College New Venture Challenge (CNVC)

Carol Bramson is the founder and CEO of Side by Side, a natural pet food and nutrition company that delivers a custom comprehensive diet for pets. She is also the president and founder of TBG Capital, which provides equity capital and advisory services to companies to facilitate startup, growth and/or acquisitions. Carol earned a BS in finance from DePaul University, and an MBA from Chicago Booth.

Waverly Deutsch teaches the Global New Venture Challenge and Building the New Venture for Booth’s Executive MBA program and is a full-time coach for the New Venture Challenge. 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.

In her role as Polsky Director for the UChicago Global Entrepreneurs Network, she is responsible for helping to connect and support all of the University of Chicago’s worldwide entrepreneurial alumni. She also writes quarterly for the Chicago Booth Review magazine. Waverly currently serves on several advisory boards for startup companies as well as the advisory council of OCA Ventures, a leading Chicago venture capital firm. Prior to joining Chicago Booth, Waverly was managing director of NetFuel Ventures, an internet incubator. Before moving to Chicago, Waverly spent seven years with Forrester Research in Cambridge Massachusetts. 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 of ExplORer Surgical, a workflow management software company for operating rooms. 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.

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 Hayes is a current active angel investor who serves as a mentor to women entrepreneurs and founders of color. She also advises corporate and nonprofit executives in management and leadership topics.

Nancy was a senior executive of the IBM Corporation for almost 20 years, CEO of two social services nonprofit organizations, Dean of the College of Business at San Francisco State University, CFO of that university, cofounder of a rewards-based crowdfunding site and Managing Director of Golden Seeds angel group Silicon Valley chapter.

Nancy has an MBA from the University of Chicago and lives in San Francisco.

Coco Meers is a serial entrepreneur, angel investor, and advisor.  As Founder and Principal of Rebelle Collective, a growth lab for digitally-enabled, female-led consumer companies, Coco partners with founders through investment and collaboration to achieve early stage growth hurdles. Prior to Rebelle, her company PrettyQuick (acquired by Groupon in 2015) introduced major efficiencies to the $70B beauty services industry by offering seamless reservations at salons and spas nationwide. Post acquisition, Coco served as GM of Beauty-Booking, a growth driver within the $900M Health, Beauty, and Wellness division at Groupon.  Prior to startup life, Coco was based in Paris where she helped market and manage global brands under the L’Oreal SA portfolio. Coco is a director of the Joffrey Ballet and the American Writers Museum. She has an MBA in Finance and Entrepreneurship from Chicago Booth, and graduated magna cum laude from Princeton with a BA in English and French.

Alex Meyer is a managing partner at Origin Ventures, a leading early stage venture capital firm focused on Series A and Seed investments throughout North America. He is the founder and chairman of the Harvard Business School Alumni Angels and Entrepreneurship Council of Chicago and serves on the global board of the HBS Alumni Angels Association. He helped establish the Global Alumni New Venture Competition at the Harvard Business School, where he is an emeritus member of the school’s alumni board of directors and its executive committee. He serves on the board of directors of the Illinois Venture Capital Association and served as part of Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s tech and economic development delegations to London, Israel, Tokyo, Beijing, and Boston. Earlier in his career, Alex held leadership roles at SAP, Deloitte, and House of Blues. He is a founder and vice chairman of the board of Chicago’s Stage 773 Theater. Alex earned a B.S. in mechanical engineering from the University of Illinois and an MBA from the Harvard Business School.

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 and entrepreneur. Most recently, he cofounded Capitol Canary (previously, known as Phone2Action) and led the company from startup phase through multiple funding rounds, acquisitions, to exit.

Capitol Canary is best known for our grassroots advocacy tools, which have helped thousands of clients lead more than 100k grassroots advocacy campaigns. More than 50M people have used our software, sending 130M+ messages to policymakers.

In September 2022, Capitol Canary was acquired by Quorum.

Ellen Rudnick is a senior advisor and adjunct professor for entrepreneurship at Chicago Booth and previously served as the initial executive director of the Polsky Center. She is a successful startup executive, having served as chairman of Pacific Biometrics and CEO of Health Care Knowledge Resources. She has held positions as corporate vice president at Baxter Healthcare and president of Baxter Management Services Division, which she founded. She also has an MBA from Chicago Booth.

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.

Neal Sales-Griffin is currently the Managing Director for Techstars Chicago, Techstars is a Worldwide Network that helps entrepreneurs succeed. Techstars was founded in Boulder, Colorado in 2006 by David Cohen, Brad Feld, David Brown, and Jared Polis. Through the Techstars Worldwide Entrepreneur Network, founders and their teams are able to connect to other entrepreneurs, experts, mentors, alumni, investors, community leaders, and corporate partners that will help their companies grow. 

Previously, he served as the CEO of CodeNow, a Y Combinator-backed nonprofit that hosts coding workshops for students from low-income backgrounds in six cities across the US. Before heading CodeNow, Sales-Griffin was the CEO of The Starter League, an institution determined “to teach everyone to code,” with an innovative curriculum and strong alumni connections. He also serves as a coordinator to the non-profit International Game Developers Association (IGDA®). Sales-Griffin lends his mentorship to the Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship.Sales-Griffin earned his B.S. in Education and Social Policy (with a concentration in Learning and Organizational Change), and his Minor in Business Institutions from Northwestern University in 2009. He currently also serves as a Faculty Coach at the University of Chicago, Booth School of Business, while also teaching ENTREP 325: Engineering Entrepreneurship for the Farley Center.

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.