Author: Zoya Nooruddin (page 1 of 7)

Class Note: Arthur Mills IV, MBA ’04, BBA ’96

Arthur Mills IV MBA ’04, BBA ’96, recently joined New Teacher Center’s Executive Team, taking on the Chief Operations Officer (COO) role in April. As the COO, Arthur will lead the national educational equity-focused non-profit’s finance, human resources, and digital transformation/IT teams.

Arthur brings a wealth of experience from both the private and education sectors that will strengthen the organization’s operations and business acumen. He comes to NTC after having served as the Executive Director of Talent Management and Organizational Strategy for Fulton County Schools in Atlanta, Georgia. This role, coupled with his private sector experience with General Mills, Dell, BNSF, and GE Capital, provides a unique perspective to this work and he will be a key thought leader in driving NTC’s culture and business model forward.

New Teacher Center is a national non-profit organization dedicated to ensuring educational equity–improving student learning by guiding a new generation of educators and leaders. NTC’s mission is to disrupt the challenges teachers and students face by providing all educators with the support and resources necessary to succeed from their first day to their last. NTC believes this will ensure all students are empowered to reach their full potential in classrooms, communities, and beyond.

Class Note: Timour Procopovich, MBA ’17

Syberry, the Austin-based software development company Timour founded in 2014, is gaining significant traction in Austin and beyond. The company has recently been recognized as a top developer by both Clutch and Design Rush, and Timour was accepted last month into the Forbes Technology Council.

Syberry provides full-scale custom software development for clients in any industry. The company’s mission is offering unparalleled service for custom software engineering, including web and mobile application development, building custom ERP solutions, and empowering businesses with cutting-edge cloud and IoT technologies.

Class Note: Jeffrey Kreger, BBA ’90

VITAS® Healthcare, the nation’s leading provider of end-of-life care, appointed Jeffrey M. Kreger as executive vice president (EVP) and chief financial officer (CFO). Kreger succeeds President and CFO David Wester who announced his retirement in early 2019 after a 22-year career at VITAS.

Kreger brings to VITAS 30 years of financial, operational and administrative experience. In addition to leading all financial operations as CFO, Kreger serves as a strategic partner to executive and operational leadership teams, and oversees finance, accounting, facilities, revenue cycle management and risk management departments.

Kreger comes to VITAS from positions as senior vice president, CFO and treasurer at two healthcare firms, including Dallas-based Aegis Therapies and Denver-based BioScrip. Previously, he worked in finance leadership roles at LHC Group in Louisiana, Sun Healthcare Group in California, American Habilitation in Texas and Sava Senior Care in Georgia. He began his career as a certified public accountant (CPA) and financial auditor at Ernst & Young. Read more here. 

Class Note: Kevin Pearce, Brian White, BBA ’04

The emergency room — often the first stop for parents when their children are sick — can be more than an hour away for residents in rural Texas. Additionally, these emergency rooms often aren’t staffed with pediatric providers.

UT alumni Kevin Pearce and Brian White, who both graduated from the McCombs School of Business in 2004, founded Urgent Care for Kids in 2011 to solve these problems and plan to expand their business this year. “So here you are. You’ve got a kid, your most prized possession, who is sick,” Pearce said. “You don’t know why, but you have no real pediatric resources with which to use to make them better. We saw this missing void and said, ‘We could do this better.’” Urgent Care for Kids is currently adding to their pediatric clinics across Texas and improving their virtual platform, Pearce said. “Our whole role was to make a customer-focused, pediatric-specialized program that would help these children and families at the time when it mattered most to them,” Pearce said. “As a part of that, we felt there were opportunities in the virtual care space to send the top-notch pediatric care in our clinics to the state of Texas.”

Last July, Urgent Care for Kids started offering a service called Virtual Care for Kids, which allows a parent to video chat with a pediatrician,
Pearce said. Read more here. 

Class Note: Nancy Spencer, BBA & MPA ’05

Aceable, the leader in digital high-stakes education, today announced the hiring of Justin Kvasnicka as Chief Financial Officer and Nancy Spencer as Vice President of Finance. Mr. Kvasnicka and Ms. Spencer, who are both proven financial leaders with accomplished backgrounds, will work together to oversee the company’s aggressive growth plan to further expand its driving and real estate products nationwide. In addition, the company is also exploring new industry verticals.

Nancy Spencer spent nearly three years at Google, serving as an Operational Controller and a Google Fiber Regional Finance Lead. Prior to her time there, she spent over 10 years at Ernst & Young, where she was a Senior Manager, Assurance Services. An experienced accounting and finance leader, Spencer has a demonstrated history of working in multiple industries with a focus in tech and real estate. She received both her BBA and MPA from the University of Texas at Austin’s Red McCombs School of Business. Read more here. 

Class Note: Mark Madrid, BBA ’95

When Mark Madrid recalls the last time he attended the Greater Quad-City Hispanic Chamber of Commerce gala, it was at a spot in Moline where people stood in line at a buffet. It was nice, and it was a beginning.

But over the years things changed, and on Saturday, at the 10th annual gala where the theme was “A Decade of Resilience,” Madrid found the event in the Waterfront Convention Center in Bettendorf, “On the main stage,” he said, not controlling the excitement in his voice.

 Speaking to the media before the event began, Madrid said resilience was to be the focus of his speech to the audience that packed the sold-out event.

“I’m going to be talking about our middle name as Latinos and Latinas, which is resilience,” said Madrid, who is CEO of the Latino Business Action Network, or LBAN, located in the San Francisco, California, area.

The goal of the organization is to double the number of $10 million, $100 million and $1 billion Latino-owned businesses by 2025. Read more here. 

Class Note: Robert Hallenbeck, MBA ’11

Today, Hallenbeck remains at the Houston-based company as manager of corporate venturing. His primary responsibility is to understand and assess underlying technologies, market potential and fit within WM. Being able to push the envelope to develop and implement these new ideas that help improve the industry’s environmental footprint is what has keeps him motivated.

“Rob is a lifelong learner. He is always willing and able to assess all facets of a waste process, be it technical, financial, operational or policy-related aspects,” says Pat Ramm, Hallenbeck’s supervisor. “He is a terrific team player and wants to include others in the brainstorming because he enjoys hearing other ideas. He is very inquisitive around what makes things work and has a very natural and positive way of challenging paradigms, technologies or the status quo.” Read more here. 

Class Note: Joel Neeb, MBA ’14

Joel Neeb: “Tomorrow I’ll compete on American Ninja Warrior. I want to thank the MANY people that have followed me here through this journey! But, I have a confession to make. This experience was never just about doing an obstacle course on TV. This adventure (and many others) really started in 2010 when I was diagnosed with “terminal cancer”. I was living a nightmare. I drew strength from the patients I met who were also battling cancer. Sitting in the chemo treatment room together, we talked about what we‘d do when we got healthy. The lifelong dreams we would finally fulfill. We were so optimistic. Tragically, many of those people never got a second chance at life. But I did. And as a survivor, I have an obligation to live my life to its fullest for those men and women in that room who are no longer here today.” Read more here. 

Class Note: Ben Ellis, MBA ’03

AUSTIN, Texas–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Mar 27, 2019–Texas American Resources Company (TARC) announced today that Ben M. Ellis has been appointed as Chief Financial Officer. In his new role, Ellis will oversee all finance, fundraising, midstream business development, and be a key leader in the company’s acquisition strategies going forward.

“We are excited about the proven experience and financial know-how Ben brings to our organization,” said David Honeycutt, TARC President and Chief Executive Officer. “As a results-driven leader with demonstrated success sourcing and executing opportunities that bring value and bolt-on growth potential, Ben has a tangible background of helping run businesses and working within leadership teams to transact and grow in a fast-paced, entrepreneurial environment. I am confident that as TARC evolves, Ben’s impact will be a key component to our continued success.” Read more here. 

Class Note: Jason Ryan, BBA ’98

Houston-based CenterPoint Energy Inc. (NYSE: CNP) has selected a new general counsel and senior vice president.

Jason Ryan, formerly CenterPoint’s senior vice president of regulatory services and government affairs, has been named to the roles, effective April 2. He’s also joining the company’s senior leadership team, according to an April 1 press release.

Before joining CenterPoint in 2009, Ryan represented the company as outside regulatory counsel for nearly a decade, per the release. He was a managing partner at energy law firm RyanGlover LLP and a global projects attorney at Baker Botts LLP. He also served as an information dominance warfare officer in the U.S. Navy from 2005 to 2015, per the release.

In his new role, Ryan will now oversee regulatory services; government affairs; corporate governance; securities and commercial law; litigation and claims; internal audit; environmental; and ethics, compliance and privacy, per the release. Read more here. 

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