the Vice President at Halstatt Legacy Partners (“HLP”), a family office located in Naples, Florida. While at HLP, Cat invested in sole-sponsored, self-funded, and traditional search entrepreneurs.

She and her husband conducted a partnered self-funded search, which led to them joining HLP instead of acquiring. Previously, Cat supported operations at the manufacturing company her husband acquired via a traditional search fund.

Cat supports entrepreneurship and learning at all levels and volunteers as an ETA advisor for Booth and leads a Girl Scout troop to support young girls as they build confidence, courage, and character.

Cat holds an MBA from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business with concentrations in entrepreneurship and finance and completed the Graduate Program in Health Administration and Policy at the University of Chicago. She also holds an BS as a graduate of Cornell University’s School of Hotel Administration. She currently resides in Naples, FL, with her husband, Matt, and their two daughters.

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 Chicago Booth 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 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.

Brian Wolfe is Managing Partner at Funded Ventures, a private investment firm, and is a retired partner at Kirkland & Ellis LLP. Brian also teaches courses on private equity and entrepreneurship at the Chicago Booth School of Business, Northwestern Pritzker School of Law, Washington University in St. Louis and the University of North Carolina, and previously co-led a SaaS “buy and build” with sale to private equity.

Brian is on the board and audit committee of Chicago Public Media, the boards of Intersect Illinois, Breakthrough T1D (f/k/a JDRF) Illinois, the Greater Chicago Legal Clinic and the Skandalaris Center at Washington University in St. Louis, and is a member of the Illinois Courts Commission and the Economic Club of Chicago.