SVF Leadership
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.
Pratik Butala (MBA ’14) – Director of Portfolio Management
Pratik is a first-year MBA student focusing on Strategy and Entrepreneurship. Prior to Michigan, Pratik was a Senior Consultant for Deloitte in New York City. While at Deloitte, Pratik held project roles related to organizational strategies, change management, and learning & development. Complementing his business experiences, Pratik actively volunteered within the NYC community, including roles as a Junior Professional Board Member at Strive for College, Career Mentor at Summer Search, and Pro-bono Consultant at Pivot Non-Profit Consulting. His interest in social ventures and enterprise arises from the belief that business, in conjunction with altruism, will change our current society from an exclusive to an inclusive one. Pratik holds a degree from New York University in Management & Organizational Behavior and International Business. Beyond his work and education, Pratik enjoys listening to a variety of music, playing sports, debating issues of the day, and laughing heartily.
Alicia Chin (MBA ’14) – Director of Fund Development
Alicia is a first-year MBA student focusing on Corporate Sustainability Strategy and Operations Management. She is passionate about using the power of the private sector to innovate and create environmental and social change. Prior to Ross, Alicia worked for three years at Viridis Strategy Group, a boutique corporate sustainability consulting firm, in Washington, DC. As a consultant, she helped Fortune 500 companies to develop and strengthen their sustainability strategies and implement key aspects, such as employee engagement and goal setting, in order to integrate sustainability into their core business. Alicia also worked at First Environment, where she advised carbon offset project developers and was a Lead Verifier for greenhouse gas inventories and carbon offset projects. In addition, she has experience in shareholder advocacy and payments for ecosystem services and is a LEED-AP. Alicia holds a B.A. in Government from Georgetown University.
Owen Henkel (MBA ’14) – Director of Fund Development
Owen is a first-year MBA student focusing on social entrepreneurship, emerging markets and finance. Prior to Ross, Owen worked with El Porvenir, a Nicaraguan non-profit developing providing clean water and sanitation infrastructure to rural communities. He both evaluated current programming and conducted comprehensive impact evaluation of 2 of the organizations 6 regions. Previously, Owen had been a Teach for America corps member in post-Katrina New Orleans, and the director of social media for a New York based legal advocacy organization. Outside of work Owen in avid traveler, having visited over 30 countries, including a 3-month, solo, motorcycle expedition through Mexico. He is a lightweight camping and outdoor survival enthusiast as well as a Nationally Certified EMT and Wilderness First Responder. Owen holds a B.A. from Vassar College.
Dan Rosen (MBA ’14) – Director of Operations
Dan is a first-year MBA student focusing on strategy and marketing. Prior to Ross Dan helped launch a baseball tourism company and also partnered with Ashoka Fellows in Ecuador to start and grow farmer-owned companies. After identifying a market need for food distribution, Dan is currently involved in creating a food distribution company that better connects Ecuadorian farmers to domestic markets. Concurrently, Dan was a market strategy analyst for Euromonitor International, consulting for clients in buyer-to-buyer and consumer-focused industries. Prior to these roles, Dan was the Alumni Coordinator at Citizen Schools, a national education non-profit, where he managed the student alumni program of over 1,000 students in the city of Boston. Dan started his career teaching English in Quito, Ecuador and as a teaching assistant for the Social Entrepreneurship Collaboratory, a social enterprise incubator at the Harvard Kennedy and Extension Schools. Dan holds a B.A. in Political Science from Washington University in St. Louis.
Will Morrison (MBA/MS ’15) - Director of Investments
Will is a first-year student with the Erb Institute, pursing a joint degree in business and environmental management. Will is interested in identifying and scaling business models and technologies that satisfy critical human needs including access to clean energy, water, and healthcare. Before coming to Michigan, Will worked at UC Berkeley’s Center for Responsible Business where he helped leading financial services firms identify new products and services that both generate business and address emerging social and environmental challenges. Wil started his career at Net Impact in San Francisco where he led efforts to grow the organization’s network of sustainable business leaders and establish Net Impact in India, China, and Europe. Outside work and school, Will advises a waste-to-energy startup in Cambodia as a member of the Resolution Project’s leadership council, bikes when he can, and eats as adventurously as possible. Will received his AB from Dartmouth College in economics and environmental studies.
Investment Circle Leaders
Nancy Gephart (MBA/MS ’14) - Food Systems / Environment, Circle Lead
Nancy is a second year MBA/MS student, interested in impact investing and finding market-based solutions to environmental degradation in developing countries. Prior to Ross, she worked throughout Southeast Asia on an IKEA/European Union/World Wildlife Fund project aimed at creating a more sustainable supply chain for rattan furniture. She led the Chain of Custody project team and, while there, achieved the first ever Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certification for sustainable rattan products. She then spent this past summer at Terra Global Capital, sourcing and developing forest projects for their investment pipeline. She has a BA in Political Science and Environmental Studies from Williams College.
Sara Joseph (MBA ’14) – Health, Circle Lead
Sara is a first-year MBA student focusing on social enterprise and nonprofit management. She is interested in public health, philanthropy, and impact evaluation. Prior to business school, Sara lived in Nicaragua analyzing the effects of U.S. trade and military policies in Central America. Sara serves on the board of directors for Third Wave, a foundation dedicated to developing youth leadership and expanding capacity in emerging feminist organizations. Previously Sara worked with the Women’s Health Education Consultants, training medical professionals in best practices for HIV prevention and crisis response. She has also evaluated nonprofit programming in service to orphans in western Kenya, created Latina outreach programs for an Atlanta women’s clinic, and taught health education classes on four continents. She has assisted with sea turtle conservation in Costa Rica, organized a day camp for Jewish youth in Ukraine, and bicycled across the United States as a fundraiser for Habitat for Humanity. As an undergraduate, Sara was a Robertson Scholar in a joint program between the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Duke University.
Ira Rigaud (MBA ’14) – Education, Circle Lead
Ira Rigaud, a first year MBA student at the Ross School of Business, was most recently a founding teacher at Ocean Hill Collegiate Charter School in Brooklyn, NY. He received his Bachelor of Science in Foreign Service from Georgetown University, and upon graduation taught second grade as a 2004 Teach For America Corps Member at CES 126. He also taught sixth grade English and was a learning specialist at Mott Hall III Middle School in the Bronx. Ira was a curriculum specialist and instructional leader At TFA’s Summer Institute, training and developing new teachers. Ira speaks French and Haitian Creole, loves a good plate of rice and beans, enjoys random geography related trivia, and swimming early in the morning (when he can). An avid magazine and newspaper reader, Ira occasionally makes his way through overly ambitious non-fiction.
Perry Teicher (MBA/JD ’15)- Urban Revitalization, Circle Lead
Perry is a second year MBA/JD student focused on combining his interests in social entrepreneurship and human rights. Prior to returning to the University of Michigan for another four years, Perry served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Kazakhstan, working with a disabled persons’ organization, as the first Fellow at Repair the World, and traveled throughout Central Asia and the Caucuses. Perry spent a summer working on the Global Legal Team at Ashoka, serves as Vice President of Detroit Nation, sits on the Steering Committee for Entwine at the Joint Distribution Committee, and as an Associate Editor of the Michigan Journal of International Law and the Michigan Journal of Private Equity and Venture Capital. Perry graduated from the University of Michigan with a B.A. in Organizational Studies and Political Science.
