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Alumni Connections
No. 32 - March 2007
Alumni Connections is a sampling of alumni
news gleaned from media online and in print, including news submitted
to Chicago GSB Magazine. Submit information about yourself or
fellow alumni to editor@ChicagoGSB.edu. |
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Alumni on the Move
Aon:
Steve Ferris, ’99 (XP-68), has been promoted to resident managing director from senior vice president and leader of the firm’s employee benefits practice. Ferris is based in Aon’s office in Green Bay, Wisconsin. Headquartered in Chicago, the company does reinsurance, risk management, and consulting.
 Calamos Asset Management, Inc.:
Mitchell Feiger, ’82, has been named to the board of directors and will serve on the committees of audit, compensation, and nominating and corporate governance. Based in Naperville, Illinois, Calamos is an investment firm. Feiger is president and CEO of MB Financial, Inc., the Chicago area’s ninth largest bank.
Charter One Bank:
Scott Swanson, ’96, has been appointed president of Charter One Bank in Illinois and is based in Chicago. Charter One also operates in Indiana, Michigan, and Ohio.
 CIT Group Inc.:
Nancy Foster, ’88, has been named executive vice president and chief credit and risk officer. The commercial and consumer finance firm is based in New York.
Contrarian Capital Management, LLC:
Peter McLaughlin, ’99, has joined as director. The hedge fund is based in Greenwich, Connecticut.
CPI International, Inc.:
Stephen Larson, ’71, has been elected to the board and will serve on the audit committee. Based in Palo Alto, California, CPI is the parent company of Communications & Power Industries, Inc., which makes high-frequency microwave and radio signal transmitters for such uses as navigation, broadcasting, diagnostic imaging, radiation therapy, and Internet and other forms of communication. Larson is corporate vice president of strategy and technology at Esterline Technologies Corporation, which makes products for the aerospace and defense markets.
Decision Dynamics Technology Ltd.:
Justin Zinke, ’91, has been appointed to the board of directors. Zinke is president and CEO of the company, which is headquartered in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, and supplies software for managing business operations.
Food Concepts International:
Dennis Lombardi, ’77, has been named to the board of directors. Lombardi is executive vice president, foodservice strategies, for WD Partners, where he advises chain restaurants. Based in Lubbock, Texas, Food Concepts International is the parent company of Abuelo’s Mexican Food Embassy restaurants.
Foundry Networks, Inc.:
Daniel Fairfax, ’79, has been promoted to CFO and vice president, finance and administration, from chief accounting officer. Based in Santa Clara, California, the firm offers products and services for Web traffic management, switching, routing, and security.
Ghana Investment Promotion Centre:
Robert Ahomka-Lindsay, ’00, has been named CEO. The Ghana government agency encourages private investment in various sectors of the country’s economy.
Gold World Resources Inc.:
Brian McChesney, ’85,has been elected to the board of directors. The firm explores and mines for gold in China and is headquartered in Toronto. McChesney is managing director and head of retail structured products for Scotia Capital Inc.
Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company:
Joseph Copeland, ’95, has been promoted to vice president and general manager of the global off-highway tire business. Previously he was CEO of Goodyear’s South Pacific Tyre in Australia. Goodyear is headquartered in Akron, Ohio.
HistoRx, Inc.:
Thomas Gerson, ’78, has been appointed CFO and vice president of business operations. Based in New Haven, Connecticut, the company makes diagnostic products used in clinical pathology.
Intuitive Surgical, Inc.:
Rick Epstein, ’86, has been named senior vice president of marketing. Based in Sunnyvale, California, the company makes machinery used by surgeons, including viewing systems and carts with robotic arms.
Kuczmarski & Associates:
Richard Strezo, '88, has been promoted to senior partner at the Chicago-based innovation consulting firm.
NAVTEQ:
Amreesh Modi, ’84, has joined as senior vice president and chief technology officer. Modi will be based in the Chicago headquarters and will report to Judson Green, ’76, president and CEO. NAVTEQ creates digital maps for automotive and other navigation systems.
Philadelphia School Reform Commission:
Denise McGregor Armbrister, ’77, has been named to fill a seat on the board, pending state Senate confirmation. The commission runs the Philadelphia School District. Armbrister is executive director of the Wachovia Regional Foundation, which gives supports nonprofit organizations that help families in low-income neighborhoods in New Jersey, Delaware, and eastern Pennsylvania.
Perlego Systems, Inc.:
Frank Costa, ’77, has joined as CEO. Based in Gig Harbor, Washington, the firm helps companies put in place and manage wireless cell phone and Internet systems.
PIMCO:
Daniel Ivascyn, ’98, has been promoted to managing director. The investment management company is based in Newport Beach, California.
Rentech, Inc:
Richard Penning, ’86, has been appointed executive vice president of commercial affairs. The Los Angeles–based company makes environmentally clean fuel.
Ryerson Inc.:
Anita Pickens, ’92 (XP-61), has been promoted to executive vice president after holding various sales and managerial positions in her 25 years with the firm. Headquartered in Chicago, the company processes and distributes metals.
Seidler Bernstein Inc.:
Jennifer O’Connell, ’96, has joined as director of brand planning and strategy. The marketing communications agency is based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and specializes in health care and biotechnology.
Sunstone Hotel Investors, Inc.:
Steven Goldman, ’90, has been appointed CEO. Based in San Clemente, California, the real estate investment trust has interests in 51 hotels.
Targanta Therapeutics:
George Eldridge, ’90, has been named CFO. Based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the biopharmaceutical company develops antibacterial drugs.
Thomson-West:
Darin Rasmussen, ’02, has been promoted to director, strategic marketing. The promotion follows his receipt of a Thomson Award of Excellence for innovative pricing and service solutions for large law libraries and law firms. The company, headquartered in St. Paul, Minnesota, publishes law books and legal products.
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Alumni to Know
 Roger Altman, ’69, chairman and co-CEO of Evercore Partners, is credited with helping to drive his firm’s growth spurt, according to a January 15 profile in Investment Dealers Digest. The advisory and investment firm had its best year in 2006, the article said, as the firm advised on $197 billion in deals, including the year’s largest, AT&T’s $90 billion acquisition of BellSouth. The firm also expanded in Europe, Asia, and Latin America, and went public, raising $84 million. “We provide classical advice to our clients,” Altman said in the article. “We ask ourselves, what would we do if we were they? In a world where few practice that approach, some corporations—especially some large ones—value that.” Altman is based in New York.
Mark Carhart, PhD ’05, is called “one of the world’s most successful money managers” in a Bloomberg News story published in the International Herald Tribune on February 5. The article said Carhart is a “mastermind behind Global Alpha, a $10 billion hedge fund for wealthy clients and employees of Goldman Sachs.” Carhart and his comanager, Raymond Iwanowski, ’97, help oversee additional hedge funds, mutual funds, and other accounts, with $101.5 billion at their command. The two base decisions on quantitative analysis rather than judgment about a company’s management or products, the article said. In a rare occurrence, Global Alpha lost 6 percent in 2006. The previous year it had raked in a 51 percent gross return. Kelly Welch, PhD ’99, said in the article that Carhart builds computer models that use historical data and other variables to inform investment decisions. The article also mentions John Cochrane, Myron S. Scholes Professor of Finance, who said Carhart told him that Goldman has devised about five proprietary risk factors for equity markets.
Adela Cepeda, ’84, balances her work and voluntarism with her main focus, her three daughters. “My girls were very young when their father died. I’ve been a single parent for 11 years,” Cepeda said in a January 28 article in the Chicago Tribune about her career path. “My top priority is to mentor my daughters. I’m very focused on their academics and their business plans.” Cepeda is cofounder and chairman of Alta Capital, a Chicago-based municipal bond broker-dealer, and president of A.C. Advisory Inc., an advisory firm. She started her first company, Abacus Financial Group Inc., in 1991 with two other women, leaving her job as vice president, corporate finance, with Smith Barney Harris Upham & Co. in Chicago because “the pace of travel Smith Barney expected was too much with three children under age 5,” she said.
 In Businessweek's February 12 cover story,
William Conway Jr., ’74, a cofounder of the Carlyle Group, talks about the affect of overheated debt markets. While Carlyle traditionally was known for “turning small deals into big successes,” the article said, in the past few years the firm has been making bigger and bigger deals as financing got cheaper. “Our business right now is being propelled by the rocket fuel of cheap debt,” Conway told BusinessWeek. “Rocket fuel is explosive, and you have to be careful how you handle it.” The article also mentions Conway’s charitable side, noting the foundation he started with his wife. Called the Bedford Falls Foundation, it is named after the town in the movie It’s a Wonderful Life.
When Brady Dougan, AB ’81, MBA ’82, , takes over as CEO of Credit Suisse Group on May 5, he will be the youngest chief executive of a global banking giant. His promotion made headlines February 15 in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and Bloomberg.com, and the London Times, among other media, a day after it was announced Dougan also is “the first derivatives trader to run one of the world’s biggest banks,” Bloomberg noted. “As head of investment banking at Zurich-based Credit Suisse since 2004, Dougan, 47, has been responsible for more than half of the company’s revenue. He produced most of his share from trading.”
The Wall Street Journal noted, “Under Mr. Dougan, a 47-year-old American who runs marathons and is known for often working 18-hour days, the investment bank has refocused its ambitions and cut costs. In one move, he limited the use of limousines by employees.”
In a visit to Chicago GSB to speak to students last May, Dougan said he’d migrated toward derivatives shortly after joining Bankers Trust in the early 1980s. At the time, derivatives were a new business. Dougan said the department did about eight swaps in his first year; Credit Suisse now does that many every four seconds, he said.
Dougan joined Credit Suisse in 1990. He will succeed Oswald Grubel, whom Dougan reported to as head of equities in the 1990s.
 The online college test preparation firm, Prepme.com, is offering its course free to every high school junior in Maine because the state now requires all high school juniors to take the SAT, CEO Karan Goel, AB ’04, MBA ’06, told Associated Press in a February 1 article. The online course normally costs $300, and Goel is seeking corporate and foundation support to help pay for the annual $4.5 million endeavor, he said. “Our mission at PrepMe from day one was to revolutionize the way students learn and to make entering college less stressful for all involved,” he said. The firm took first place in Chicago GSB’s 2006 New Venture Challenge business plan competition.
Ed Howe, ’64, retired in January as chief executive of Aurora Health Care. He had overseen its growth from a single hospital to 13 hospitals and around 100 clinics throughout Wisconsin, with more than 25,000 employees and $3 billion in revenue. A profile about Howe January 21 in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel looks at the good he has done, from building a hospital that serves the city’s poor people, to spending more than $500,000 a year for 16 nurses to work in Milwaukee Public Schools, and spending $750,000 to cover the salaries of 52 parish nurses. Aurora also has had internship programs for minority college students for more than 30 years and training programs for surgical and pharmacy technologists “to help low-wage workers receive the training needed for careers in health care,” the article said.
 Johnson Kachidza, ’97, managing principal of Knox Lawrence International, LLC, cofounded the firm in 2001 when it became clear to him that huge opportunities were arising in acquiring noncore businesses from utilities, said a November 10, 2006, article in the Deal newsletter. Based in New York, his firm has invested in five deals so far, including the purchase of Consonus Inc., a Salt Lake City data center business, from Questar Corp., an electric and gas utility. Knox Lawrence plans to take Consonus public upon completion of an add-on acquisition. Kachidza said his firm has sold two of its investments and partially exited a third, achieving returns of two to three times its original investments. In headier days, utilities were buying all sorts of businesses, from cable companies to business processing firms, the article said. Nowadays, Kachidza said, utilities “want to get rid of (those buys) relatively quietly and without much fanfare.”
 Bill McComb, ’87, new CEO at Liz Claiborne, grew up in Fort Wayne, Indiana, and used his ambition, Midwestern values, and business acumen to get where he is today, said a profile of him in the February 5 Indianapolis Star. “I really believe Midwestern values are key to leadership in business,” McComb said in the article. “You can be as smart as a fox, but it’s your people skills that are going to help you build teams. I wouldn’t trade where I grew up for anything.” Liz Claiborne chairman of the board Kay Koplovitz told the Star, “Bill has a stellar track record of driving growth. He has repeatedly demonstrated an ability to develop innovative strategies to drive consumer demand and deliver superior results.”
 Joseph Neubauer, ’65, CEO of Aramark, and his family saw their holdings in the company skyrocket in value to almost $1 billion after he and other managers led a leveraged buyout of the firm, according to an Associated Press article on February 3. Aramark is the country’s largest food services company. Neubauer “amassed his holdings by cashing in stock options and using millions in borrowed funds to buy shares at prices as low as 27 cents each,” the article said. “Stock splits multiplied his shares. His stake grew with the help of a board so friendly to him, it established a scholarship in his name at his alma mater.”
 Pete Peterson, ’51, cofounder and senior chairman of Blackstone, a private equity firm, is just finishing the first draft of his memoirs, he said in a Financial Times profile January 27/January 28. Peterson was commerce secretary under Richard Nixon and has been longstanding chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations as well as the author of five books. Still he is modest about his intellectual prowess. He called his education, particularly his time at the GSB, “a thrilling intellectual experience,” but turned down an associate professorship because he felt outclassed by the stellar faculty, the article said. “They helped make clear the difference between a first-rate first-rate mind and a first-rate second-rate mind,” Peterson said. “I am probably first-rate second-rate.”
 Jorge Russe, ’95 (XP-64), is senior vice president and group leader of Physicians’ Financial Care, a private banking service and affiliate of Barrington Bank & Trust Co. The service helps doctors plan for all stages of their careers and run their practices, Russe said in a December 4 article in the Chicago Tribune. “Physicians are working in a highly regulated and highly competitive environment where they are expected to behave as business people,” he told the Tribune. But with a lack of formal business training, they can find themselves at a disadvantage. Physicians’ Financial Care will tackle such issues as medical school loan consolidations, medical practice expansions and mergers, financing of electronic health records systems, and ancillary business investments, Russe said.
 Glen Senk, ’80, president of Anthropologie, a chain of women’s clothing stores, and executive vice president of Urban Outfitters Inc., took a road infrequently traveled after graduation. He went into retail. While most of his fellow graduates worked as investment bankers, he was peeling tags off ceramics as he prepared a display for Bloomingdale’s, he recalled in a February 1 article in yaledailynews.com. “I’ve always been a little odd, but have had the confidence to follow my oddity,” Senk said in the article. “There have been times when I’ve thought to myself, ‘I must be out of my mind.’ But I’ve always just done what I love.”
Senk took the job at Anthropologie after working at Bloomingdale's and Williams-Sonoma because he was told he could run the start-up store as if it were his own company, according to yaledailynews. "We drive our business by offering fashion that is unique," he told the paper. "We'd rather be early and wrong than become stagnant."
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Submit information about yourself or fellow
alumni to editor@ChicagoGSB.edu.
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