Accounting Graduate Brews Coffee Business with Soul

Alumna Leticia Hutchins (center) co-founded Alma Coffee with her husband, Harry (left), and father, Al Lopez (right). The business roasts and sells coffee from Honduras, where her family has been farming for five generations.

Alumna Leticia Hutchins (center) co-founded Alma Coffee with her husband, Harry (left), and father, Al Lopez (right). The business roasts and sells coffee from Honduras, where her family has been farming for five generations.


Leticia Hutchins’ four-year-old coffee business has been 500 years in the making.

“My family has been coffee farming in Honduras for five generations,” explains Hutchins (BUS ’16), cofounder of Alma Coffee, a Georgia-based coffee roaster and importer. “For generations that was all my family knew, the farming side of coffee. They never roasted their own coffee to see how it could taste.”

That changed in 2018. Hutchins had a comfortable job as an auditor at KPMG in Chicago, following in the footsteps of her father, Al Lopez, who enjoyed a successful career as a corporate accountant and executive. But something was missing. “I felt like I wasn’t doing my part to make the world a better place,” Hutchins says. “Accounting is super-important and I really respect the industry, but it just wasn’t fulfilling me in the way that I wanted to help others.”

Hutchins frequently visited Finca Terrerito, her family’s coffee farm in the rural mountains near Copan, Honduras, where her father lived until he immigrated to the United States at age 11. She and her husband, Harry, a fellow accountant whom she has known since high school, began to discuss with her father how they could expand the family business and its social impact. They envisioned a farm-to-cup, high-quality, coffee-roasting business managed with socially responsible practices that respect nature and support the community. “We worked on a business plan, and before we knew it, we were ready to take this scary step of quitting our careers to take a leap of faith,” she says. They named the new venture Alma, the Spanish word for “soul.”

Transitioning from bean counter to bean roaster had a steep learning curve, Hutchins admits. She and Harry moved from Chicago to Georgia, where her parents live, to research the coffee industry and roasting technology. After an eight-month search, they found an 8,000-square-foot warehouse in Holly Springs, Ga., to set up Alma’s roasting headquarters.

Entrepreneur Leticia Hutchins and her husband and business partner Harry Hutchins visit the family coffee farm in Honduras.

Entrepreneur Leticia Hutchins and her husband and business partner Harry Hutchins visit the family coffee farm in Honduras.

Today, Alma Coffee has three business segments: roasting coffee sold at restaurants, coffee shops and stores located primarily in the Southern United States; retailing a dozen coffee blends and related merchandise online and at its pop-up café in the roastery; and wholesaling raw coffee beans (aka green coffee) to other roasters around the country.

We worked on a business plan, and before we knew it, we were ready to take this scary step of quitting our careers to take a leap of faith.”
– Leticia Hutchins (BUS ’16)

Hutchins manages Alma’s retail website, marketing and human resources. Her husband oversees their bean-roasting team, sales and logistics, and her father runs Finca Terrerito. She credits her DePaul education in accountancy and management information systems, which included learning computer code, for empowering her success. “Going into the corporate world, I felt very prepared,” she says. “It really helped me build that foundation for starting a business.”

Conducting business sustainably is a core value at Alma Coffee. “The farm is USDA-certified organic, and we use as many coffee byproducts as possible,” Hutchins says, including converting cascara, potentially harmful waste left over from harvesting coffee cherries, into environmentally friendly farm pesticides. Hutchins also invested in a Loring Smart Roast machine, the most fuel-efficient roaster on the market, which produces 80% fewer emissions than conventional roasters.

Hutchins and her family believe in investing in their community, too. The farm provides employment and proper living conditions for 250 coffee pickers in Copan during harvest season. At Christmastime, the family also distributes food baskets and other necessities, including children’s shoes, to nearby families in need. “A lot of times it will be the only pair of shoes that a child will get for a whole year,” she says.

Alma Coffee is ground in a fuel-efficient roaster to promote sustainability.

Alma Coffee is ground in a fuel-efficient roaster to promote sustainability.


Like many family businesses, Alma has faced economic challenges caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Hutchins responded by building Alma’s online presence. “I spent three weeks redoing the whole website from top to bottom, every single word and photo, updated our subscription program, and began a paid advertising program, which we had never done before,” she says. “Slowly but surely, we began to see the online business grow. In a weird way COVID was a blessing in disguise that pushed us to do things that we didn’t think were possible for us to do.”

Alma has expanded to encompass a second farm, named Finca La Unica, which Hutchins’ father acquired by trading cattle for land. “He came to me and said, ‘Women are very underappreciated in our industry,’” Hutchins recalls. “We need to lead by example, and I would like you to lead this farm and be the owner of it. I think you need to come down to Honduras and teach our community, which is very machismo-driven, that women can own land and successfully lead a coffee farm.” Since then, Hutchins has been busy choosing the coffee varieties to be grown by Finca La Unica and designing farm operations, which will focus on producing a higher yield of coffee.

As Hutchins applies 21st-century business practices to an old family business, she has remained true to the values that inspired her to co-found Alma Coffee. “Our three key pillars are improving lives, sustainability and extraordinary coffee,” she says, “and that’s what we go back to with every single decision we make, whether it’s an investment, a hiring decision or whether we stay late to get one more person’s order out.”

By Robin Florzak

Below, view a video of Leticia Hutchins leading a tour of Alma Coffee’s roastery.

Alumnus Leads Data Tech Firm That Helps Hospitals Curb Costs

Dan Michelson, CEO of Strata Decision Technology, says he discovered his voice as a leader while studying for his DePaul MBA.

Dan Michelson, CEO of Strata Decision Technology, says he discovered his voice as a leader while studying for his DePaul MBA.

“I never even considered running a company until I interviewed for this job,” says Dan Michelson (MBA ’94), who celebrates his ninth year as CEO of Chicago-based Strata Decision Technology this June. Growing up in the Chicago area, Michelson “was an introverted kid, very insecure,” he explains, “and when I got to DePaul, I was still very much that person.”

Michelson credits Marketing Associate Professor Joel Whalen and his class “Effective Business Communication” for helping him discover his voice and confidence as a leader. “It completely changed how I thought about communication and connecting with people.”

Those skills have served Michelson well in his career. For more than a decade, he was chief marketing officer at Allscripts and helped the health care IT company grow revenue from $50 million to more than $1 billion. When Strata offered Michelson the CEO position, he set his sights on transforming it into one of the top health care data analytics software companies in the world. Named among the city’s top workplaces by the Chicago Tribune in 2020, Strata has more than 2,000 hospitals as customers and has grown from 50 to 500 employees during Michelson’s tenure.

“The biggest problem in health care is the cost of it,” Michelson says. “Right now, Strata is one of the central players in our country in terms of helping hospitals and health care delivery systems bend the cost curve. We have a cloud-based solution that’s used for financial planning, analytics and driving performance. We take something that’s very opaque—the cost of care—and we make it available to people who can do something about it.”

When COVID-19 hit last spring, Strata launched a new data report, the National Patient and Procedure Volume Tracker, to help hospitals allocate resources more effectively. The tracker has become the health care industry’s go-to tool for analyzing patient volume trends.

Michelson strongly believes business leaders should give back to the community and says his experience managing Chicago-area charity initiatives helped prepare him to run Strata. With his wife, Kim, he co-founded projectMUSIC, a benefit concert that sends underprivileged children to overnight camp. He also co-chairs Hack Hunger, a Chicago tech company collaborative that seeks to alleviate hunger.

“Tech companies often talk about saving the world, but they’re not really good about translating that inspiration into action,” he says. “For the past five years we have hosted a hackathon where we invite technologists from across the city, including high school students, to work on a set of problems with the Greater Chicago Food Depository.”

While seeking to address business or societal challenges, Michelson says he is driven by one question: “Are you doing meaningful work?”

“I give everyone the same advice, which is to find something you care about and work with people you care about,” he says. “If you do that, you’ll be happy and have an amazing career.”

By Robin Florzak

Political Pioneer Bushra Amiwala Reclaims Her Voice

Senator Kamala Harris and Alumna Bushra Amiwala

Alumna Bushra Amiwala, seen above with Vice President-elect Kamala Harris, is part of a wave of women making their voices heard in politics.

I think a lot of us just didn’t think that this kind of change would be possible for someone who had a particular background.”

— Bushra Amiwala (BUS ’20)

Two years ago, Bushra Amiwala’s (BUS ’20) candidacy for the Cook County Board of Commissioners captured the attention of national media outlets and won her a place in the PBS docuseries “And She Could Be Next.” In one scene, the documentary shows Amiwala addressing a room full of young volunteers in a small Skokie, Ill., restaurant.

“If I get elected,” she says. “I would be the first Pakistani Muslim woman to ever hold office in the United States.” At 20 years old, Amiwala lost her election to longtime incumbent Larry Suffredin. A week after her loss, Suffredin invited Amiwala to breakfast and encouraged her to run for the Skokie Board of Education.

“He said, ‘You can’t let this movement and mobilization that you had go to waste. You have to keep going,’” she says. She took his advice, and in 2019, Amiwala was elected to the board and is currently serving a four-year term. “Skokie has had such a profound impact on me and my education and upbringing, and it was my way to give back to the community that has done so much to shape who I am,” she says. Amiwala’s win made her the youngest Muslim elected official in the country.

Since 2015, the number of women of color who have run for office and been elected has increased dramatically—up 40% in Congress and up 38% in state legislatures, according to a report released by the Women Donors Network. In August, U.S. Senator Kamala Harris was nominated as the Democratic vice-presidential candidate. She was elected as the first woman and the first Black and Asian American vice president of the United States.

Bushra Amiwala greeting people

Bushra Amiwala, 22, serves on the Skokie School District 73.5 Board of Education.

“I think a lot of us just didn’t think that this kind of change would be possible for someone who had a particular background. Now they are stepping up to the plate and realizing, yes, there is space for us in the political realm if we choose to get up and do something about it,” says Amiwala, who began working for Google as a large customer sales associate following graduation in June. “I do want to make sure it’s not just a token type thing, that it’s not just the identity politics behind it, that they truly are the best to represent their communities right now in this time.”

During Amiwala’s first election run, which placed her and other women candidates on the cover of Time magazine, she noticed a trend in news stories documenting her campaign. During interviews, journalists rarely asked about her ideas as a candidate and instead focused on her identity as a Pakistani Muslim woman.

Amiwala says she has combated the stigma attached to identity politics by reclaiming her own voice when she can. “It’s being very intentional about what I choose to put out there and how I choose to amplify my own voice,” she says. “It’s speaking out against every instance where I do sort of feel like my identity and what I look like is at the forefront instead of my actual policy ideas or change I hope to bring forth.”

By Jaclyn Lansbery | Photos courtesy of Bushra Amiwala

Alumna Alex White Bridges the Music-Business Gap

Francis White and Alex White (BUS ’07)

Using the skills she learned as an undergraduate DePaul student, Miss Alex White has turned her band, White Mystery, into a sustainable music business through which she and her brother, Francis White (left), produce outdoor festivals, consult for artists and mentor music business students.

 

As industry leaders, it’s our responsibility to learn all of the Vincentian, ethical lessons that I feel DePaul does a really good job at emphasizing in the MBA program—that people in money decisions aren’t just data.”

— Miss Alex White (BUS ’07)

In 2008, Miss Alex White (BUS ’07) made a pact with her brother, Francis White, to commit full-time to their newly formed punk band, White Mystery, for the next 10 years.

Throughout the next decade, the sibling rock duo fulfilled that pact by living and breathing music 24 hours a day. To date, White Mystery has played more than 1,000 shows on three continents with music icons including Iggy Pop, Garbage, Mavis Staples, Patti Smith and even Sir Richard Branson; appeared in a national Levi’s Jeans ad campaign; performed live on the NBC late night TV show, “Last Call with Carson Daly”; and self-released 10 records – all without a manager or publicist. White partly credits her band’s success to lessons she learned in the DePaul class, Effective Business Communications, that she took as an undergraduate business student with Associate Professor of Marketing Joel Whalen — lessons that include how to properly introduce yourself and market your business to others.

“I use the lessons from Dr. Joel Whalen’s class every day,” White says. “So many times you’ll receive an email from somebody and it’s just a too-long-to-read autobiography about the person’s experience and the reality is that a lot of business people in music and beyond receive dozens and dozens of emails every day.”

Using these skills, White has turned White Mystery into a sustainable music business through which she and her brother produce outdoor festivals, consult for artists and mentor music business students.

Now, White has returned to DePaul to earn her MBA with a concentration in Real Estate Finance & Investment. She juggles school with a full-time job as the senior market and experience manager for Do312, a virtual Chicago network that helps people discover happenings in Chicago, and side gigs that consist of spinning records for clubs and parties, writing a column for High Times magazine and working on freelance consulting projects that have been featured in Forbes magazine.

Hitting the High Notes On and Off the Stage

Francis White and Alex White

Miss Alex White (right) made a pact with her brother, Francis White (left), to commit full-time to their band for 10 years.

Born and raised in Chicago, White and her brother grew up listening to rock ‘n roll classics on her parents’ vinyl collection – The Rolling Stones, Led Zepplin and The Who. She and her brother began playing musical instruments around 5 and 3 year’s old, respectively, and began jamming together at 13 and 11 year’s old.

As a high school student at Northside College Prep, White played in a number of bands. She also held a part-time job at Laurie’s Planet of Sound, a music store in the Lincoln Square neighborhood, where she developed an appreciation for vinyl records. She discovered she could manufacture seven-inch vinyl records – also known as 45s – from a record-pressing plant in Nashville. Under the name Missile X Records, White began producing 45 records and selling and releasing music through a one-page website.

“We took the punk approach where we Xeroxed black and white covers for these 45s and got a bunch of friends together, folded the covers and then we mail-ordered them all around the world,” she says.

Although White thought she might study art, she was exposed to the idea of being self-employed from a Chicago Tribune article that highlighted the Coleman Entrepreneurship Center at DePaul. “Jumping into entrepreneurship opened up a whole new world to me and a method of uniting my love of the arts with actually creating a career,” she says.

She enrolled in the Driehaus College of Business where she studied business management, sales leadership and entrepreneurship, later graduating with a bachelor’s in business cum laude. On the day of commencement, White was busy touring Europe under with her band, Miss Alex White & the Red Orchestra.

A year later, White, who added “Miss” to her given name to create her stage persona, and her brother started performing as White Mystery and playing up to 250 shows in one year. My brother Francis and I started White Mystery as an all-encompassing band and brand, where it started as just a sibling rock duo and transformed into what it is today, where we produce outdoor festivals, and help brainstorm solutions to challenges in the entertainment industry,” she says.

Shaping the Future of Music Business

Miss Alex White and Francis White

Miss Alex White (left) enrolled into the Driehaus College of Business to study entrepreneurship and later returned to DePaul to pursue an MBA.

I hope that in going through the DePaul MBA program that I become a better leader and help shape the culture of music and the arts to be a more diverse place for entrepreneurs to thrive.”

Today, White Mystery performs fewer shows while White continues to focus on her MBA. She served on the Coleman Entrepreneurship Center’s advisory board and helped form an alumni association, called eMerge, for emerging entrepreneurs. In the last 10 years, she’s mentored more than 30 college and high school students as well as the DePaul Blue Demons Men’s basketball team interested in entrepreneurship through guest-teaching, networking programs and consulting projects.

“Now that I am so overwhelmed by my workload from morning until night, I now am seeking mentorship,” she says. “Just because you mentor other people, it doesn’t mean you have it all figured out. It’s nice to actually have leadership from someone who is maybe a phase ahead of you but they can help you with the obstacles that you face.”

White also served as vice president of the Chicago Chapter of the Recording Academy, the organization responsible for the annual Grammy Awards. One of her proudest achievements while serving on the board of governors was successfully advocating for online streaming artists to be considered for nominations. The rule led to Chicago native Chance the Rapper winning multiple Grammy awards in 2017.

Following years of professional growth and experience, White says getting her MBA at this point in her career felt right, especially as the pandemic has impacted the music industry. She ultimately hopes to use her MBA to work in an executive leadership role and open doors for other musicians.

“I hope that in going through the DePaul MBA program that I become a better leader and help shape the culture of music and the arts to be a more diverse place for entrepreneurs to thrive and a place where women and people of color can also achieve leadership goals in creating environments that are more progressive,” she says.

“I feel that we, as industry leaders, have a responsibility to learn all of the Vincentian, ethical lessons that I feel DePaul does a really good job at emphasizing in the MBA program—(such as) that people in money decisions aren’t just data. There’s a very real human element that needs to be considered in decision-making and, as Blue Demons, we need to make sure we are the voice in the room that really emphasizes that.”

By Jaclyn Lansbery | Photos by Diane Alexander White 

DePaul MBA Alumnus and Professor Collaborate to Release Jazz CD

Dario Napoli

DePaul MBA alumnus Dario Napoli

Nov. 18 marks the U.S. release date for “Bella Vita,” a gypsy jazz CD that is the culmination of a unique musical collaboration between Dario Napoli, an Italian musician and DePaul MBA alumnus, and Steven Briggs, DePaul business professor emeritus and founder of Blue Night Records, a jazz/Americana music label.

In this Q&A, Napoli and Briggs talk about the origins and results of their musical partnership, which began 15 years ago when Napoli was a student at DePaul’s Kellstadt Graduate School of Business.

How did you first meet?

Napoli: So, in 2005 I began my MBA at DePaul and Steven taught a negotiations class that I took. I noticed right away that his approach to teaching was unconventional and creative and it truly was my favorite class even before I knew anything about Steven’s involvement in music. One of the assignments in the class was discussing our passions and our desires in life, and of course, that’s when Steven found out that music had been my No. 1 passion, ever since childhood. That prompted Steven to inquire more about me and so one day after class we chatted a bit and he invited me to bring my guitar so we could jam.

When did you start playing as musicians together?

Briggs: At my suggestion during our after-class discussion the first week, Dario brought his guitar to the second class session. Mine was in my office. We found a spot in the lobby after class and the notes began to fly. I was shocked at his musical knowledge and improvisational skills. We started jamming every Friday night until we got a few duet gigs here and there, sometimes on Chicago’s North Shore, and sometimes in my neck of the woods—Galena, Ill.  My wife, Barbara, is a great singer, so she joined us for the Galena gigs. Collectively, we were called “Swing Shift” and we had a blast playing in various Galena venues.

Napoli: After that first post-class jam, we got a lot closer and the jams became more frequent. Then Steven invited me to his beautiful house in Galena and there was more jamming. Since we had so much fun, we then started playing regular shows at a beautiful local restaurant in Galena, One Eleven Main.

Dario, why did you decide to focus on music as a career?

Napoli: On and off, I had always been involved in music since my high school days, at times more seriously (like in college in Louisiana), at times more as a hobby. Nonetheless, I basically never took time off from music since about the age of 12. After I met Steven, the idea of dedicating my life entirely to music grew stronger and stronger in me, as a result of the activities in his class and then as our friendship developed. He was a huge reason I made the leap in that direction and don’t regret it to this day. Steven helped me realize that life is so much better when you’re truly spending time doing what you love. Everything in life requires a tremendous amount of work, sacrifice and dedication; it might as well be toward something you genuinely enjoy doing.

A huge aspect of music is also the business side of it. The MBA at DePaul helped me greatly in always looking at things not only with the musician hat on but also with the management, booking, promoting and marketing hats on as well, (which are) vital in sustaining a career.

Steven, how did you found Blue Night Records?

Briggs: In 1996 I was the “arrangements chair” for the National Academy of Arbitrators’ 50th Anniversary Conference in Chicago. Part of my job was to hire musicians for several events. Among the cats I hired was Don Stiernberg, a Chicago jazz mandolinist and guitarist. He and I became friends and I offered to finance/produce a CD that featured him. The result was “About Time,” Blue Night Records’ first release, in 1998. “Bella Vita” by Dario and his trio, Modern Manouche Project, is our 16th CD release.

How did “Bella Vita” come about?

Briggs: Dario has been living in Italy for at least 10 years, and we’ve kept in touch the whole time. While he has a strong following across Europe and beyond, he had never released a record (yes, we still call them that) for the U.S. market. He sent me a nine-track demo he had recorded with Modern Manouche Project, and after some additional mastering and revised packaging it became “Bella Vita.”

Napoli: In January 2020 I recorded the demo with “Modern Manouche Project,” a trio I sometimes lead. As with all my previous recordings, one is always automatically reserved for Steven. A few weeks after I sent him a copy, Steven reached out and to let me know he was impressed with the work and wanted to release it as a CD, releasing it in the U.S. under the Blue Night Records mantle. The rest is history!

What’s next for each of you?

Briggs: Dario and I have already begun discussions about the next Blue Night Records’ release. I want to feature him again, but this time all of the tracks will be his original compositions.

Napoli: Before March and the advent of the coronavirus, we (Modern Manouche Project) had just completed a northern European tour. Things were really looking promising as we had a schedule full of exciting tours and concerts. That came to a bit of a halt, but we are still optimistic about being able to tour and present “Bella Vita” both here in Europe and in the U.S. I’m also writing new music and will look to record the new Blue Night Records album sometime in the next year, if the world returns to some semblance of normalcy.

Anything you would like to add?

Napoli: I suppose life grants you a certain number of crucial encounters, mentors or significant people that somehow inspire you and guide you toward a path you were likely bound to take. Steven was one of those people for me, someone whose integrity and personality just stood out for me. I’m honored to this day to have met him and more than once, listened to his advice and followed his example. And none of it would have likely happened without my experience at DePaul University.


Q&A conducted by Robin Florzak | Photos courtesy of Dario Napoli and Steven Briggs

Alumna Leads Launch of Innovative New Bank

Marianne Markowitz (MBA ’92) CEO, First Women’s Bank

Marianne Markowitz (MBA ’92) CEO, First Women’s Bank

When I think about the impact DePaul had on my life and career, I also go back to networks. DePaul expanded my perspective, my skill set, but perhaps most importantly, my network— a network I continue to leverage and grow today.

Marianne Markowitz (MBA ’92) is leading the launch of Illinois’ first new commercial bank in a dozen years. Called First Women’s Bank, the innovative, Chicago-based institution will serve small and midsize businesses and individual depositors, with a focus on women’s banking needs. Markowitz brings experience as the former Midwest regional director of the Small Business Administration to her role as bank CEO. In this interview, she shares why she is passionate about this groundbreaking bank startup, which is scheduled to open this year.

What motivated you to establish First Women’s Bank?

There is a well-documented and addressable gender gap in lending, but no one is addressing it. Women are starting businesses at two times the national average, yet they receive just 16% of conventional business loans. Our mission is to help bridge that gap, help grow the small-business economy and advance the role of women within it. That’s incredibly motivating to me!

What’s unique about this venture? 

Everything! We’ll be the first de novo bank in Illinois in more than a decade and the only bank with a strategic focus on women in the nation. We have built an incredible team, and we’re guided and supported by a talented and experienced board. People are drawn to our mission to grow the economy and advance the role of women within it. The support we are receiving and the excitement this launch elicits continue to surprise me. It’s truly the opportunity of a lifetime.

What are the current challenges and opportunities facing small businesses in Chicago and beyond?

Historically, one of the biggest challenges facing small business was access to capital; now it’s about access to the right capital. Because larger banks tend to focus on larger, more profitable middle-market companies, the service levels for small businesses have suffered. As a result, a new crop of fintech ventures have emerged to fill the gap with fast cash. There are lots of providers offering immediate capital with opaque terms.

Small businesses are signing up for these loans without fully understanding the aggressive repayment terms, which can sometimes be predatory in nature. In addition, there are fewer trusted advisers to guide small businesses to the best capital solutions to meet their needs. While capital is one piece of the puzzle, a strategic network that can provide access to information, technology and marketing opportunities can be as powerful as capital. We intend to provide access to innovative capital solutions and connect our clients to networks of opportunity to help them achieve their goals.

How did your upbringing and education lead you to a career in business and public service?

I was raised in a working-class community, and I saw firsthand the achievement gaps that exist when there are few paths to consider and no networks to leverage. I’m a very commercial person, so I was drawn to business early on, I think, in part, because I saw so many different possibilities. That was exciting to me, and that ultimately led me to DePaul for my MBA and a career in finance.

A pivotal moment in my career came when I joined the 2008 Obama campaign as chief financial officer. It was the first time I had the opportunity to marry my skills with my passion and values. Once you experience leveraging the skills you’ve worked so hard to build with what matters to you most, then you are no longer working—you’re living your values. And that’s how I feel about the work we are doing at First Women’s Bank. We’re building more than a bank. We’re creating a platform that will allow small businesses, corporations and individuals to demonstrate their commitment to gender equality and women in leadership.

How did your DePaul education shape your career and life?

DePaul had a fantastic banking and trading focus. At the time, I was working on complex trading instruments, so it was great to go to school at night and immediately go back to work the next morning and apply what I was learning. It was at DePaul that I focused on banking for the first time. In fact, we had a project where we had to design an innovative bank from scratch, and my team designed a mobile bank. I’ve thought about that project a lot as we prepare to launch a mobile bank. The technology is dramatically different, but the fundamentals are not.

When I think about the impact DePaul had on my life and career, I also go back to networks. DePaul expanded my perspective, my skill set, but perhaps most importantly, my network— a network I continue to leverage and grow today.

What advice do you have for recent DePaul graduates?

My advice is to leverage the broad network that DePaul offers. Broaden your perspective, look beyond your current job or area of study. Look up, look across, look around at the many paths that DePaul can help lead you down. See your professors not only as teachers, but as advisers for your future. And find a way to marry your skills and experience with your passion.

By Robin Florzak | Photo by Kathy Hillegonds

Walgreens Exec Turns Real Estate Experience into Real-world Lessons

Nestor Eliadis MBA ’10

Nestor Eliadis MBA ’10

Nestor Eliadis, senior director of real estate at Walgreens

I chose DePaul because it best combined a world-class education, alumni network and location that provides a gateway to the marketplace.

Residence: Orland Park, Ill.

Occupation:
As senior director of real estate for Walgreens, I lead the real estate program in the Southern United States, which includes asset development and portfolio management, as well as direction of the surplus idle property program across the country through disposition and subleasing activity. Since joining the organization in 2011, I have held various roles and responsibilities within the real estate and finance divisions. I serve as the real estate conduit between business, operations, finance, accounting, treasury, law and tax divisions.

Education: I was raised in the southwest suburbs of Chicago and graduated from Brother Rice High School in 1995 with aspirations of becoming an architect. I attended the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee as a collegiate athlete in men’s soccer for two years prior to transferring to the University of Illinois at Chicago to focus on my architecture degree, which I earned in 2000. After an eight-year professional career in architecture, construction and real estate, I sought to enhance my business and financial acumen through additional education. I chose DePaul because it best combined a world-class education, alumni network and location that provides a gateway to the marketplace. I received an MBA with distinction in real estate finance and investment in 2010.

Vital stats: My formal real estate career began in 2003 when I earned a real estate brokerage license in order to become a more informed home buyer for my personal Chicago residence. I transitioned to corporate real estate in 2006 and joined Walgreens in 2011. Since joining, I’ve had the opportunity to drive real estate decisions for more than 10,000 retail and office properties, execute $2 billion of sale-leasebacks and manage annual budgets of $4 billion in operating expenses and $1 billion of capital expenditures.

What I like best about my job: My job offers me an amazing national real estate platform to identify opportunities, create solutions and implement strategies to deliver results at scale. Additionally, I thoroughly enjoy collaborating with people to develop systems that empower them to execute efficiently.

The biggest challenge I face in my job: Retailers strive to deliver relevant solutions for changing consumers. Flexibility and agility are paramount to our success. The greatest challenge exists in the continual effort to preserve operational flexibility while delivering the maximum real estate value for the lowest costs, which is a conflict in most negotiations.

How and why I stay connected to DePaul’s business college: I owe a lot in my career to the education I received at DePaul. It was a fantastic educational experience for me. I keep in touch with many of the professors who influenced my career and journey since my graduation. I guest-lecture in real estate classes by presenting a case study that connects financial and business theory with real practice. I also participate in two or three real estate department events annually. For me it’s a way of giving back, influencing and challenging students in different ways, and impacting the next generation of DePaul graduates.

By Robin Florzak | Photo by Kathy Hillegonds

DePaul Provided Foundation for CEO’s Success

Frank S. Ptak (BUS ’65, DHL ’13)

Frank S. Ptak

Frank S. Ptak

My love for the city where I grew up and for DePaul, which came to my financial aid when my father died, will never end.”

RESIDENCE: Boca Raton, Fla.

OCCUPATION: I recently retired as chairman and CEO of Marmon Holdings Inc., a subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway Inc. My job was to set the overall strategy for Marmon’s vast array of companies and develop sufficient management talent to implement that strategy successfully, and always with high integrity, trust and ethical behavior. Marmon is a highly decentralized, diversified industrial conglomerate with more than $8 billion in revenues in 2018. It comprises more than 100 businesses whose products range from railroad tank cars and platform trailers, to shopping carts and commercial beverage dispensers, to screws and work gloves. Berkshire Hathaway acquired Marmon in 2008, and having the opportunity to work directly for Berkshire CEO Warren Buffett was the delight of my entire career.

EDUCATION: My pursuit of a business career started at Chicago’s St. Rita High School, which offered one of the very few high school business curriculums. DePaul was very attractive to me with its high reputation in accounting and the near certainty of good job placement in the Chicago CPA firm market. This approach worked well for me, as I landed with Arthur Young & Co. immediately after graduation in 1965 and became a CPA.

MY BACKGROUND: I grew up in a highly principled and hardworking family on the South Side of Chicago. My father was a regional manager for the A&P grocery store chain. All of us, including my three siblings, worked hard to help our parents make ends meet in a typical lower middle-class family; I had a paper route starting at age 12. We didn’t have a lot of amenities then, but it was a family full of love and we always tried to have fun.

CAREER HIGHLIGHTS: After a five-year accounting career, I got my first real taste of business working as a stock market analyst and investor for two years. I went on to a series of management jobs during five years with Sara Lee Corp. Then I got my greatest career break with Illinois Tool Works, one of the most highly regarded American operating companies. I spent 30 wonderful years learning and growing, and retired as its vice chairman at the end of 2005. I joined Marmon as CEO in January 2006 after a two-week retirement. In retrospect, I guess I just enjoyed running industrial companies too much to give it up. I relished the opportunity to build something financially strong enough to take good care of a company’s three constituencies—its employees, customers, and owners.

I have watched many employees grow and develop into outstanding contributors to this cause, and I am very proud of the fact that I had something to do with their success. This is my ultimate joy and sense of accomplishment. I am very active in many Chicago philanthropic activities, including DePaul (as an Executive Committee member of the Driehaus College of Business Advisory Council) and Junior Achievement of Chicago. My love for the city where I grew up and for DePaul, which came to my financial aid when my father died, will never end.

Advice for Recent Graduates

  1. Do something you love.
  2. Don’t be afraid to take a chance.
  3. Strive to work with strong mentors who give you your chance to really take off.
  4. Never compromise on your integrity and ethics.
  5. Never forget to give back as you achieve your own success.

Raising the Bar

Jared Smith and the Startup that Became a $600M Game-Changer

Jared Smith, co-founder of RXBAR

Jared Smith (BUS ’08) co-founded RXBAR in the basement of his
business partner’s parents’ home. Last fall Kellogg bought the venture for $600 million.

When Jared Smith (BUS ’08) began attending DePaul University, he thought he wanted to be a math teacher. His passion for business quickly led him to transfer to the Driehaus College of Business, where he double majored in economics and finance before graduating.

Now, Smith is co-founder of the nutrition bar company RXBAR, and he’s clearly mastered both math and business. Last October, Kellogg Co. acquired RXBAR for $600 million, calling the startup “a unique and innovative company” with “values, people and a cutting-edge approach (that) represent an exciting opportunity for our business.” Smith has stayed on with the company.

Headquartered in the River North neighborhood of Chicago, the company is the fastest-growing nutrition bar brand in the U.S. The acquisition is allowing RXBAR to expand its resources, break into new food categories and take advantage of Kellogg’s research and development resources while operating as a standalone business.

We don’t want to change the way we work, we don’t want to change the way we operate,” Smith says. “We wanted to be able to leverage their resources and their experiences where and when we need them.”

At DePaul, Smith took a range of classes, including an entrepreneurship class he says changed the way he thought about his career.

“What it really taught me was a different way of thinking and that there is more than one way to make a living, rather than going to work at a big financial firm,” he says.

Before he became an entrepreneur, however, Smith gained experience through a more traditional path in finance. He completed internships at three different financial services companies in Chicago, including an unpaid internship at what is now Morgan Stanley Wealth Management.

After graduating at the height of the financial recession, Smith took a job at Jackson National Asset Management, where he worked in various departments for the next four years. During his last year of working there as an operations analyst, he began collaborating with Peter Rahal—his childhood best friend—on creating a minimal-ingredient protein bar in the basement of Rahal’s parents’ house in Glen Ellyn, Ill.

Rahal, CEO of RXBAR, and Smith shared a passion for health and fitness. They would head to the gym together every day after work and were huge bar consumers themselves. They were unable to find an all-natural, clean, minimal-ingredient protein bar.

“If you look at the protein bar category, it’s either all fruit and nut all-natural or granola bars,” Smith says. “On the other side of the spectrum is body builder (bars) high (and) heavy in protein with tons of ingredients. There was nothing in the middle.”

RXBAR labelSmith and Rahal came up with the concept for RXBAR in August 2012, then spent the next eight months developing the recipe and designing the label themselves in PowerPoint— a label that, however ugly, successfully displayed their value proposition to offer whole food protein bars. In March 2013, Smith and Rahal quit their day jobs and officially launched RXBAR.

After going all in, they each invested $5,000 of their own money and rented a 1,000-square-foot manufacturing space on the West Side of Chicago. Over the next 18 months, their production and staff grew to the point where they eventually rented the entire 7,000-square-foot facility.

“Every single weekend, especially during the first couple of years in the business, we’d go out and sample our demo at any type of event we could find, whether it was a gym or a grocery store, literally anywhere,” says Smith. “We’d go out and sell the product directly to consumers to figure out what resonated and what didn’t, and eventually we’d start telling customers, ‘This is like eating a handful of nuts and some fruit and protein.’ This really hit home for our customers.”

This led Smith and Rahal to create RXBAR’s current packaging, which features its core ingredients on the front of the label.

In the first four years at RXBAR, Smith served as chief financial officer. His main focus now is building the company’s philanthropic arm and engaging a variety of stakeholders, including customers, suppliers and vendors.

Smith says he underestimated the work it would take to get to where he and RXBAR are today.

“Everything I read about entrepreneurship before starting the company was always focused on the outcome, the end game. That was something Peter and I never focused on,” he says. “Literally, we’d stay at work all week. Then we’d demo our samples on the weekends. We sacrificed a lot—social life, income, sleep and much more. We just focused on work, and that was it.”

As friends and co-founders, Rahal and Smith make up a perfect partnership. “Our personalities are totally different,” he says. “I’m much more methodical, pragmatic, back end, and he’s much more aggressive, front end, and an incredible visionary. But our relationship from first grade and growing up together proved to be extremely valuable, because who you partner with is everything. We trusted each other from day one.”

How Smith and Rahal work together has led to the business culture at RXBAR, as well as their product’s master claim, “No B.S.,” which is displayed proudly on the front label below the ingredients. “That’s what our product and business is all about, and that’s the definition of transparency,” Smith says. “We’re not trying to hide anything. We’re putting everything out there for the consumer and empowering the consumer to make that decision.”

By Jaclyn Lansbery | Photos by Kathy Hillegonds

Double Demon Leads Business Simulation Company

Reda Chafai BUS '05, MBA '10
Reda Chafai
BUS ’05, MBA ’10

Residence: Palatine, Ill.

Occupation: President, Capsim Management Solutions Inc., a Chicago-based company that delivers online business simulations and rich learning environments for both academic and corporate clients. I began working there as a business training analyst in 2007 and have since held a number of positions that have helped me in my current role as president. When Capsim started in the 1980s, it delivered business simulation-based training to corporations. Our first testing ground in the university market was DePaul in the ’90s. I did my first Capsim simulation as a DePaul undergraduate, and I currently use simulations in teaching strategy as an adjunct professor in the college’s Department of Management & Entrepreneurship.

What I like best about my job is: I know many companies say it, but we truly want to make a difference. I think the reason we are still around in this rapidly changing environment is that we are determined to keep making learning more accessible, relevant and applicable.

The biggest challenge I face in my job is: Sifting through all the available opportunities and working out what to say “yes” to and what to say “no” to. Some of the things we reject look so good and tempting, but like every company, we have limited resources—time, people, expertise, cash. It’s my job to allocate the resources to the opportunities that have the best chance of success and best align with our strategy.

My DePaul experience helped me to: Face the different challenges that come with managing teams, making executive decisions and aligning tactical decisions with a strategic direction. What I was taught at business school, and what I teach at business school, is what I do every day at work. It is an amazing opportunity for me, as a teacher and a leader, to see how the theory and the practice work together.

Advice for new graduates:

  • Never stop learning.
  • Aim as high as possible.
  • You’ll be surprised by how much you can achieve.
  • Give back in any way you can.
  • Nurture the network you build as a student.

By Jaclyn Lansbery