Faculty

The entrepreneurship faculty at Chicago Booth rank among the top educators in the world. With a a rich blend of tenured, clinical, and adjunct professors, entrepreneurship faculty members develop innovative content, teach multiple facets of entrepreneurship, conduct groundbreaking research, collaborate with the entrepreneurial and private equity communities, and bring their own entrepreneurial experiences into the classroom. The result is a valuable network of resources for students and alumni.

Principal Faculty

About 25 professors teach courses in entrepreneurship at any given time. However, the professors listed below work most closely with the Polsky Center and dedicate most or all of their time to entrepreneurship at Chicago Booth.

Steven N. Kaplan, Neubauer Family Professor of Entrepreneurship and Finance and faculty director of the Polsky Center, teaches Entrepreneurial Finance and Private Equity and Developing a New Venture (New Venture Challenge). He has been named among the top five professors at Chicago Booth in BusinessWeek since 1992, and he is the two-time Phoenix Award winner for service to students outside of the classroom at Chicago Booth. Kaplan is widely published in academic journals and often quoted for his expertise in business publications like the Wall Street Journal. He is academic dean and board member for the Kauffman Fellows Program. Other board experience includes: Illinois Venture Capital Association, and Morningstar (NASDAQ: MORN).

Ellen A. Rudnick, '73, clinical professor of entrepreneurship and executive director of the Polsky Center, teaches Entrepreneurial Internship Seminar, Private Equity/Venture Capital Lab, and Developing a New Venture (New Venture Challenge). She is a successful start-up executive, having served as chairman of Pacific Biometrics and CEO of Health Care Knowledge Resources. Rudnick has held positions as corporate vice president at Baxter Healthcare and president of Baxter Management Services Division, which she founded. Her current board experience includes: Liberty Mutual Insurance, Patterson Companies (NASDAQ: PDCO), Health Management Systems (NASDAQ: HMSY), and First Midwest Bancorp (NASDAQ: FMBI). She was previously a venture partner for Inroads Capital.

Linda Darragh, clinical associate professor of entrepreneurship and director of entrepreneurship programs, teaches New Venture and Small Enterprise Lab and Social Entrepreneurship, and leads the Hamer Small Business Initiative. She is founder of the Ceres Venture Fund for women investors seeking investments in women-led businesses. As the former vice president of the Women's Business Development Center in Chicago, Darragh has worked with hundreds of entrepreneurs, served on the Illinois governor's transition team on economic development, and developed programs to increase access to capital for women-led businesses. She received the Illinois Technology Association's 2009 CityLIGHTS Award, given to an individual who has made a significant impact on the Illinois technology community.

Waverly Deutsch, clinical professor of entrepreneurship, teaches Building the New Venture. The class won her the 2005 Innovative Pedagogy for Entrepreneurship Education award from the United States Association for Small Business and Entrepreneurship. She also teaches a course on Elements of Entrepreneurship to CPS students over the summer as part of the Collegiate Scholars Program. Deutsch's advisory board experience includes Chicagoland Entrepreneurial Center and Chicago Community Ventures.

Jonathan K. Frenzen, clinical professor of marketing, teaches Laboratory in New Product and Strategy Development (Management Labs). Frenzen's course is an important part of students' experiential learning at Chicago Booth. Frenzen's research activities include business-to-business marketing, product development, sales management, and international marketing.

Robert H. Gertner, Joel F. Gemunder Professor of Strategy and Finance, focuses his research primarily on industrial organization, resource allocation and decision making in organizations, corporate investment, law and economics, and strategic pricing. Prior to accepting his position at the Chicago Booth, Gertner was a research fellow for the National Bureau of Economic Research, taught courses as a visiting associate professor of management and strategy at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, and worked as a full-time consultant for the American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T). His work has appeared in the Review of Economic Studies, the Journal of Law and Economics, the Stanford Law Review, and the Palgrave Dictionary of Economics and the Law.

Scott F. Meadow, clinical professor of entrepreneurship, teaches Entrepreneurial Finance and Private Equity and Commercializing Innovation. He has been named among the top five professors at Chicago Booth in BusinessWeek since 2002, when he began teaching at the school. Meadow is the only faculty member at Chicago Booth to have received the Phoenix Award for service to students outside of the classroom in four consecutive years. He has spent more than 25 years as a general partner in private equity, founding such projects as Sports Authority and Sunrise Assisted Living. He is currently associate partner at Edgewater Funds.

James E. Schrager, clinical professor of entrepreneurship and strategic management, teaches New Venture Strategy. He has been named among the top five professors at Chicago Booth in BusinessWeek since 1994, and he is editor of the Journal of Private Equity. Schrager completed the first IPO of a U.S. private company in Japan, and he has turned around several businesses, including a company with $500 million in sales and operations in 20 countries. He currently serves as president of Great Lakes Group.

Luigi Zingales, Robert C. McCormack Professor of Entrepreneurship and Finance, teaches Entrepreneurial Finance and Private Equity. He is widely published in academic journals and has won several awards for his research. His most recent book, Saving Capitalism from the Capitalists, with Raghuram G. Rajan, received acclaim from the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post.