Alumni Profiles – Business Exchange

“If you think you can’t do it, maybe you just haven’t found a way to do it yet:” The Remarkable Life and Enduring Legacy of John Goode at DePaul and Beyond

By jmercha3 • November 22, 2024 Alumni Profiles

John Goode, born September 24, 1934 and deceased September 16, 2024, embodied the entrepreneurial spirit. A polyglot who served on over one hundred company boards the world over, he was a portrait of the globetrotting, forward-thinking executives who built out the international reach of American business in the second half of the 20th century. As a distinguished DePaul alumnus, his life left an indelible impact on the DePaul community.

An entrepreneurial upbringing

Born in the depths of the Great Depression, Goode quickly found his footing as a resourceful and creative young man. He embarked upon an enterprising path early: his first job was at the cash register of his mother’s shop at age seven, where he also took care of customers and stocked shelves. He was a quick study, even taking two buses to distributors to pick up boxes of candy for the store.

Goode’s development through adolescence and into adulthood was a DePaul story through and through. In his high school years he attended DePaul Academy, an all-boys Catholic high school founded in 1898 – the same year that Saint Vincent’s College, better known today as DePaul University, was also established.

It was a tumultuous period for Goode, who dropped out of school for a time and got into his share of trouble. But he eventually felt compelled to return to school, and begged DePaul Academy’s Father Fitzgerald to let him return. Father Fitzgerald was a talented teacher who would become a key mentor figure for Goode. The whole experience changed his life. It would also turn out to be the beginning of a fruitful, lifelong relationship with DePaul.

Goode went on to enroll at the Catholic university in the shady groves of Chicago’s Lincoln Park neighborhood in the late 1950s. During his studies, he was married with three children and worked full time as a doorman. In 1960, he became the first in his family to graduate from college. It would be the beginning of a long, remarkable journey, for which he would eventually be recognized and honored as a distinguished alumnus of DePaul University.

A legacy of success, service, and kindness

Goode’s positive attitude, natural talents, and DePaul education all propelled him into a remarkable business career. He worked his way up the corporate ladder to hold senior executive positions at many Fortune 500 industrial companies, eventually owning and serving as board chairman for Prestolite Electric, K&W Products, AP Labs, and American Innotek. He also invested in many businesses, and mentored many business owners over the years.

Through it all, Goode retained a deep fondness for his time at DePaul, which he always believed had made a significant impact on his life, going all the way back to his formative experiences at DePaul Academy with Father Fitzgerald. And so, following his successes in the business world, Goode returned to the DePaul community to teach for the Department of Accounting in what was then the DePaul College of Commerce, eventually serving as an Associate Dean in the 1980s.

Four middle-aged adults pose, smiling, with their elderly father

A photo of Goode with three of his children: John Jr., Jim, and Sue.

Although Goode went on to obtain advanced degrees from the University of Chicago and Northern Illinois University, he always maintained that DePaul had the greatest impact on his life. In true DePaul fashion, Goode was also an avid basketball fan, traveling to see the Blue Demons play in the NCAA Final Four in 1979. Eventually, all four of his children – John Jr., Sue, Lee, and Jim – would all attend DePaul themselves. His son, John Jr., even received his diploma on stage during his graduation from his father, who was then serving as an Associate Dean of the College of Commerce.

Goode was well-known around DePaul for his commanding presence and jovial personality. Between classes, he valued friendship and camaraderie with friends and colleagues. Following the powerful example set by Father Fitzgerald earlier in his life, Goode strove to serve as a mentor to his students. After an especially brutal exam, he was known to meet up with the “survivors” (as he called them) at a local pub, where he would treat the students to drinks and lively conversation. He was also an avid golfer and sailor, and enjoyed taking students on sailing expeditions from Monroe Harbor.

No problem too great to solve

Goode made his mark at a national level. In the 1980s, he would go on to serve in the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, as well as the White House Council on Competitiveness. It was a far cry from his humble upbringing in the midst of the Great Depression: a testament, in this way, to Goode’s tireless entrepreneurial spirit.

Through it all, Goode always held a firm belief in the foundational impact that the DePaul community had on his life and career. He was a prolific donor, giving millions of dollars to the university that had played such a formative role in his life. Such was his esteem for DePaul that instead of having a room named in his honor, he requested that the room be dedicated to his revered mentor, Father Fitzgerald.

His experiences at the Chicago university cultivated his can-do, entrepreneurial attitude — one of the characteristics that those who knew him best remember as a cornerstone of his legacy. No problem was too great to be solved. As recounted by his son, John Goode, Jr., his attitude was well exemplified in one of his favorite phrases, a question he liked to pose when faced by adversity: “Are you telling me you can’t do it, or you haven’t found a way to do it yet?”

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You Create Your Own Power: Triple Demon Dana Alkhouri Reflects on the Entrepreneurial Mindset

By Meredith Carroll • November 19, 2024 Alumni Profiles

Dana Alkhouri is many things: A Triple Demon who earned her bachelor’s, her master’s in public policy, and her MBA from DePaul. A journalist who covered the height of the pandemic on the ground in New York working for ABC News. And, as of a few years ago the founder of The Sidelines, a newsletter that focuses on women in athletics and wellness.

Recently, Dana shared her insights into making a career pivot, making space for women’s stories, and making it in the face of skepticism.

Driehaus College of Business (DCOB): Tell us about your current project, The Sidelines: a newsletter focused on sharing stories from women’s sports and wellness. How did it get started? What’s the most impactful advice you received along the way?

Dana Alkhouri (DA): The Sidelines is a sports newsletter by women and for all.

My friend Megan Schaltegger and I launched it in 2020. We started it because, back then, there was not a huge amount of interest in coverage of women in sports. It was such a niche industry. So we thought: let’s get ahead of it.

We initially wanted to start as a website. And we got advice from another founder to start as a newsletter instead. We’ve built out some great partnerships and gotten a great group of readers that way.

DCOB: Did you always know you wanted to be an entrepreneur? How did you launch your career in journalism, and how was DePaul part of that?

DA: I’ve always had this entrepreneurial mindset. When I was a kid, I started this jewelry business on Etsy. During the pandemic, I started a sweatshirt line. I’m always looking for a project.

I have done the majority of my education at DePaul. That just goes to show how resourceful DePaul is and how much they offer to their students. And how well they connect with their students and stay in touch with them.

I had so many great experiences at DePaul. I studied abroad, primarily focusing on the EU and NATO. I had some really dedicated journalism professors who helped me figure out an independent study. That’s an amazing thing about DePaul. They’re so resourceful. They’re so dedicated to making sure students can pursue what they want.

DCOB: Around the time you launched The Sidelines, you were pivoting from a career in journalism to one in business. Can you talk about that transition?

DA: In 2020, I was working at ABC. I was going into the office every day. I was covering the pandemic, the election, everything that was going on. It was an eye-opening experience. But after awhile, I realized I needed a break from hard news.

I was able to enroll in DePaul’s MBA program full time — and fully online. During that time, in the summer of 2021, I started working at Goldman. I was working full time and going to school full time. It was important to me to do my MBA side-by-side with working at a bank, with working in business.

I graduated with my MBA last summer. It was a great experience – great connections, great networking.

DCOB: You’ve gotten the chance to speak to so many inspiring athletes and founders. What’s stuck with you about those conversations?

DA: There’s this question I always ask: What is your biggest piece of advice to a woman trying to break barriers in the sports industry? Their responses are so awesome.

A lot of them have talked about the need to push through. They’ve talked about not taking no for an answer. When you get criticism, it means you’re doing something right. That’s really stuck with me.

When we launched The Sidelines, people had so many questions. They were skeptical if people were going to read it. But facing criticism was my favorite part of it. Because criticism means that you’re reaching people.

Hearing criticism is also really important because, sometimes, you need a vision from the outside. As a founder, it’s easy to get tunnel vision. We’ve actually ended up incorporating content in response to criticism.

DCOB: What does entrepreneurship mean to you?

DA: Freedom. Entrepreneurship means having an idea and being able to bring it to life. And I think there is freedom in that. You create your own power. You’re doing it for yourself. And you’re doing it for the people who work with you, and work for you, and for the audience that you are creating.

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Finding your Towering Strength: Paula Price’s (BUS ’82) Extraordinary Career

By Meredith Carroll • June 24, 2024 Alumni Profiles, Features

Paula Price (BUS ’82) shares her insights from an extraordinary career as a leader

By Meredith Carroll

Look at Paula Price’s (BUS ’82) resume, and it could be tempting to split it in two.

There’s her leadership experience, as extensive as it is varied. There’s her tenure as CFO for multiple Fortune 500 companies; her years of teaching for Harvard Business School; and her current role as an independent board director for four major, publicly traded companies.

And then there’s the part of her career that started right here at DePaul. The part where she mastered accountancy, the “language of business.” The part she spent on the ground, immersed in the many small but critical details that keep businesses running.

It is easy to imagine these two phases as diametrically opposed: first the view from the ground, and then the view from 30,000 feet. First the microscope, and then the panoramic lens.

Diametrically opposed, that is, until you hear Price tell her story.

A Tale of Dedication to Curiosity and Craft

Photos of Price on stage in conversation with Sulin Ba, Dean of the Driehaus College of Business, on April 22 (Photo credit | Working Anchor)

On April 22, Paula Price returned to DePaul to share insights from her career. She was the first speaker in the college’s Executive Speaker Series: a series, established with a gift from Cory Gunderson (BUS ’91) designed to help DePaul students envision and embark on their own paths to success.

Sitting across a small stage from Dean Sulin Ba, Price speaks in the measured tone of an experienced leader. She chooses each word with care and clarity. She is passionate about taking the time to get it right — whether “it” is a major decision in a corporate boardroom, or a visit to her alma mater.

What shines through above all else, though, is Price’s commitment to curiosity.

She lights up when talking about her early career. You can see the student in her; the young DePaul graduate, eager to master a notoriously challenging discipline.

“I spent the first several years of my career in public accounting really honing my skills and honing my craft,” she recalls. After that came a tenure in industry, when she began working with senior executives.

“What they wanted to know,” she says, “was: ‘is this a good business idea? Does this create value for our shareholders? Does this idea have a good return?’ It became very evident to me that accounting should do more than talk about the past. It should illuminate the path forward.”

It is the first of many moments of clarity – in the way Price speaks about the world of business, in the way she charted her own course through it. That fundamental insight led her to the University of Chicago, where she earned her MBA in finance and strategy. She became obsessed with putting her insight into action.

“How do you create financial models for looking at new product lines? For looking at acquisitions? For looking at research and development projects?” she remembers asking herself. “I just began building all these models. People knew that I was modeling these things. And they were asking me to work with them. They were asking me to lend my models to them.”

“I kind of thought,” she adds with a smile, “I could build a financial model for anything.”

From left to right: Malik Murray (BUS ’96, MBA ’04), Dean Sulin Ba, Laura Kohl (MBA ’94), Paula Price (BUS ’82) and Cory Gunderson (BUS ’91). Murray, Kohl and Gunderson are all members of the Driehaus Business Advisory Council. (Photo credit | Working Anchor)

Price’s curiosity, and the keen insights it generated, propelled her to the C-suite.

“Even as a CFO, the idea of fusing accounting, finance and strategy together was essential,” she says. “It was essential to telling the story of our business, to telling the story of our strategies and how they created value. To telling the story of what they would do in the future.”

There’s such clarity to the way she tells her story that it can be hard to imagine her path as anything other than foreordained. Hard to remember, too, that her time as a top leader spanned multiple major financial crises.

When Price looks back on moments of turmoil, it’s her dual perspective she returns to. Her ability to see the big picture without losing sight of the small but crucial details. To keep her eyes on the horizon without losing sight of the world around her.

“The biggest role of the CFO is to create space for innovation,” she says, when asked about difficult decisions she has faced. “And economic downturns often coincide with the greatest need to invest in innovation. That leads to tough decisions.

“What’s hard,” she adds, “is that at the end of those kinds of decisions are people.”

The People Factor

And that’s what Price returns to, what she never loses sight of in telling her story: people.

During her visit, she is asked about her seemingly inexhaustible career: the way her resume encompasses seven top leadership positions at major, publicly traded companies. That’s not to speak of her time teaching the next generation of leaders at Harvard Business School, or her service to nonprofits and her community.

It was all simpler, she says, than it might look from the outside.

“For every major move in my career,” Price says, “I can point to a relationship that is based on trust. Trust in my work. Trust in my abilities. Trust in my integrity. These relationships – they lead places. Connections lead places. Every person. Every change. Whether it’s moving to London. Moving back to the U.S. Moving into teaching. Moving out of teaching. Pivoting back into corporate. Pivoting onto boards. I can point to a person. For each move, I can point to a person.”

“You can’t be my friend overnight,” she quips, later, when Dean Ba points out that many of her friendships have lasted decades. In fact, some of them have lasted since high school. Two of her friends from her days at what was then called Jones Commercial High School sit in the front row, laughing. All night, they’ve been cheering her on.

Price and Dean Sulin Ba pose with two of Price’s close friends, both of whom attended DePaul alongside her: Charlena Griggs (far left) and Aaron Tolbert (BUS ’82, far right)
(Photo credit | Working Anchor)

Price sums up her advice to the students and young alumni in the audience by reflecting on her own career and the principles that have guided it:

“I have four pieces of advice. The first is: to find your towering strength. That is, the thing that distinguishes you from the next person. And, when you find it? Own it, hone it, and leverage it.

“The second, third, and fourth, is to: Build great relationships. Build great relationships. Build great relationships.”

From Chicago to the FBI: The Education of Sean McWeeney (BUS ’61)

By Meredith Carroll • June 24, 2024 Alumni Profiles, Features

The retired FBI agent, corporate executive, author and philanthropist reflects on the educations he received — in school and outside of it

By Meredith Carroll

An elderly couple posts against a scenic, outdoor backdrop

Millie Cronin and Sean McWeeney | Photo provided by Sean McWeeney

Now retired, Sean McWeeney (BUS ’61) lives a quiet life in Reston, Virginia, with his wife, Millie Cronin. They are both widowers; in fact, they met through Cronin’s first husband, a coworker of McWeeney’s. They volunteer for their local parish. They spend time with their family. They support causes close to their hearts, including DePaul. Just this year, McWeeney established the McWeeney Family Scholarship Fund to help under-resourced students attend DePaul.

McWeeney’s life up to this point was anything but quiet. He served for decades in the FBI, where he played a central role in the capture of notorious Mob boss Carlo Gambino. He rose through the ranks to become the longest-serving section chief of the Organized Crimes division. After his retirement, he launched Corporate Risk International, a global security firm specializing in kidnapping and extortion cases. It’s a career so action-packed that, with the encouragement of his family and friends, he wrote a book about it, entitled “Up by the Bootstraps.”

Like many success stories, McWeeney’s life attests to the ever-shifting balance between luck and hard work. It’s a story about being in the right place at the right time, but it’s also about having the right skills to rise to the moment. It’s a story about education, broadly defined: the kind of education you get from the people and environments around you. The kind of education you make out of what you are given.

McWeeney’s education would ultimately take him around the world. But it began right here in Chicago.

A Chicago Childhood

It has been decades since McWeeney lived in Chicago – a lifetime, even. But his roots are still evident. He speaks with a faint Chicago accent. He talks about himself with a distinctively Chicagoan strain of understatement: humble yet direct; self-effacing yet also, justifiably, proud.

McWeeney was born in 1938 to two Irish immigrants. Among the kids in his West Side neighborhood, he can’t recall knowing anyone whose parents were born in the U.S. Being in that environment at that time was an education – only McWeeney didn’t know it yet.

“I was a scrappy kid,” he recalls. “I had an unusual name for that time, and they made fun of me for it.”

It was easy to fall into trouble.

“A lot of people I grew up with became Mafia,” McWeeney says. “We had one person we knew quite well whose brother was killed by the Mafia.”

It was an environment that offered up two ways to navigate the world.

“You either win one way, the good way,” McWeeney recalls, “or you win the bad way. And I happened to be lucky in who I turned out to be. Going to a school like DePaul certainly helped – and so did having good parents. I was lucky in that regard.”

The West Side gave McWeeney one kind of education. In school, he received another.

For high school, he earned a four-year scholarship to St. Ignatius College Prep. It promised to be a pivotal moment for McWeeney. But it lasted just two weeks.

McWeeney was kicked out after a fight with a boy who made fun of his name. He transferred to St. Mel’s, another Catholic school.

“St. Mel’s identified me as a bit of a thug,” he says. “They assumed that ‘this guy isn’t going to college. This guy won’t go much further because he’s a scrapper.’ That’s part of being from the West Side, I guess.

“Anyway,” McWeeney adds, with his trademark understatement, “I outdid their expectations.”

From DePaul to the FBI

Outdoing those expectations began in earnest when McWeeney enrolled in the College of Commerce at DePaul University.

At DePaul, McWeeney found his place.

Despite working a grueling overnight shift at the railroad switchyard off 35th and Pulaski, he was active in sports and in his fraternity. In his senior year, he was elected class president.

He also met his first wife at DePaul: the late Joan Hennessy, a fellow student. They were set up on a blind date. They would travel the world together, raise a family, and launch Corporate Risk International from their kitchen table.

When McWeeney looks back on his time at DePaul, it’s his good fortune that he stresses. The good fortune to have met Hennessy; the good fortune to receive an education that allowed his world to expand, equipping him with tools he’d need to earn his MBA and launch a second career as a successful entrepreneur. Good fortune — and the commitment to taking advantage of it.

A black-and-white photograph of a man with a bowler hat and a rueful grin, escorted by a younger man behind him

McWeeney, at right, escorts Carlo Gambino into the courthouse for his hearing. The photograph would be widely reproduced, leading McWeeney to receive media enquiries up until today. | Photo provided by Sean McWeeney

From DePaul, McWeeney ventured out into the world. He joined the Navy as an officer candidate. He moved to Rhode Island, where he earned his MBA.

The MBA allowed him to stand out when he applied for his dream job as an agent at the FBI.

From day one, working in the FBI was its own kind of education. He lived in cities in distant corners of the U.S. He learned all he could – from the culture, and from agents who were stationed in these posts as discipline.

“The punished agents knew how to get the job done,” he writes in his memoir. They were also repentant, “eager to share their story and what they learned from it.”

In the summer of 1969, McWeeney and his family landed in New York, where he was eventually assigned to the Gambino Squad.

Thanks to his upbringing, he was precisely the right man for the job.

“There were a lot of agents, believe me, who were a little leery of talking to the Mafia,” he recalls. “But when you grow up where I did, you just kind of learn to talk to them. I used to go right up to them – let them know who I was and what I wanted to know.”

He approached his work as a plain dealer: collected, straightforward, respectful. In McWeeney’s hands, even the arrest of Gambino was understated.

Gambino’s wife and children were with him, McWeeney recalls, when McWeeney and his agents pulled him over near his home in Brooklyn.

“He seemed surprised,” McWeeney writes, “but consistent with his typical demeanor, he remained calm and gave us no trouble during the arrest.”

The Capstone of a Remarkable Career

The Gambino arrest, like McWeeney’s years at DePaul, was a turning point in a much longer story. From there, he would go on to senior leadership positions in the Bureau. He would found a successful, global company.

A book cover. The title is Up By the Bootstraps and the cover displays a pair of worn, old-fashioned leather combat boots with a pair of handcuffs lying at their feet

McWeeney’s memoir, Up by the Bootstraps, details his life and extraordinary career. | Photo provided by Sean McWeeney

But if you ask McWeeney, it’s those early days as an FBI agent that stand out.

“If anyone ever asks what I did, my first reaction is to say I was an agent,” he says. “I was a top executive, of course. But I’m very, very proud of the fact that I was an FBI agent.

“It was the first time my father ever said he was proud of me – and I heard that from secondary sources,” he recalls. “My dad was soft-spoken, a tough guy. All he did was work, work, work. For him to have said that meant a lot.”

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Where the Classroom and Careers Meet

By Meredith Carroll • November 14, 2023 Alumni Profiles, Faculty Focus

To take a class with Andy Clark (MBA ’87) is to get a “master class” in networking – one that launches you straight into your career.

Director of Sports Business program and Senior Instructor Andy Clark.

Andy Clark is the director of the sports business program at DePaul’s Driehaus College of Business. In 2023, he was one of two faculty selected by graduating seniors in business to win the Lawrence W. Ryan Distinguished Teaching Award at Driehaus.

When he was his students’ age, he didn’t know a career like this existed.

He recalls one moment when it all came together.

It was a basketball game: DePaul vs. Northwestern. It was the early ’80s: the height of Ray Meyer’s tenure as DePaul men’s basketball head coach. The stadium was packed: a sea of blue on one side and purple on the other, Clark recalls.

“DePaul won on a last-second shot,” Clark says. “To be there for that — to be a small part of that — was amazing.”

At the time, Clark was an intern for DePaul Athletics, after graduating from Fordham University. It was a position he’d heard about through a friend from Fordham.

“A hundred bucks a week, a room in McCabe,” he recalls of the arrangement. The flight to Chicago, he says, was his first time on a plane.

The internship gave him a glimpse into what was possible at the nexus of management, marketing and the sports world he loved so much. After his internship, he got hired as the manager of DePaul Athletics ticket sales. Eventually, he decided to earn his MBA from DePaul.

Forty years and an extensive career in sports management and marketing later, Clark has returned to where he started.

“Making relationships and keeping them”

Getting work done, Clark says, is all about “making relationships and keeping them.” This is the central message he hopes to impart to his students.

Gridiron in the Classroom: Referee Tony Michalek helps Clark’s class make the right calls.

Clark has cultivated connections with an impressive roster of guest speakers. There’s an NFL referee and an NHL player agent. There’s an Olympic silver medalist who started a nonprofit to empower girls in swimming. There are DePaul alumni, many of them Clark’s former students, hailing from every corner of the sports world.

Clark has also forged partnerships with Chicago’s top sports organizations. He’s worked especially closely with the Chicago Cubs, where a number of alumni hold posts in senior leadership. Every so often, Cubs chairman Tom Ricketts makes an appearance to speak to Clark’s students.

Clark has two criteria for each guest speaker he invites: Can they keep students — and Clark — engaged? (He “never gets bored” of site visits, he says.) And can they discuss their career in a way that imparts lessons relevant to any field, not just sports business?

“What I like about teaching,” reflects Clark, “is being a connector: connecting experts to our students, so they can learn how their skills apply to the workplace.”

In this regard, taking a class with Andy Clark is like getting a master class in networking. He schools students in crafting thoughtful, well-researched questions for speakers. He teaches them how to dress for site visits (a suit and tie are no longer required). And as part of his final exam, he tasks each student with writing thank-you notes to three guest speakers — by hand.

From classroom to career

In Clark’s courses, students aren’t only learning from the sports business world, they’re also contributing to it by partnering with leading sports organizations to carry out real-world research.

Andy Clark’s classes visit where the action all happens.

Projects for the Chicago Cubs have included an analysis of their customer service and a study on their rollout of a mobile ordering platform.

“Knowing that the work we were doing was going to be useful right away was highly motivating,” says Kenzie Mocogni (BUS ’19), who worked on the Cubs customer service study. “Working with a real client reminded us that what we are learning in the classroom at DePaul is preparing us for the business world.”

The Cubs aren’t the only team with close ties to Clark and to DePaul.

“It’s been incredibly inspiring to see DePaul students come up with innovative, impactful ideas,” says Tony Rokita, a onetime DePaul student and the former director of alumni relations for the Chicago Bulls, regarding a project that worked on a Bulls community partnership in Chicago’s West Garfield Park neighborhood.

For Clark and his students, there’s a direct line between theory and practice and between classroom and career.

“I’m not a teacher by training,” he’s quick to say. “With most of the stuff I do, no one told me I had to do it this way. For me, teaching feels like an evolution of what I was doing before [in the business field].”

As Clark reflects on teaching, he says the best part has been seeing how students’ careers unfold, outside sports as much as within it.

“It’s almost more gratifying,” he says, “when I hear from former students who don’t work in sports that they apply things from my class to their jobs now. That’s what this is all about: helping students apply what they learn.”

Teaching has taught Clark a lot, too.

“Every day,” he says, “is an education in empathy.”

—

On the first day of his Introduction to Sports Management course, Clark has one question for his students. It’s perhaps the best summary of what Clark accomplishes in his courses — and how Driehaus overall approaches preparing students for their careers.

“When do you think your career in sports is going to start?” Clark asks.

Clark’s answer? “If you’re in this class, it already started.”

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Researcher in Residence Program Builds Bridges Between Theory and Practice

By Meredith Carroll • November 14, 2023 Alumni Profiles

In the Doctorate of Business Administration (DBA) program, industry insights and research acumen meet. A new program in the marketing department amplifies the impact of DBA research.

Thomas Dammrich (BA ’74, MBA ’78, MS ’85, DBA ’19), Research in Residence.

When industry experience and academic research join forces, both fields benefit. This is a core tenet of the Doctorate in Business Administration (DBA) program at DePaul’s Kellstadt Graduate School of Business. It’s the same principle that led Associate Professor of Marketing Richard Rocco to establish the Researcher in Residence program within the Department of Marketing.

Rocco, who teaches in the DBA program, saw firsthand how industry experience amplifies the impact of research, first through writing his own dissertation while working full-time and later through advising DBA students.

Rocco launched the Researcher in Residence program in Fall 2022 based on feedback from DBA alumni. These researchers wanted to amplify the impact of their work and publish it in peer-reviewed journals where it could reach a wider audience.

To do that, they needed access to university resources, ranging from databases and data sets to Kellstadt’s vast network of faculty, students and alumni.

The program provides access to these resources. The university, Rocco says, will benefit in return. Faculty and current DBA students will gain new collaborators. As researchers publish more widely, their work will extend the reach of Kellstadt and DePaul.

As the program enters its second year, all three researchers in the inaugural cohort have returned for another year. They represent a wide range of fields.

Chris Hansen (MBA ’98, DBA ’21), vice president of university partnerships at Everspring, has over 25 years of experience in educational technology, where he has helped senior administration and faculty bring their offerings to life online.

Tammy Higgins (DBA ’18), a consult partner at Kyndryl, brings more than 35 years of experience in the information technology (IT) industry to her research on IT sales strategies.

And Thomas Dammrich (BA ’74, MBA ’78, MS ’85, DBA ’19) earned his DBA after more than 20 years as CEO of the National Marine Manufacturers Association.

As for Rocco, he hopes that the program as it exists now is just a starting point. The model could easily expand to other departments and programs, he says.

“We have a wealth of resources in our DBAs,” he adds. “This is a way to expand on that. It’s a way for DePaul to get our name out there. It’s a way to influence the conversation. You never know where those kinds of connections might lead.”

Researcher in residence Q&A

Thomas Dammrich reflects on his research and its impact and how the Researcher in Residence program helped him expand on that work.

College of Business: Give me the elevator pitch for the research you conducted for your DBA. How are you building on this work as a researcher in residence?

Dammrich: I worked in an industry where manufacturers and dealers do not advertise the price of boats for sale. You can only find this out by speaking with a boat dealer or attending a boat show.

Every model of the consumer purchase journey includes an evaluation phase. Much has been written about other aspects of that phase. But very little, if any, empirical work has been done to understand what happens to consumers’ path to purchase when an objective price is not available.

I designed my dissertation research to address that gap in the literature.

As a researcher in residence, I have been working with DePaul faculty to extend and publish the results of my work in a Tier 1 or 2 academic journal. Not only have we identified a gap in the literature, we also believe we can provide practical advice to practitioners.

College of Business: How did your industry experience influence your research?

Dammrich: Because of my knowledge of the industry, my relationships with many industry players and the willingness of a third-party website that was a significant resource for consumers shopping for new boats, I was able to design and conduct a field experiment with random assignment. This form of research provides the opportunity to learn causation, not just correlation.

The third-party website believed the industry would sell more boats if prices were more available on their website. They were eager to help me gather evidence to test this proposition. And because of my relationships with the CEOs of many boat builders and dealers, I was able to get them to agree to participate in an experiment where price was randomly shown or not shown to visitors to the third-party website.

My research confirmed that displaying price increases search, leads and purchase intent.

College of Business: How has the Researcher in Residence program allowed you to further collaborate with the DePaul community?

Dammrich: I was delighted to be invited to be part of the Researcher in Residence program. I had been working closely with Richard Rocco to publish an article related to my dissertation. As we began this effort, I quickly realized that I was at a disadvantage because, after graduation from the DBA program, I no longer had access to library resources, Qualtrics and other necessary tools. The Researcher in Residence program gives me access to those resources.

The program also allowed Dr. Rocco and me to speak with other faculty about what we were working on. Associate Professor of Marketing Zafar Iqbal has joined our team and contributed excellent recommendations that extend the analysis to create an article that should be of great interest to academia and practitioners.

College of Business: How is the Researcher in Residence program allowing you to amplify the impact of your research on industry?

Dammrich: One of the primary goals of the DBA program is to cross the chasm between academic research and practitioner implementation. By bringing additional faculty, Dr. Iqbal, and new perspectives to our work, I am confident we will be able to publish our work in a journal read by academics and practitioners alike.

The research I did for my dissertation has a high level of relevance for industry while addressing a gap in the literature that should be of interest to the academic research community. Getting the results published in a peer-reviewed journal, which is our goal, will significantly magnify the impact of the research I did for my DBA dissertation.

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Embracing the Entrepreneurial Spirit: Laura Kohl (MBA ’94), Global CIO of Morningstar

By Kate Silver • May 18, 2023 Alumni Profiles

College of Business alum Laura Kohl (MBA ’94), far right, with DePaul students visiting the CIO at Morningstar.

College of Business alumna Laura Kohl (MBA ’94), far right, with visiting DePaul students who won the Driehaus Cup winter quarter 2023 business pitch competition sponsored by Morningstar.

Laura Kohl (MBA ’94) remembers when she started to think like an entrepreneur, and it involves Airfone, a pioneering company at the time.

She was working toward her MBA in management information systems at DePaul in the early 1990s and had an assignment to bring in a business leader to talk about starting their company. Kohl had recently met Sandra Goeken, who was president of Airfone — the country’s first air-to-ground telephone system, founded by her father, John Goeken — and she mustered the courage to invite her to be a guest speaker.

As Sandra talked about her family’s business, and how it changed the way people communicate by putting phones in airplanes, Kohl felt her world expand. “The experience made me think about technology in an entrepreneurial way. It made me think a little bit differently about the art of the possible and what we could do differently.”

After that experience at DePaul, Kohl felt inspired to dream and knew she wanted to work with a company that had the same effect.

Kohl spent three decades harboring that entrepreneurial spirit in technology roles at McDonald’s, WW Grainger, United Airlines, Ulta and ultimately Morningstar, where she’s global chief information officer. The Chicago-based investment company, founded by Joe Mansueto, has grown from seven employees in 1984 to nearly 10,000 employees in 29 countries today, and Kohl says an agile mindset has helped it adapt and expand.

“Because we’re entrepreneurial, and we’ve grown organically and through acquisition, my job is to build a foundation off which to quickly continue to grow,” she says. “And so that’s looking at how we leverage the right tools, how we support our fellow colleagues with technology and how we get some financial benefits from things like automation.”

In 2021, around the same time Kohl started working at Morningstar, she reconnected with DePaul. She’d reached a nexus in her life: her three daughters were in college or preparing to go to college, and she was eager to focus on something inherently hers.

So at the invitation of Dean Sulin Ba, Kohl joined the executive committee of the Driehaus College of Business Advisory Council. She soon learned that the Driehaus Cup — a new student business pitch competition that’s part of the newly refreshed core undergraduate business degree curriculum — needed corporate sponsors. She approached one of the presidents at Morningstar, who jumped at the idea. “He was like, ‘Go do it. Yes!,’” says Kohl. “It was almost too easy.”

Kohl, who was recently named one of the Top 100 Women in Tech Leaders to Watch in 2023 by WomenTech Network, is thrilled for the new opportunities to make an impact at her alma mater.

Kohl says the opportunities at DePaul align perfectly with the advice she dispenses to young people: First, be a sponge and learn everything you can, and second, do something that scares you. “Don’t be afraid to do a stretch project or do something that might not be in your comfort zone,” she says. That, in turn, could reveal new dreams.

Follow Laura Kohl on LinkedIn.

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Blending Business and Mission: Alumna Nicole R. Robinson, CEO of the YWCA of Metropolitan Chicago

By jlansber • November 13, 2022 Alumni Profiles, Professional Development

Nicole R. Robinson (BUS ’92, MBA ’00)

“I was a kid of the four P’s: public school, public libraries, public parks and public safety net programs,” says Nicole R. Robinson (BUS ’92, MBA ’00), a proud Chicago South Sider and the CEO of the YWCA of Metropolitan Chicago.

From the time that she was a teenager, Robinson had an unflinching curiosity. She would ask herself, Why is it that some people are wildly successful and other people struggle? Why can’t everyone do well and do good?

“I didn’t have the language around equity and philanthropy because those were things I hadn’t been exposed to at that point,” she says.

Needing to stay local for family but wanting to explore beyond her neighborhood, Robinson enrolled at DePaul University to pursue her undergraduate degree. She began as a liberal arts major before switching to finance. Her curiosity was set on fire at DePaul. “I was curious about civic engagement and thinking about business in the broader sense. I didn’t know then all the buzzwords we use today to describe a company that is being successful in capitalism and also making an investment in society, but I kept asking myself: How do I do well and do good?”

From Corporate Finance to Corporate Social Responsibility

After graduating from DePaul, Robinson worked in finance for 10 years while also engaging in her community through social activism. Eventually she moved to Kraft Foods and worked her way through the ranks until she found her niche through an opportunity that had presented itself—in corporate social responsibility. Career pivots were not as common then as they are now, but it was a risk Robinson was willing to take despite all the advice she received to stay in her lane.

“I ended up being promoted three times, succeeded the person who hired me and got the title and compensation everyone said I wouldn’t get,” she reflects. “I got to travel all around the world as part of my job. I got to see and experience things I never imagined I would do as a little Black girl from the South Side of Chicago.”

Robinson eventually moved into nonprofit leadership and became chief partnership and programs officer for the Greater Chicago Food Depository, where she helped guide the organization’s mobilization of services to feed food-insecure Chicagoans during the pandemic. In 2021 she was the unanimous choice of the YWCA Metropolitan Chicago’s board of directors’ search committee to be the organization’s next CEO.

Today Robinson feels like she has come full circle through her leadership role at YWCA, a nonprofit whose mission includes eliminating racism and empowering women. “Both DePaul and the YWCA were born and shaped in Chicago. We have shared values that focus on making society more equitable. At the YWCA we strive to accomplish our mission by building bridges between all stakeholders in our community. We help organizations have conversations about equity, gender, belonging and inclusion and how to create that in workspaces. One of our programs that drives this is called ‘Until Justice Just Is,’ and it’s one way DePaul alumni can collaborate with us so that we can, as DePaul says, ‘do Chicago proud.’”

DePaul and the YWCA have, in fact, collaborated through the Driehaus College of Business Women in Entrepreneurship Institute (WEI) in 2021. The partnership brought WEI’s business accelerator program to a cohort of Chicago-area entrepreneurs who are women of color.

As for that question Robinson has asked herself throughout her career—“How do I do well and do good?”—she finally feels like she’s answered it.

“I realized the answer is not a destination. It’s a way of life, and I’m living it,” she says. “That question was guiding my purpose. It allowed me to figure out how I wanted to use my voice and talents and how I wanted to show up in the world.”

Nicole R. Robinson’s Advice for Women Leaders

From first-generation college student to successful socially responsible leader, Robinson has these tips to share for aspiring women leaders.

Be open to the possibilities. Some people are good planners and have a timeline of where they want to be in one, two and five years. And to some extent that’s good if you know exactly what you want to do. But be open to things you hadn’t previously considered. Be open to other paths that present themselves to you. Trust your intuition.

Lean into your values and your authentic self as you build your career. Know what areas you want to gravitate to. Ask yourself: What impact do you want to make in this world? What industry do you want to influence? Some people will say they want to be a CEO and that’s their goal. But instead of focusing on what position or title you want to have, think about the broader landscape of what you care about and where you want to make a difference, then follow that. Be your authentic self, tap into your passion and unleash your creative genius to guide your career path.

Build a support system of allies. Being a leader can feel isolating. Being a leader and a woman and a person of color can feel even more so. As a leader you need a community of family, friends, peers, mentors and sponsors to support you. Connect with other leaders you can trust and lean on because that will help you thrive not just in your role but on a personal level too. As author and activist bell hooks said, one of the most vital ways we sustain ourselves is by building communities of resistance and resilience, places where we know we are not alone.

By Nadia Alfadel Coloma

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Alumnus Brian Ruben: “Paying It Forward Is the DePaul Way”

By jlansber • May 5, 2022 Alumni Profiles

As an advisory council task force chair, Brian Ruben is helping the business college re-envision how it can engage the strengths, talents and industry connections of alumni and friends on the council.

When Brian Ruben (MSA ’95) started his graduate program at the School of Accountancy & MIS nearly 30 years ago—right around the time he began working at Deloitte in Chicago—he wasn’t sure which direction he wanted to take in his professional career. He chose accounting because “it’s the language of business and every organization needs a good accounting function.” But something sparked for him in the DePaul classroom as he listened to guest lecturers talk about their careers.

“It was inspiring to hear directly from professionals in accounting and learn how they navigated their careers and built their networks, because I was at a stage where I needed to do that from scratch,” Ruben says. “It made an impression on me, seeing a successful professional share their knowledge and having access to that knowledge. That’s something DePaul does really well, leveraging business connections to bring real-world experiences into the classroom.”

Fast-forward years later and Ruben is the one speaking to DePaul students, sharing lessons from his own career journey. Whether he’s in the classroom as an adjunct instructor or guest lecturer, or at a student event as a panelist or recruiter for Deloitte, where he is currently an audit and assurance partner, Ruben is an active and influential business alumnus, following a mantra of “giving back” that he says is the DePaul way.

“I know so many alumni who continued to stay connected to DePaul after graduating, giving back through service or dollars, and over the course of my career, I’ve benefited from the time many of these people have taken out of their busy careers to mentor me,” he says. “Now that I’m in a stage in my career where I feel like I can make a difference, I feel a responsibility to do so.”

Ruben is a proud donor and champion of DePaul. He helps recruit DePaul students and even led a fundraising initiative as part of the university’s annual Blue Demon Challenge in 2021. His efforts helped raise more than $300,000 (and counting) from individuals and the Deloitte Foundation to fund student scholarships and faculty support.

“It was a great way to bring DePaul alumni together at Deloitte and very exciting to see hundreds of alumni in offices around the country rally around something we all have in common,” he says.

Most recently, Ruben supported DePaul’s participation in a Deloitte MADE (Making Accounting Diverse and Equitable) initiative, the Deloitte Foundation Accounting Scholars Program. This scholarship program, for students pursuing a fifth-year master’s in accounting, is part of an effort to increase representation of racially and ethnically diverse students in accounting.

My connections with DePaul have benefited my personal and professional success in many ways. If I can be helpful and promote DePaul and give back insights and opportunities to students who are sitting where I once sat, that’s really satisfying and rewarding for me. I hope I can inspire others to do the same.”
— Brian Ruben (MSA ’95)

Ruben also has helped faculty members incorporate the latest business innovations into the curriculum. When DePaul Finance Associate Professor Lamont Black approached Ruben to collaborate on designing a course on blockchain, Ruben obliged, bringing in his blockchain Deloitte colleagues to provide the knowledge and coaching needed to help develop the course, which is now in its third year.

“I love that DePaul faculty aren’t lecturing out of a book and are truly dedicated to being at the forefront of the most cutting-edge information to bring back to students,” he says. “I think it’s important to contribute to that, as a business professional, for the next generation.”

One of Ruben’s most long-standing contributions has been his service on the Driehaus College of Business Advisory Council, a 60-member group of business leaders who offer industry insight and resources to the college. Ruben has been involved in the council for 10 years, and in his role as a council task force chair this academic year, he has been instrumental in re-envisioning how the business college can engage the strengths, talents and industry connections of council members to support the college and its students.

Encouraged by a former mentor, who also happens to be a DePaul alumnus, Ruben has used his time on the council not only as another way to give back, but also as an opportunity to expand his own professional experiences.

“Through all these experiences, I’ve learned so much about myself, the challenges that academia and universities face, and how to help another organization grow. It’s not all just about giving, giving, giving. That’s certainly a priority, but you also have to get something in return,” Ruben says.

“My connections with DePaul have benefited my personal and professional success in many ways. If I can be helpful and promote DePaul and give back insights and opportunities to students who are sitting where I once sat, that’s really satisfying and rewarding for me. I hope I can inspire others to do the same.”

By Nadia Alfadel Coloma | Photo by Kathy Hillegonds

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From Inspiration to Innovation: A Q&A with Serial Entrepreneur Russ Gottesman (MBA ’11)

By jlansber • November 18, 2021 Alumni Profiles, Online Extras

Alumnus Russ Gottesman (MBA ’11)

Entrepreneur Russ Gottesman’s first venture, CommuterAds, began as a business idea he pitched to win the 2008 New Venture Challenge, an annual student competition for aspiring business founders sponsored by DePaul’s Coleman Entrepreneurship Center.

Today, Gottesman (MBA ’11) is CEO of CommuterAds, a Dayton, Ohio-based business that has placed more than $25 million in audio and digital advertising on public transit vehicles using a patented GPS-enabled system. Always seeking new ideas to turn into businesses, he also recently launched Cocktail Claw, a franchise that brings arcade claw machine fun to a wide range of celebrations.

In this Q&A, Gottesman talks about his entrepreneurial inspirations and how he’s giving back to the next generation of student and alumni innovators through his continuing involvement with the Coleman Entrepreneurship Center.

Tell us about your most recent venture, Cocktail Claw.

This is my favorite part of entrepreneurship, starting new ventures and seeing them take root. In July 2019, I bought a claw machine from a laundromat in Louisville to surprise my daughter, Avery, for her sixth birthday, as she an avid claw machine advocate AND winner!

Cocktail Claw is a franchise that brings arcade claw machine fun to a wide range of celebrations.

I went to the CommuterAds office to tell my team about Avery’s birthday present and said, “Hey, let’s fill that machine with miniature bottles of booze and cigars and I’ll invite the whole team over!” Boom, what a great idea for weddings, charities and other parties, I thought! Cocktail Claw was born.

We are now one of a small number of companies that have successfully franchised their business model, having sold franchises in Ohio and Michigan. Just last month we were approved to sell franchises for Cocktail Claw in Illinois, too, and are actively looking for partners to join our family. In addition, and taking a lesson from CommuterAds, Cocktail Claw successfully secured a service mark and has several patents filed for both new tech and design patents.

The greatest part about our newest venture is that we work with partners on their brightest days. Weddings, backyard parties, corporate parties are a core market, and charities also utilize Cocktail Claw. That has been so rewarding.

Why did you choose to attend DePaul and how has being a Blue Demon impacted your career?

Choosing DePaul for my graduate studies was one of the easiest decisions I’ve ever made. I applied to exactly one graduate school program – DePaul – because it’s consistently well-ranked for entrepreneurship. In the summer of 2007, I decided to pursue my Master of Business Administration with a dual concentration in entrepreneurship and in strategy, execution and valuation.

DePaul’s entrepreneurship ecosystem added to my career trajectory in immeasurable ways. The Coleman Entrepreneurship Center’s mentor system and in-depth workshops are designed to build base platforms for emerging business—such as developing your company’s financial models, go-to market strategies, marketing concepts, pricing, social media and all things needed to launch a business. These resources are incredible. But it’s the Blue Demon connections that make the most impact, where we are always one phone call away from finding the best person to help solve a complex start-up or business challenge.

A major influence on my small business experience also came from DePaul superstar lecturer Dr. (Mark) Frigo. He wrote a book titled “Driven,” which utilizes the return driven strategy framework that really is a blueprint for what comes next after your business gets to market.

As a Coleman Entrepreneurship Center board member, how are you helping the next generation of DePaul entrepreneurs?

One of the most satisfying parts of achieving some form of long-term small business success is being able to shape the next generation of DePaul entrepreneurs who are some of the most talented, diverse and creative groups of students you could ask for.

The CEC allows our entire group to collaborate on constant innovation for our students. This, in short, means that we are collaborating to create new in-person programs and chart the overall path for both the short and long terms. (CEC Executive Director) Bruce (Leech) has done an incredible job assembling the most talented group of individuals that I have seen serve on any board I’ve been fortunate enough to be a part of. That adds up to sustained success for all students at DePaul who may touch entrepreneurship in some form or fashion.

What connections have you made among other alumni?

The Coleman Center is the heartbeat for the program and a main benefit of joining up with DePaul’s entrepreneurship program is for the community.

For example, through this community I connected with Fern Visutvattanasak (BUS MS ’18), who is now marketing and operations account director for Commuter Ads and also is helping to market Cocktail Claw.

I met Fern through the Coleman Entrepreneurship Center when she was an MS in Marketing Analysis student. She is a supremely talented marketing pro originally from Thailand and as part of her student visa work program, Bruce and I were looking for possible positions for her to apply this talent. Fern has been with our companies ever since and recently started her fourth year overseeing marketing and brand management, building various social media platforms and overseeing a dozen interns to make CommuterAds and Cocktail Claw stand out.

What’s the best thing about being an entrepreneur?

It’s one thing to have an idea and it’s another to have the organizational skill set required to be successful in business and in life. It’s quite another to pull these two things together and see a business concept you had simply in your mind explode onto the scene. For example, the sheer joy that Cocktail Claw brings to the people who rent the machines and their guests who use them is just awesome! Same goes for helping public transit agencies create new revenue streams utilizing our patent at CommuterAds.

Second is developing new tech to create credible genuine assets. For CommuterAds we secured a patent, a major milestone achieved, and first filed when I was a student at DePaul. We are the sole company in the country to offer our GPS messaging platform onboard public transit vehicles and would like to significantly expand our partnership base post pandemic.

Next, we knew that we had to innovate our offerings for Cocktail Claw. We had listened to our customers who were early adopters of Cocktail Claw, which launched months before the pandemic closed down much of the country. Brides were saying, “Should we rent a photo booth or a Cocktail Claw?” The innovator in me decided it was time to develop new tech that would wire the claw machine to a photo booth that snapped pictures of happy guests playing Cocktail Claw! We recently launched this new product at the Las Vegas Wedding MBA convention to wild success.

Being able to control your destiny through new market innovation is an incredible feeling.

By Robin Florzak | Photos courtesy of Russ Gottesman

Category Archives: Alumni Profiles

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