UNIVERSITY GROWTH FUND - Key Persons
Adam Otterson is an undergraduate Finance student at Brigham Young University with an expected graduation of 2021.
Prior to University Growth Fund (UGF), Adam worked at Alta Global Ventures where he researched the venture capital landscape of Latin America. Along with this research, Adam worked with a team to perform analysis' on portfolio companies and potential investments. Adam also previously worked as an intern for a local CrossFit gym in Provo where he assisted with the finances and operations of the small business.
When Adam gets free time, he enjoys spending time with friends and family, swimming, reading and doing puzzles. His favorite sports are wrestling, MMA, and gymnastics. Adam loves learning and is always willing to try new things.
Adam studied at the University of Utah before transferring to Pomona College where he studied Economics and plans to pursue a career in finance. During his time at UGF, he worked on a wide range of projects and investment opportunities, including UGF portfolio companies Pinterest, Simplus, and UrbanStems.
Job Titles:
- Associate
- Student Associate
Alex was born and raised in Honolulu, Hawaii, and is currently pursuing a degree in finance at Brigham Young University. As a first-generation college student, he is driven to achieve success for the benefit of his family, associates, and community.
Alex's strong desire to expand his skills & abilities has led him to seek out experience in a number of roles. Alongside UGF, he is currently working as an analyst for Clearstone Associates, a small-scale private equity firm. Alex has also worked as a summer intern in Aetna Inc./CVS Health's Medical Economics Unit, and as an M&A intern for SymphonyAI.
Alex is passionate about the Japanese language and continuously seeks to expand his communication skills.
After spending two years in Hokkaido, Japan as a volunteer, he found great joy in learning about Japan and its people. When he's not working, Alex enjoys cooking, taking photos, and spending time in nature.
Job Titles:
- Associate
- Student Associate
Atakan studied Molecular Biology and Genetics BS in Turkey and came to the University of Utah to pursue his PhD in Oncological Sciences. Upon completing his PhD and Master's Degree in Clinical Investigation in parallel, he started his postdoctoral fellowship at the Department of Pathology, University of Utah in 2018. During his time at UGF, he has worked on deals involving companies from a spectrum of industries. These included Quantenna, Spotify, Snapchat, and Consensus. He has also contributed to the analysis of VR/AR industry and a Salt Lake-based biotech company, Veritas. UGF has been an amazing experience and an unparalleled learning opportunity for him. He highly recommends UGF to all Utah students!
Job Titles:
- Associate
- Student Associate
Barrett will graduate with a bachelor's degree in Finance from Brigham Young University in April 2022. He received the Thomas S. Monson scholarship, which is BYU's top academic scholarship for incoming freshmen. His fascination with entrepreneurship quickly led him to the venture capital industry. Through internships with Battery Ventures and University Growth Fund, he has learned how to source and analyze early- and growth-stage companies. He hopes to continue his career operating and investing in innovative businesses.
In his free time, Barrett enjoys playing pickleball, soccer, and board games. He also loves skiing, surfing, boating, and seaglassing.
Ben Dahl LinkedIn During his career, Ben has been a co-founder, COO & General Counsel of a startup, Unspam Technologies, where he co-created Project Honey Pot, a distributed honey pot network designed to identify, track and correlate spammers, email address harvesters and the like. He has also re-capped Echo Networks, a flagging dot-com, with strategic investments from massive music retailers to compete with the likes of iTunes. He also practiced law at Cooley LLP. When he is away from the office, Ben enjoys his time with his wife and kids, traveling, skiing, cooking and eating great meals.
Job Titles:
- Associate
- Student Associate
Ben Poynor is a sophomore at the University of Utah double majoring in mathematics and economics. A self-taught python programmer and open-source enthusiast at heart, he interned as a software dev at a Utah-based lead gen firm prior to joining the fund. After undergrad, he intends to pursue a PhD in economics. In his free time, Ben enjoys golfing, reading, and skiing.
Brooke Gunnell graduated summa cum laude from Utah State University in December 2019 with degrees in Finance and Accounting. She was also named the Scholar of the Year at the Jon M. Huntsman School of Business for 2019-2020. After graduating, Brooke joined Partners Group (Swiss-run private investment firm with $96B AUM) as an Investment Analyst in Broomfield, CO. She intends to pursue a career in private equity.
Brooke was the first female Senior Associate at University Growth Fund. During her two years at UGF, she lead 10 deals, including investments in portfolio companies Omaze, Pronto, and Fetch, and helped deploy $3.9M of investor capital. She primarily focused on Series B consumer products and consumer technology deals. Brooke also organized UGF's first Utah Venture Capital Case Competition, which took place over 7 weeks and involved 130 students from 4 universities. Working at UGF with some of the most incredible people she's had the pleasure of knowing was the highlight of her college experience. She looks forward to her future involvement with and support of the program that fundamentally changed her trajectory.
In her free time, Brooke enjoys hiking, skiing, and spending time with her dogs.
Job Titles:
- Finance at University of Utah
Curtis was an honors finance major at the University of Utah. He has previously held internship positions in international development, private equity, compliance, and investment banking at The Mitchell Group, Horizon View Capital, Goldman Sachs, and Wells Fargo Securities respectively. Additionally, Curtis has been an equity research analyst for the University of Utah Student Investment Fund and was the president of the Beta Theta Pi fraternity in 2016. Upon graduating from University Growth Fund, Curtis has accepted a full-time investment banking position with Wells Fargo Securities in New York City. Curtis is also a competitive skimboarder and collegiate intramural football and basketball player.
Cabell Haverty attained his undergraduate degree in Business Economics at the University of San Diego (Cum Laude). Before becoming an associate at University Growth Fund, Cabell interned as a management consulting analyst for University College London's Innovation & Enterprise Center. He has gained additional work experience from The Firmament Group, an industry-agnostic private equity firm that seeks both debt capital and equity capital opportunities.
In addition to his work experience, Cabell has received departmental honors in business economics from the University of San Diego and was accepted into the international economics honors society, Omicron Delta Epsilon. With a passion for building businesses and utilizing data-driven strategies in private markets, Cabell is now pursuing a master's degree in International Finance at Nova School of Business and Economics in Lisbon, Portugal.
Outside of academics and work, Cabell volunteers at NOVAFRICA, a knowledge center created by the Nova School of Business and Economics with the mission of producing expertise that promotes business and economic development in Africa. In his free time, Cabell enjoys surfing, spearfishing, sailing, and traveling with friends.
Cameron Wright graduated from the University of Utah and studied Finance through the David Eccles School of Business with a minor in Mandarin Chinese. At the University of Utah, he worked on the Finance Board for ASUU, helping manage the budgets for the travel committee and ASUU.
In his free time, Cameron enjoys hiking and walking his two cocker spaniels.
Job Titles:
- Associate
- Student Associate
Charlee is a rising sophomore pursuing a B.A. in Finance with a minor in Media Arts at Brigham Young University (BYU).
Prior to joining the University Growth Fund, Charlee was an analyst extern with the venture capital firm, Battery Ventures. She was a recipient of the Thomas S. Monson Scholarship, BYU's highest academic scholarship for incoming freshman, and she is currently completing the requirements for the Ballard Scholar, a distinction for work in Social Innovation. Charlee loves opportunities to travel and to serve. She has traveled to Ghana as a volunteer with Ghana Make a Difference, and recently returned from spending 18 months in Germany on a church mission. She has also worked as an intern with Cisco's Military and Veteran's Program, helping improve Veteran acquisition and retention.
Her ultimate goal is to work in some intersection of the finance and film industries- potentially on a media team at an investment bank, or in a corporate or production finance role at an entertainment company. Additionally, she loves swimming, wakeboarding, and playing the piano.
CJ Ekstrom is an Honors Finance undergraduate at the University of Utah. While at University Growth Fund (UGF), he has worked on several deals and projects in the marketplaces, consumer tech, and enterprise software sectors. He is active at his university as a Finance and Accounting Teaching Assistant. CJ joined Piper Jaffray as an Investment Banking Summer Analyst after graduation.
Job Titles:
- Student Associate
- Acquisition Analyst at NorthRock Companies
Job Titles:
- Student Associate
- Investment Banking Analyst at Guggenheim Partners
Corbin is currently an investment banking analyst at Guggenheim Partners. He graduated Summa Cum Laude with a BS in Accounting from the University of Utah and has experience in investment banking, venture capital, and SaaS (Software as a Service). During his 2 years of work at UGF, he spent time as a senior associate focusing on SaaS and IoT companies. Some of his portfolio companies include Visier, Carbon Lighthouse, and Canopy Tax. When not working, Corbin enjoys reading, scuba diving, playing basketball, and is an avid NBA fan.
David Ricciardelli is working towards attaining a Bachelor of Business Administration in Finance at the University of San Diego. Prior to becoming an associate at University Growth Fund, David was an Associate intern at the boutique investment bank, Dinan and Company. David has accompanied his work at University Growth Fund with experience in Wealth Management at Hall Private Wealth Advisors. Along with his work experience, David earned a Division I scholarship for Men's Golf at the University of San Diego and is recognized as a WCC Scholastic All-American. Outside of his work experience, David impacts the community with his volunteering efforts in the Homeless Outreach Student Transition (HOST) and Team Impact. His hobbies include professional/collegiate sports, skiing, investing, mathematical puzzles, and astronomy.
Defina Toncheva LinkedIn A teenage emigrant from Bulgaria in 1998, Defina Toncheva arrived alone in the U.S. without guarantees, but with a relentless conviction to succeed. Leaving her homeland was "much more difficult than I expected because, like most of the entrepreneurs I meet, I was focused on the upside possibilities and was really not prepared for the difficulties I would inevitably encounter in a new place". Yet, she parlayed her determination and talents into degrees at Harvard and Stanford, positions with leading corporations and a successful early career in technology investing. Dafina joins USVP from Tugboat Ventures, where she was a principal investor since 2010. Prior to Tugboat, she spent two years at Venrock, where she helped expand the firm's investments in the areas of SaaS, virtualization, security, infrastructure and enterprise applications. Her investments include Cloudflare and Aria Systems, both high flying leaders in next gen enterprise software.
Before becoming a venture capitalist, Dafina held positions in development and product management at Microsoft, where she focused on authentication systems, digital signatures and business workflow. She worked on MSN Live ID and MS Office, and co-authored several key patents. Dafina has served as a Director at MATRIXX Software Inc. and Risk I/O, and as a board observer at PGP, Imperva, and Cloudflare. She earned a M.B.A. from Stanford Graduate School of Business and a B.S. in Computer Science, magna cum laude, with special focus on cryptography, efficient algorithms and database systems from Harvard University.
Job Titles:
- Student Associate
- Honors Finance Major at the University of Utah.
He has previously held internship positions in private equity, equity research, and investment banking at Horizon View Capital, Credit Suisse, and J.P. Morgan respectively. Additionally, Diego was an equity research analyst for the University of Utah Student Investment Fund during his junior year and he served as the President of the Finance Club.
Diego is passionate about finding attractive investment opportunities by researching new technologies, new businesses, and new sectors. Diego has worked on deals in on-demand services, health care analytics, and B2B sales technologies. He was an active member on the Postmates, Health Catalyst, and Consensus deal teams. After graduation, Diego started a position as an Equity Research Analyst at Morgan Stanley in New York city.
In addition to investing, Diego really enjoys to travel, is fluent in Spanish, and has visited Mexico, Denmark, Sweden, England, Greece, Spain, Italy, France, and Belgium. Diego also enjoys to play basketball and football competitively.
Job Titles:
- Chief Development Officer of Integra
- Partner at CHL Healthcare Partners
Dr. Myles D. Greenberg, M.D. serves as Chief Development Officer of IntegraMed, Inc. Dr. Greenberg is a Partner at CHL Healthcare Partners, CHL Healthcare Partners, L.P. and CHL Medical Partners II, L.P. Dr. Greenberg joined CHL Healthcare Partners in 2004 and has led financings for 10 of its portfolio companies. He has led investments into a number of start-up and early-stage healthcare services and medical device companies.
Dr. Greenberg founded CareWell Urgent Care Centers of New England in 2012 and serves as its Lead Director. He has 25 years of experience in the medical device and healthcare sector and is active in the biotechnology, medical device and healthcare services sectors. Prior to joining CHL Medical Partners in 2004, Dr. Greenberg served as a Senior Principal and Vice President, Principal at Pappas Ventures, where he served on the Board of a number of companies and led six investments.
He is instrumental in recruiting top-notch management and setting business strategy as an active Director. He served as Vice President, Principal of A. M. Pappas Life Science Ventures II, L.P. and A.M. Pappas Life Science Ventures III, L.P. Prior to entering business school, Dr. Greenberg was an Assistant Clinical Director and Instructor of Emergency Medicine in the Department of Emergency Medicine at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Harvard Medical School, where he managed many of the clinical, educational, and administrative functions. He supervised patient care by a team of physicians, nurses, students, and other clinical staff and taught residents and medical students in a high volume, high acuity urban emergency department.
He received an M.D. from Yale University School of Medicine; an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School; and a B.A.S. from the University of Pennsylvania School of Engineering and Applied Science.
Drew Konopasek graduated with a Finance Degree from the University of Utah. Upon graduation, Drew joined Moelis & Company as an M&A generalist analyst during the summer. In addition to University Growth Fund, Drew worked at Cross Creek Advisors, a later stage/pre-IPO and fund of funds venture capital firm. Prior to UGF, Drew held internship positions in investment banking, venture capital and private equity at Moelis & Company, Peak Ventures and Cicero Partners, respectively. After graduating from University Growth Fund, Drew accepted a position as an Investment Banking Analyst at Moelis & Company.
Drew enjoys analyzing market opportunities and the viability of business models and has had the opportunity to work on and lead deals in a variety of industries including on-demand services (staffing, delivery, lawn care), sales acceleration and big data during his tenure at UGF. In Drew's free time, he enjoys playing basketball, snow skiing, hiking, and reading books on investing.
Jason Reading LinkedIn Prior to forming Aries Capital Partners with Rick Durham, Jason Reading was a partner at Peterson Partners. Jason invested in and sold numerous businesses in addition to serving on a variety of boards for portfolio companies. Prior to Peterson Partners, he held various positions at Leucadia National, a $10 billion publicly held investor in distressed assets. Jason also worked in the Technology Mergers and Acquisitions Group at Merrill Lynch and Audit and Business Advisory Services group at Price Waterhouse and is a licensed CPA and CMA. He holds an MBA from the Harvard Business School and a Bachelor's Degree in accountancy from Brigham Young University. Jason was also a major in the Army National Guard and served a one-year tour of duty in Baghdad, Iraq where he served as a company commander for a combat engineer company.
Jeff Strong is a retired consumer products executive, who is now working part time for the Marriott School to develop and launch the new Brand Management Lab. He previously held positions of global president and chief customer officer of Johnson & Johnson and executive vice president for Sun Products, the second largest North American manufacturer and marketer of fabric and dish cleaners and conditioners. He also held positions in customer development, marketing, and general management for Procter & Gamble during his twenty-one year career there. He earned his bachelor's degree in business management from BYU and his MBA from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University in Chicago. Jeff and Sara have five children and three grandchildren.
Job Titles:
- Traeger Wood Pellet Grills As President & CEO
Jeremy Andrus joined Traeger Wood Pellet Grills as President & CEO in January, 2014 and acquired the business alongside private equity fund Trilantic Capital Partners in July of that year. Prior to Traeger, he served as President and CEO of Skullcandy as well as on its board of directors. In eight years, Jeremy helped grow Skullcandy's annual sales from less than $1 million to nearly $300 million. He served as Director of Strategic Planning and Acquisitions for boutique hotel owner and operator Kimpton Hotels & Restaurants Group from 2003 to 2005 and managed his own hotel development projects focused on Marriott franchise properties from 1998-2002. He served as a Consultant for Monitor Company from 1996 to 1998. Jeremy currently sits on the boards of directors for Wilson Electronics, PurePredictive and TrueGreece, and was formerly a board member of Goal Zero. He volunteers on the loan committee for refugee microfinance agency International Rescue Committee. Jeremy received his M.B.A. from Harvard Business School and B.A. from Brigham Young University. He lives in Salt Lake City with his wife and four daughters.
Job Titles:
- Partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield
Ray Bradford is a partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. He joined the firm in 2011 and focuses on investments for the firm's digital practice.
Before joining KPCB, Ray worked at Amazon Web Services and helped grow the company's cloud infrastructure business. He led one of the core product management teams and was responsible for the definition, launch, and business growth of new database services, including Amazon Relational Database Services (RDS), Amazon ElastiCache, and Amazon DynamoDB. He is named inventor on multiple patent applications related to scalable data systems, and is excited by the opportunity for big data to drive efficiency gains and innovation in many sectors of the economy. Earlier in his career, Ray spent time at Twitter and Linden Lab (creators of the virtual world Second Life).
Ray earned his M.B.A. at Stanford University, where he was an Arjay Miller Scholar, and completed computer science coursework. Ray holds his B.S. degree in economics from Westminster College, where he graduated summa cum laude and served as student body president.
Stacey Bishop LinkedIn Stacey has been investing with Scale Venture Partners for over 15 years with a primary focus on Software as a Service and Digital Marketing. She currently serves on the Board of Directors of Aviso, Bizible, Demandbase, Extole, Lever and Sailthru and previously HubSpot (NYSE: HUBS) and Vitrue, prior to its acquisition by Oracle. Stacey also originated investments in ExactTarget, acquired by Salesforce in 2013 for $2.6B and Omniture, acquired by Adobe in 2009 for $1.8B. Stacey is currently on the board of the Western Association of Venture Capitalist "WAVC" and an advisor to the University Venture Fund. Prior to Scale, Stacey specialized in M&A within Bank of America's Corporate Development Group, worked in equity research at Morgan Stanley and began her career as an account manager at Syntel, an IT services firm. Stacey holds an M.B.A. from Columbia Business School and a B.A. from University of Michigan.
Tom is the Managing Partner of the University Growth Fund (UGF). Tom is responsible for the day-to-day management of the Fund, including deal sourcing, due diligence oversight, financial management, and monitoring the UGF portfolio. Prior to UGF, Tom served as the Executive Director of the University Venture Fund (UVF). His experience includes over 16 years with Roth Capital Partners, where he worked as a Managing Director. Tom also worked for Merrill Lynch & Co. in the Investment Banking Group, as well as a Specialist with expertise in alternative investments, asset allocation strategies and private equity. He is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the University of Utah, where he served as a member of the university's Board of Trustees; and earned an MBA from Harvard Business School.