our team
Borislava Karageorgieva, MBA'04, CFA, PAHM
Board President
Borislava Karageorgieva is a corporate finance expert with experience in financial compliance and regulatory analysis, mergers and acquisitions, angel investing and entrepreneurship, and board governance. She has worked both in early-stage and in mature companies, and internationally. Borislava is a Board Director and Past President of the Chicago Booth Alumni Club of Chicago. She judges, coaches, and mentors entrepreneurs in the alumni and the global new venture challenge tracks in the accelerator program of the Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation at the University of Chicago. She has co-founded a couple of businesses, including a for-profit and a non-profit. Borislava is an Adjunct Instructor in the University of Chicago Professional Education, teaching courses on Corporate Financial Strategy and Decision-Making and Risk Management. She received her MBA from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, an undergraduate finance degree in Sofia, Bulgaria, and is a CFA charterholder.
Greg Thomas, BA’81, MD’85, MBA’96
Senior Advisor & Co-founder
Greg is an alumnus of the College, Pritzker School of Medicine, and Chicago Booth. Following his studies at the University of Chicago and after completing an internship in general surgery, a residency in anesthesiology, and a fellowship in chronic pain management, Greg elected to go into the family businesses. He now leads a multi-state enterprise that includes 11 car dealerships in Indiana, Illinois, and Florida. He is also an active investor in multiple commercial real estate projects, insurance and reinsurance firms, and finance companies. Greg is passionate about the University of Chicago Medicine and is a dedicated volunteer to the broader University. At Chicago Booth, he is a member of the Chicago Club and CEO Roundtable and also serves as a director of the Booth Alumni Board. His volunteerism with the College includes serving as co-chair of his College Reunion. In addition, Greg is a member of and investor in Hyde Park Angels. Greg coached four teams in the Polsky Alumni New Venture Challenge and was a judge in the semi-finals.
Bill Roule, BA'79, MBA’81
Treasurer
Bill Roule is an alumnus of both the College and Chicago Booth (or the Graduate School of Business as it was known back then). He is a retired corporate tax expert with experience in both public accounting and private industry. His areas of professional focus include planning, compliance, and audits for all areas of corporate taxation: Federal and state income, franchise, property, payroll, sales and use, etc. He had also implemented the financial accounting for income taxes for Inland Steel Industries, a then Fortune 500 company. He is currently Treasurer of the Chicago Booth Alumni Club (of Chicago), the largest alumni network of Chicago Booth. Besides his MBA, Bill has received a Master of Science in Taxation from DePaul University and has passed the CPA exam.
Jacqueline Horwitz, JD'22, MBA'24
Corporate Secretary
Jacqueline Horwitz has been with CBAN Chicago since 2021. Her past experience includes working as Summer Associate at Kirkland & Ellis, Program Coordinator at a wealth management consulting firm, and a Program Manager at a recently acquired startup. She also has experience working with startups through The Innovation Clinic during her time as a law student. She is expected to graduate with an MBA from Chicago Booth in 2024, and holds a J.D. from The University of Chicago Law School and a B.A. in Political Economy and Classics with a minor in Mandarin from the University of California, Berkeley.
Amalesh Sanku, MBA’99
Marketing and Communications Chair
Amalesh is currently President and CEO at Sagertech Communications, a strategic marketing consulting company. He leads strategy and marketing engagements for telecommunications and medical technology companies with engagements in strategic planning, corporate strategy, marketing, and sales strategies.
Amalesh has worked at and partnered with some of the top technology companies in the USA, such as Sprint, AT&T Bell Laboratories, Lucent Technologies, Ciena, E.F. Johnson, and Mpower communications.
Amalesh currently serves as a Director and an Officer on the Board of Gateway Foundation a $110M non-profit drug and alcohol addiction counseling service.
Amalesh has an MBA from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, an M.S. in Computer Science from Oklahoma State University, and a B.S. in Engineering in Electronics and Communications from the University of Madras, India.
Brian Buehling, MBA’00
Startup Evaluation Committee Chair
Brian Buehling is the Founder and Managing Director of Dakota Systems, a technology firm specializing in product content delivery with offices in Chicago and Shanghai. As a company operator and advisor, he has expertise in technology innovation, business development, and strategic marketing. Prior to Dakota, he led content management system initiatives for several companies including Wolters Kluwer Health, John Deere and AT&T. His team’s decision support system at John Deere Health was selected as a Finalist for Business Intelligence Applications at Comdex/Window World Open and was nominated for the Smithsonian Award for innovation in information technology. He has earned a M.B.A. with concentrations in Finance and Strategy from the University of Chicago and a M.S. in Systems Science and Mathematics from Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri. Additionally, he has academic experience as a visiting lecturer at Boston University (CDIA) and Ohio University teaching business communication and computational theory. He is also an active early stage investor concentrating on emerging markets and industrial marketplace solutions.
Anjoo Rai-Marchant, MBA’08
Director
Anjoo Rai-Marchant is a board director, an enterprise SaaS/cloud technology executive and an investor with experience building and scaling global businesses. She has comprehensive technology experience covering professional services, software, hardware, infrastructure, mobile and product development, having held CIO, CTO, COO and CEO roles across multiple industries. She has lived and worked in Europe, India and the US leading organizations of all sizes from global multinationals (EY, Barclays) to mid-markets to start-ups.
David Johnson, MBA '07
Director
David Johnson is Founder and Managing Partner of Abraxas Group, a boutique advisory firm focused on providing transformational leadership to middle market companies in transition. Over the course of his career David has served as financial advisor and interim executive to dozens of middle market companies. David is also a recognized thought leader on the topics of business transformation, change management, interim leadership, restructuring, turnaround, and value creation. He can be contacted at: david@abraxasgp.com
Cindy Machles, MBA'82
New York Leadership
Cindy has long been a leader and pioneer. While part of the big conglomerate world, she took an entrepreneurial approach by applying marketing principles from consumer-packaged goods to healthcare. This ultimately revealed an unmet need that inspired her to create and lead an operating unit within WPP that developed branding exclusively for prescription products. Seeking to disrupt the industry again, she envisioned and launched Glue Advertising in 2014 as a more strategic, innovative, nimble, and accountable communications company. Glue has been recognized as a top 20 NYC agency since 2017 and a top digital agency globally, and Cindy herself was recently named a top-100 entrepreneur and innovator for 2022. Cindy is an avid mentor to start-ups through CBAN, an advisor to young companies within The Polsky Center’s Alumni New Venture Challenge, and a private company board member. Cindy has a BS summa cum laude from Boston University and an MBA from Booth. While Cindy is known more for her agency background, she began her career in brand management at Revlon, Clorox, and Johnson & Johnson.
Ellen Itskovitz, MBA '81, CFA
New York Leadership
Ellen Itskovitz is a senior executive, with more than 30 years of investment management and banking experience. She currently serves as a lead on the Investment Screening Committee at the Catalytic Impact Foundation (CIF), a social-impact, not-for-profit healthcare VC firm. She is involved in the early stage venture world, serving as a judge for numerous venture pitches, and consulting and mentoring early-stage companies. Previously she had been a partner at the investment firm, Lord Abbett, and an executive director at both Morgan Stanley Investment Mngt and UBS Asset Mngt. Outside of work, Ellen has volunteered in the not-for-profit entrepreneurial world. She serves on the advisory board of Hot Bread Kitchen’s incubator (aka “the Kitchen Cabinet”). She has an MBA from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, a BA in Economics and Public Policy from Duke University and is a CFA charterholder.
Dave Weiner, MBA ' 01
New York Leadership
Dave has over 22 years of experience as a Wall Street analyst, operator, venture advisor, and investor. Most recently, as CFO of early-stage EdTech, PropTech, and B2B SaaS companies, he developed processes and financial best-practices to drive company growth. He also helped lead and attain two seed-stage term sheets. Previously, Dave had a career as Deutsche Bank’s lead consumer discretionary global brand analyst within equity research. Dave leads and is active in early-stage investing and mentoring networks, including through his business school alma matter the University of Chicago, XRC Ventures, and Z2Sixty Ventures, and others.
Matt Hyland, MBA ' 19
New York Leadership
Matt is Director of Growth Capital Investments with Export Development Canada (the state-owned Canadian export development bank), where he makes later-stage venture capital investments in high-growth companies as they scale to become sector leaders. In his career to-date, Matt has served as an investor or advisor on 30+ investments (and hundreds of investment evaluations) with cumulative closed deal value exceeding $20bn USD. Matt is actively engaged as a board member and advisor to management teams across a variety of companies and industries. Matt currently serves as a Board Director of Attabotics Inc. and as a Board Observer to Procurify Technologies Inc., both for-profit private companies. Matt holds an MBA from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, an HBA from the Ivey Business School at The University of Western Ontario, and a BA from The University of Western Ontario .