The Social Venture Fund is comprised of a Ross Faculty Adviser and a select group of MBA students who are admitted to the fund each year. In addition, the fund benefits from the support and guidance from an external advisory Board of Directors.
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Gautam Kaul, Managing Director
Gautam Kaul is the John C. and Sally S. Morley Professor of Finance at the Ross School of Business (RSB). Gautam has published extensively on the behavior of asset prices. Gautam was awarded the Senior Faculty Research Award in 2003 for sustained, exceptional, and continuing contributions to scholarly research in the field of business, and noteworthy contributions to building and maintaining a strong research environment at RSB. Gautam has taught at the undergraduate, MBA, Ph.D., and Executive levels and in courses ranging from Corporate Finance, Investment and Financial Institutions, to advanced courses on Empirical Methods in Finance and, more recently, Sustainability. His class on Finance and the Sustainable Business has drawn special recognition from students. Gautam has been nominated for the MBA Teaching Excellence Award several times, and was the winner of the award in 1996, 2006, and 2009. He also won the Global MBA Teaching Excellence Award in 2003. Gautam was recently awarded the 2009 Victor L. Bernard Leadership in Teaching Award by the RSB faculty.
Lauren Miller, Student Managing Director (MBA ’11)
Lauren is a second-year MBA student specializing in finance and strategy. She spent the summer interning with Grassroots Business Fund and consulting with one of the fund’s recent portfolio companies in India on market development and entry strategies. Prior to business school Lauren spent over five years working at Google in Online Sales and Operations and Business Marketing. During her tenure she launched email operations in India, founded and managed an industry marketing team and worked in business-to-business brand management. Lauren left Google in 2009 to start an education non-profit benefitting low-income students in the San Francisco Bay Area. Lauren attended the University of California, Berkeley where she graduated Phi Beta Kappa and Magna Cum Laude with a B.A. in Rhetoric.
Jan Bak (BBA ’12)
Jan is a junior BBA concentrating in Finance and Strategy. He is also pursuing a minor in Economics. The past summer Jan was involved in a pilot for a new summer action learning program in consulting for BBA students. He worked with an Ann Arbor insurance company helping to develop a new workers’ compensation line of business. The project included analysis of various business models, assessment of state entry opportunities, and creation of an overall strategic plan. Originally from Chicago, Jan enjoys playing basketball, reading and working on strategic business problems. He hopes to eventually become involved in a career that combines business and social impact.
Anita Bhat (MBA ’11)
Anita is a second-year MBA pursuing concentrations in Social Entrepreneurship and Finance. She spent the summer at the White House working on energy and social innovation for the Office of Public Engagement. Prior to Ross, she was the project manager responsible for opening Wells Fargo’s first international operations in Hyderabad (India) and moved on to apply lessons of corporate efficiencies to the social sector. Most recently she worked for the Chief Minister of state of Rajasthan (India) and led financial inclusion/livelihoods reforms for the state of 60 million citizens. Along with SvF, she is currently the VP of Social Enterprise for Ross Net Impact. Anita holds degrees from UC Berkeley in Business Administration and Political Economics. She is also an avid dance choreographer, a certified yoga instructor, and a public speaking coach.
Christina Browne (MBA ’11)
Christina Browne is a second-year MBA student focusing on Entrepreneurial Studies and Finance. Prior to Ross, Christina worked at Deutsche Bank in Sales and Trading and then Equity Research. Afterward, Christina did online marketing for Pro Mujer International, a nonprofit microfinance organization for entrepreneurial women in Latin America. During the summer before business school, Christina traveled to Argentina to visit Pro Mujer’s clients and found inspiration in the ambition of these women. During the summer of 2010, Christina’s internship was with Ashoka in Social Financial Services. Christina holds a B.A. in Economics from Harvard University.
Luis Calderon (MBA/MS ’11)
Luis Calderon is a third-year dual degree MBA/MS Erb student with concentrations in Finance, Entrepreneurship and Sustainability. He is also one of four founding members of the SvF. Prior to Michigan, Luis worked for over 9 years with consulting and startup companies. He has also served as a team leader for the Wolverine Venture Fund, co-president of the Entrepreneur & Venture Club in 2009-2010 and an Investor’s Circle Venture Fellow. He is also a co-founder of Bebaroo, an online baby clothes rental service. Luis spent the past summer working as an analyst for Early Stage Partners, a premier venture capital firm in the Mid-West, and launching the SvF. He received his undergraduate degree from the University of Virginia with a focus in Electrical and Biomedical Engineering.
Nabomita Dutta (MBA ’12)
Nabomita is a first-year MBA student focusing on Finance and Social Entrepreneurship. Prior to business school, she was the Chief of Staff at Monitor Inclusive Markets – the social change practice of the Monitor Group. Her areas of focus were strategic analysis of commercially viable social enterprises with the goal of driving investment, making the market for low-income housing finance, fundraising, and relationship management with the organization’s multifaceted partners. Previously, Nabomita worked with Kiva as their representative to SELFINA, one of Tanzania’s largest microfinance organizations, where she helped the organization fundraise person to person microloans through Kiva, improve their operational efficiency, and quantify their social impact through metrics. She started her career as a management consultant at Deloitte Consulting working on projects across a variety of industries and functional areas, as well as leading pro-bono projects for non-profit organizations in the New York area. Nabomita has a Bachelors degree in Economics and Chemical Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley.
Lauren Foukes (MBA ’12)
Lauren is a first-year MBA student focusing on Finance and Entrepreneurship. Lauren has a strong interest in the role that entrepreneurs play in revitalizing urban communities. Prior to coming to Ross, Lauren worked in both the private sector and nonprofit sector. In the private sector, Lauren worked in brand management at Kraft Foods where she was a brand team member for Kraft’s flagship cheese brands. In the nonprofit sector, Lauren worked as an AmeriCorps VISTA volunteer in low-income communities of Chicago providing small business consulting services to under-served entrepreneurs. Lauren also spent time learning about developing countries through seven months of teaching English to elementary aged children in rural Ecuador. Lauren graduated with a BBA from the University of Michigan.
Dave Gioia (MBA ’11)
Dave is a second-year MBA student focusing on Entrepreneurial Studies and Strategy. Prior to Ross, Dave worked in Deutsche Bank’s corporate finance practice, focusing on M&A advisory and debt/equity financing transactions totaling over $13 billion in the consumer and business services sectors. Dave then transitioned from investment banking to private equity, joining the team at Kinderhook Industries, a New York-based private equity firm focused on the lower middle-market. At Kinderhook, Dave evaluated opportunities, executed transactions and monitored portfolio companies for the $470 million fund. This summer, Dave worked with the Insitor Fund, a social venture capital fund in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, to launch a real estate development company aimed at providing affordable housing to the urban poor. Throughout his career, Dave aspires to be involved with launching and growing new ventures from both the investor and entrepreneur’s perspective. Dave holds a B.S.F.S. with honors in International Politics from Georgetown University.
Seth Greenberg (MBA ’12)
Seth is a first-year MBA student focusing on Strategy and International Business. Most recently, Seth completed a fellowship with Lok Capital, a social venture capital fund based in New Delhi, India. Through the fellowship, he worked as an internal consultant for a Delhi-based microfinance institution. Seth redesigned the MFI’s internal audit program, conducted a thorough evaluation of operational processes and worked to implement social performance tracking. Prior to that, Seth worked as a financial analyst within the acquisitions group at LaSalle Investment Management, a commercial real estate investment firm. At LaSalle, Seth underwrote investment opportunities, completed due diligence and closed over $700M in real estate acquisitions. Seth seeks to leverage his MBA and post-MBA management consulting experience for a long-term career in international development. Seth holds a B.A. with honors in Political Science and a minor in Business Administration from Washington University in St. Louis.
Naveen Lakshmipathy (MBA ’12)
Naveen is a first-year MBA student with a strong interest in the intersection between social enterprise and sustainable development. Most recently, Naveen worked to leverage carbon finance to scale clean cookstove initiatives at Impact Carbon, a San Francisco-based nonprofit. He also spent two years in rural South India developing commercially viable and environmentally sustainable infrastructure services with the Small-Scale Sustainable Infrastructure Development Fund (S3IDF). Prior to that, Naveen worked as a policy analyst at the New America Foundation, a nonpartisan think tank in Washington, DC, where he promoted policies to expand Internet access to rural and underserved communities. Naveen holds a Masters in Public Policy from the London School of Economics and a BA in Political Economy from the University of California, Berkeley.
Hueling Lee (MBA ’11)
Hueling is a second-year dual degree MBA/MA Education student focused on education leadership and passionate about urban school reform. She spent the summer at Chicago Public Schools learning about education technologies, developing a custom, real-time observation program for differentiated instruction, and training Summer Leadership teams to use and to provide training for new assessment technology. Prior to Michigan, Hueling led and managed over 30 consulting projects, developing strategies for pharmaceutical, semiconductor, automotive, mortgage, venture capital, and medical diagnostics companies. She also chaired a non-profit board to start a charter middle school in East Oakland, CA. Currently within SvF, Hueling manages the Education Circle of Interest, Recruiting, and Associate Management. Outside of SvF, she leads the Ross Education Club as president. Hueling holds a dual A.B. degree in Government and Asian Studies from Bowdoin College.
Michelle Lin (MBA/MS ’12)
Michelle is a second-year dual degree MBA/MS Erb student who is passionate about utilizing markets and smart design to influence behavior and create positive environmental and social outcomes. This summer, Michelle interned at two organizations in Chicago. At IDEO, Michelle worked with an electric utility to research its customers’ needs and redefine its future customer relationships. She also worked on an internal initiative to explore the launch of a social enterprise incubator. At the Civic Consulting Alliance, she helped implement the carbon emissions goals of the Chicago Climate Action Plan. Prior to graduate school, Michelle was a consultant at the Corporate Executive Board where she partnered with Fortune 500 companies to enhance the productivity and effectiveness of their sales organizations. Michelle holds a B.A. from Brown University in Economics and Computer Science.
Jessica Meyer (MBA ’11)
Jessica is a second-year MBA student focusing on Finance and Strategy. She spent the past summer at American Express working in finance and driving investment decision making for multi-million dollar investments consumer product marketing. She also developed a social impact measurement tool for SVT Group and worked on internal projects for Social Enterprise Associates. In her first year at Ross, she competed in the Social Venture Investment Competition on the team that took home the Entrepreneur’s Choice Award. She also worked on a student consulting project with IDEO investigating the social innovation industry structure. Prior to Ross, Jessica was a Peace Corps volunteer in Tanzania, working with rural small business owners and teaching pre-med Biology. Before Ross, she did marketing and development strategy for nonprofits in New Mexico and developed the teacher corps at Kaplan Test Prep and Admissions. She has had an urban farm, producing duck eggs to sell at farmers’ markets and going hot air ballooning. Jessica earned her Bachelor’s degree in Biological Sciences at the University of Chicago.
Darrin Nagengast (BBA ’12)
Darrin is a BBA senior dual concentrating in Finance and Strategy. Last summer, he interned for Walt Disney Imagineering in Glendale, CA. As a Business Associate, he helped oversee the internal estimation process of the Disneyland Resort being built in Shanghai, China. He also represented Ross at the Georgetown Business Strategy Challenge, and his team placed 3rd out of 20 competing business schools. He is involved with the community service organizations Circle K and Alternative Spring Break. His interests include hockey, poker, and social change. He is interested in pursuing a career in consulting or corporate finance.
Daniel Reyes (MBA ’12)
Daniel is a first-year MBA student focused on Finance, Strategy and Entrepreneurial Studies. He is passionate about K-12 Education reform and is especially interested in the role of private enterprise and technology in driving innovation and creating disruptive change in the U.S. Education system. Prior to Ross, Daniel spent eight years with SCORE! Educational Centers, a Kaplan company, managing K-8 tutoring businesses in the San Francisco Bay Area and building confidence and delivering academic progress to over 10,000 children in his career. Most recently, as a product manager for SCORE!, he managed a science-based reading intervention program for dyslexic children and was responsible for staff training, student outcomes, instructor training and development, sales and marketing, and the financial performance of the program. As a member of the SVF Education Circle, Daniel hopes to further the impact edupreneurs can have on our school system while keeping an eye toward reform and improved student outcomes. Daniel holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Economics from Stanford University.
Mauricio Rincon (MBA ’11)
Mauricio is a second-year MBA student and holds bachelors and masters degrees in economics from Universidad de los Andes (Bogota, Colombia). As an investment banker for almost seven years in Colombia, he participated in the financial structuring of several infrastructure projects as well as advised companies in M&A processes and strategic investments and divestitures. While working full-time, he co-led the development of an education-oriented nonprofit organization in the low income districts of Bogota. This experience boosted his passion for the linkage between business and social enterprises and motivated his interest in BoP ventures.
Emily Rinner (MBA/MPP ’12)
Emily is a second-year dual degree MBA/MPP student focused on Strategy and General Management. Over the summer she completed a public policy internship at the Chicago field office of the U.S. Government Accountability Office, where she examined the decision-making process used by the Department of Transportation to award over $1.2 billion dollars in Recovery Act funds. Prior to business school, Emily worked as a program management consultant to the U.S. Census Bureau and in sales and account management at the Corporate Executive Board. Emily is interested in social policy and program management and hopes to eventually manage a large government or private sector venture working to alleviate domestic poverty and inequality. Outside of school, Emily enjoys playing intramural sports with friends, trying out new restaurants, and attending academic talks across campus.
Jeremy Schifeling (MBA ’12)
Jeremy is a first-year MBA student with an interest in educational technology. Prior to Ross, Jeremy helped iMentor, one of NYC’s largest youth mentoring programs, develop a social enterprise technology business. Before joining iMentor, Jeremy managed the sourcing and vetting processes at Echoing Green, a venture capital firm for new, innovative social change organizations. While at Echoing Green, he was proud to support the launch of America’s first public service university, as well as a nonprofit serving recently exonerated men, founded by a social entrepreneur who spent eighteen years on Louisiana’s Death Row for a crime he did not commit. In addition, Jeremy has taught kindergarten at an all-boys charter school in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn and recruited for Teach for America, helping the organization set a record of 17,000 applications in 2005. A graduate of Swarthmore College, Jeremy hails from the great city of Buffalo, NY.
Himanshu Sharma (MBA ’12)
Himanshu is a first-year MBA student focusing on Strategy and Finance. Prior to Michigan, he worked for five years at Capital One Financial, primarily in the product strategy and credit risk management roles. He also chaired Capital One’s financial education committee, managing their agenda for the Washington DC metro area. Himanshu’s interests lie in bridging the gap between business profit and social impact creation. He provided pro-bono consulting services to microfinance organizations in Tanzania, increasing their customer penetration, and also developed business plans for non-profit organizations in New Orleans, helping establish a financially self-sustaining business with the aim of providing technical skills and jobs to wrongfully convicted, exonerated individuals. Himanshu holds a MS in Industrial Engineering from Pennsylvania State University.
Jamie Shea (MBA/MS ’12)
Jamie is a second-year dual degree MBA/MS Erb student. He is interested in reestablishing the connection to our environment and communities through the development of new businesses that promote sustainable consumption or strengthen local economies. Prior to graduate school, Jamie worked on public lands policy for the Idaho Conservation League and later founded a hospitality company that designs, develops, and operates nightlife, restaurants and private event space. He has a B.A. in Government and Environmental Studies from Bowdoin College. During his free time he can be found on the stream fly-fishing, behind the turntables DJ’ing, or on the court playing squash.
Kirby Smith (MBA/MPP ’12)
Kirby is a first-year dual degree MBA/MPP student concentrating in Social Enterprise, Strategy, and Finance. She is passionate about creating impact through mission-focused investments. Prior to coming to the University of Michigan, she worked as a Senior Analyst for Ithaka Strategy + Research, leading consulting engagements that helped digital publishing initiatives in the academic and cultural sectors develop market-facing earned-revenue models and wean themselves from grant funding. She also worked for Prepare the Future, a start-up project that leveraged social networking technologies to organize education advocates in advance of the 2008 election. Immediately after college, she taught middle school English at the American School in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Kirby graduated Magna Cum Laude from Yale University with a B.A. in English Language and Literature.
Elizabeth Stamberger (MBA/MPP ’11)
Elizabeth is a third-year MBA/MPP student focusing in Domestic Social Policy, Social Entrepreneurship, and Nonprofit Management. Elizabeth started her career at Deloitte, where she was a strategic management consultant. She helped businesses to reorganize, develop business cases, and improve sourcing. She left consulting to become the Director of Operations at a start-up education company in Chicago which created experiential curriculum for grade school students. While there she became intrigued with hybrid business models that work effectively among the for-profit, not-for-profit, and public sectors, and she has spent her time at Ross investigating new models. Elizabeth is passionate about education and workforce development — helping to ensure there are companies ready for workers and workers ready for companies. She holds a bachelors degree from Miami University (OH) with majors in Business-Economics and Marketing.
Meeraj Thaker (MBA ’12)
Meeraj Thaker is a first year MBA student focusing on Social Enterprise and Finance. Most recently, Meeraj spent several years working for the Clinton Foundation HIV/AIDS Initiative in New Delhi, India. He worked for their global procurement and logistics team where he implemented strategies to allow the organization to deliver over $150 million of ant-retroviral drugs to countries hit hardest by the AIDS epidemic. Prior to that, Meeraj spent two years working for Seneca Financial, a boutique investment bank in Greenwich, CT where he focused on the restructuring of distressed companies. He has additional experience in the litigation consulting field. Meeraj holds a B.B.A in Finance and International Business from Georgetown University.
Richard Thompson (MBA/JD ’11)
Richard Thompson is a fourth-year dual degree JD/MBA student with a concentration in Finance and Corporate Strategy. Prior to Michigan, Richard taught English to high-school students as a Fulbright Fellow in Indonesia, and also worked to combat organized crime with the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime in Peru. Richard has interned with the International Development Law Organization’s Microfinance Project in Italy to analyze how microfinance institutions can be accommodated in European banking law. Richard was selected as a William Davidson Institute Global Impact Fellow to work with the Rural Development Fund to implement development projects and analyze land governance in Kyrgyzstan. Most recently, Richard was a Summer Associate in the Financial Services and Business Transactions groups at corporate law firm Spencer Fane Britt & Browne. Richard graduated Magna Cum Laude from Tulane University with a B.A. in French and English.
Ned Tomasevic (MBA ’12)
Ned Tomasevic is a second-year MBA student and Consortium Fellow focusing on strategy and entrepreneurship. He is also a duel degree candidate in Russian and Eastern European Studies, when he has set his focus on foreign policy. Ned is the co-president of the Entrepreneur & Venture Club. Ned spent his internship in Cambodia working for The Insitor Fund, a seed stage social venture capital firm, where he focused on clean energy investments. Prior to coming to Michigan, Ned held the position of director with Buxbaum Holdings, a privately owned investment firm, where he was responsible for structuring and executing strategic buyouts, operational improvements, and exits in the firms turnaround portfolio, both in the US and Latin America. Prior to joining Buxbaum, Ned was a consultant in the Corporate Finance and Restructuring Group at FTI Consulting, Inc. in Los Angeles, where he assisted in numerous Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganizations. Formerly a resident of Manhattan Beach, CA, Ned earned a dual degree in business and psychology from the University of Minnesota in 2002.
Emily Tsiang (MBA ’11)
Emily is a second-year MBA student focusing on Organizational Strategy and Innovation. Prior to Ross, Emily spent several years as a management consultant for the Initiative for a Competitive Inner City, a social enterprise founded by Michael Porter. In the city advisory practice, her consensus-building skills were critical to successfully driving a $4B economic development strategy for Newark, New Jersey. Based on her efforts, she was selected as a Fellow for Emerging Leaders in Public Service and recruited to Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s Administration where she implemented the aggressive transformation of New York City’s workforce development services. Outside of SvF, she is founder of the Design + Business and Yoga Club, and serves on the Net Impact Leadership Board. She graduated from UCLA where she earned a dual degree in Economics & East Asian Studies with a concentration in Community Education Leadership.
Sanjay Vachani (MBA ’12)
Sanjay is a first-year MBA student focusing on Strategy and Finance. Prior to Ross, Sanjay leveraged his passion for education and entrepreneurial acumen to transform a struggling supplemental education franchise in the San Francisco Bay Area. During his five-year tenure of ownership, he directed the implementation of over 1000 individualized academic plans across K-12 and standardized test preparation education while returning the center to profitability. He utilized his educational knowledge to help the Walnut Creek Chamber Education Committee improve the value and quality of the local education system through community events. He additionally helped a local Green Committee implement an environmental program that seeks to educate and recognize local businesses for adopting green practices. Sanjay maintains the strong belief that the catalyst for social change is and will forever be business and is therefore looking to explore the intersection of social impact and financial returns, specifically in the education and environment sectors. Sanjay holds a B.S. in Applied Economics and Management from Cornell University.
Kevin Zussman (BBA ’12)
Kevin is a BBA Junior pursuing concentrations in Finance and Accounting with a Minor in Program in the Environment. He spent this past summer living in Israel and interning for ARBA Finance, a boutique merchant bank in Tel Aviv. At ARBA, Kevin analyzed international high-tech companies in the broadcasting industry and evaluated potential venture investments. He experienced Israeli entrepreneurship firsthand and networked with venture capitalists and entrepreneurs in Jerusalem, Haifa and Tel Aviv. Kevin is also a member of the University of Michigan Men’s Club Soccer team.
