Advisory Board

David S. Blitzer is the Global Head of Blackstone’s Tactical Opportunities group (Tac Opps), and a member of the firm’s Management and Operating Committees. He also leads the Tac Opps Investment Committee. Tac Opps is Blackstone’s opportunistic investment business which invests globally across asset classes and industries to generate attractive risk-adjusted returns in any market environment. Prior to launching Tac Opps, Mr. Blitzer had been involved in the execution of Blackstone investments across a variety of asset classes, including establishing and leading Blackstone’s European private equity business. He joined the firm in 1991.

David is also the Co-Founder and Co-Managing Partner of Harris Blitzer Sports & Entertainment (HBSE), which includes the New Jersey Devils, the Prudential Center, the Philadelphia 76ers, the Penn Medicine 76ers Training, Wollman Rink in New York City, an investment 5-time NASCAR Cup Series champion Joe Gibbs Racing, the Delaware Blue Coats, the Utica Comets, the Dignitas e-sports franchise, White Eagle Hall in Jersey City, NJ, the Sixers Innovation Lab and HBSEv, a venture fund.

David is also an owner of the Washington Commanders, the Cleveland Guardians, Real Salt Lake, Crystal Palace of the Premier League and FC Augsburg of the Bundesliga, amongst other soccer properties. He became the first person to hold team equity in the five major sports leagues of North America: the NBA, NHL, NFL, MLS, and MLB.

David and his wife Allison have 5 children and reside in New York. Through the Devils Youth Foundation and the Sixers Youth Foundation, they invest in organizations that positively impact community and youth development.

David graduated magna cum laude from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. He currently serves on the Boards of Dream, the Riverdale Country School, the Advisory Board of the Mount Sinai Surgical Department, the Board of Overseers at the Wharton School, the Board of Trustees at University of Pennsylvania, and the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Foundation.

A passionate consumer advocate, Cho was most recently the CEO at Evite where he led the company successfully through COVID19 and returned it to growth, financial health, and a successful corporate buy-out. Before that Cho was the CEO during a multi-year turnaround effort at Kodak Gallery (formerly ofoto.com). He served as the Vice President and leader of Intuit’s web channel, taking the business from $300 million to $1.3 billion+. Cho also spent seven years at Microsoft, where he launched some of the company’s earliest Internet commerce and SaaS initiatives.

Cho has received numerous awards for his work, including being named the Internet Person of the Year by the Internet Marketing Association and receiving a Knighthood from the Royal House of Savoy for his philanthropic efforts–which have raised over $30M for charities and non-profits. He is also the creator of the 4^th Stakeholder Framework (www.4thstakeholder.com) on improving stakeholder capitalism.

Cho currently serves on the boards of Evite, Emovid (video AI), and ModoPayments (payments orchestration) as well as the advisory boards of the Internet Marketing Association and several other start-ups. He earned a BS from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School.

David Gallo is the Managing Partner, Portfolio Manager, and founder of Valinor Management, an equity long/short hedge fund with $4+ billion of assets at its peak. Valinor was converted into a family investment office in 2020. As a hedge fund, Valinor was a generalist firm, investing in public securities across a wide variety of industries, geographies, and market capitalizations. As a family investment office, Valinor invests in most asset classes, including public equity, private equity, real estate, absolute return, and credit.

Prior to founding Valinor, Mr. Gallo was a Senior Analyst at Bridger Capital, which he joined as the fourth member of its investment team. Prior to Bridger, Mr. Gallo was a Vice President at Francisco Partners, a technology-focused private equity firm. Prior to that, he was an Associate at Tiger Management, an Analyst at Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co., and an Analyst at The Blackstone Group where he worked primarily with their Private Equity Group.

Mr. Gallo serves on the Board of Advisors of two investment firms, CenterBook Partners and Heights Capital, serves on the Board of Trustees of the Jewish Center of the Hamptons and of Natan, and prior to joining the Advisory Board of the WAIAI, was an Advisory Board Member of the University of Pennsylvania Institute for Urban Research. Mr. Gallo previously served on the Board of Directors of NextDecade Corporation, a Nasdaq-listed company.

Mr. Gallo received his Bachelor of Science in Economics with concentrations in Finance and Accounting from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, Summa Cum Laude, where he graduated as both a Benjamin Franklin Scholar and a Joseph Wharton Scholar. Mr. Gallo received his MBA from Harvard Business School, where he graduated with High Distinction as a Baker Scholar and a Loeb Fellow.

Mr. Roger Gu is the Co-founder and President of Wacai, one of the largest independent mobile-based platforms for comprehensive personal wealth management in China. Prior to founding Wacai, Mr. Gu has dedicated over 20 years of his career to data-driven business leadership roles in the United States and Europe at Capital One Financial, and in Asia at Standard Chartered Bank.

Throughout his professional journey, Mr. Gu has developed a profound expertise in Decision Analytics, Risk Management, and entrepreneurship in the Fintech sector. In addition to his role at Wacai, he also serves as an Independent Non-executive Director of Standard Chartered Bank (Singapore) Ltd.

Mr. Gu holds four advanced degrees, including a B.S. in Applied Mathematics and a B.S. in Business Administration, an M.S. in Electronic Engineering and an M.S. in Computer Science, from Shanghai Jiao Tong University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Nobel is the Chairman and CEO of the Numeus Group, a global investment firm focused on Digital Assets. Over the past three decades, Nobel has proven to be an entrepreneurial executive with a demonstrated history of building and managing investment and trading businesses, leveraging the power of data science and technology. He spent twelve years at Two Sigma where he led the growth of the company across various dimensions, including the expansion into new geographies, asset classes, as well as adjacent businesses such as market making and insurance. Most significantly, Gulati was responsible for scaling the investment management business, as CEO of Two Sigma Advisers, LP, which encompasses Two Sigma’s asset management division that provides solutions for institutional investors. Under his leadership the company’s assets grew from $3.7B in 2007 to $60B in 2019.

Prior to Two Sigma, Nobel worked at various investment banks, including NatWest Markets, ABN Amro and Citigroup in Equity Research and Global Equities. Nobel began his career with Raymond James, where he established the firm’s first Asian office in India. He graduated from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, as a Joseph Wharton Scholar, with a bachelor’s degree in international finance.

Nobel is a non-executive director on the board of Pictet Asset Management. Nobel is a guest lecturer at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, and also serves on the Executive Board of the Undergraduate Wharton School. He is the co-founder of the Gulati Family Foundation.

Sajjad is the Head of Data Analytics and Machine Learning and a member of the Investment Committee at GrowthCurve Capital. He joined GrowthCurve at its inception in 2021 as part of the founding Senior Leadership Team.

GrowthCurve Capital is a private equity firm focused on building world-class businesses by leveraging data, analytics, and machine learning, combined with a comprehensive approach to human capital, to accelerate growth and drive value creation. Founded by Sumit Rajpal, former Global Co-Head of the Goldman Sachs Merchant Banking Division, the firm focuses on control private equity investments primarily across the financial and information services, healthcare, and technology sectors.

Prior to joining GrowthCurve, Sajjad co-founded Two Six Capital, the Silicon Valley firm that pioneered Data Science for Private Equity. Sajjad’s arc at Two Six began as a startup entrepreneur in 2012 when he found 25 years of Ph.D. research developed at Wharton. He launched Two Six in 2013 building a team of Data Scientists and Data Engineers that applied this research to private equity investing. The company evolved into a technology platform as the team deployed large-scale engineering and data science models to over $30 billion of global private equity deals closed across industry sectors. This technology platform was acquired in 2020 as an AI asset by West Monroe Partners and Sajjad concluded his Two Six tenure through its successful exit.

Sajjad’s work and Two Six have been profiled by Private Equity International, Mergers and Acquisitions magazine, Knowledge@Wharton, Private Equity Technology podcast, Forbes, FT Fundfire, Institutional Investor, and Business Insider.

He holds a B.A. from Bowdoin, where he double majored in Computer Science and Government and minored in Economics, and an M.B.A. from the Wharton School. He serves on the Board of Analytics at Wharton.

Carleigh Jaques was most recently, SVP, Global Head of Risk & Identity at Visa, Inc. During the course of her 15 year career at Visa, Ms. Jaques led a number of scaled strategic businesses and functions. In her role as Global Head of Risk & Identity, Ms. Jaques was responsible for all aspects of the business which blocked over $40 billion in payments fraud annually across a number of sophisticated platforms including leading edge AI platforms. Prior to that, Ms. Jaques was the SVP, Global Head of Acceptance Solutions driving double digit growth across digital transactions, face to face acceptance, transit solutions and the Tap to Phone product lines. She also led Visa’s Strategy, Corporate Development and Venture activity from 2008 to 2016.

Earlier in her career, Ms. Jaques was a Managing Director at Deutsche Bank Securities Inc. focusing on financing and mergers & acquisitions for technology companies across enterprise software, data center, cybersecurity, mobile and hardware. Ms. Jaques has received numerous awards including being named among the Most Influential Women in Bay Area Business, Most Influential Women in Payments and a Top 100 Dealmaker. Ms. Jaques has spoken at The Wharton School as well as Stanford Law School on topics ranging from AI/ML to Innovation to Merger & Acquisitions.

Ms. Jaques holds a BA from the University of Michigan Honors Program in Political Science and French Language and an MBA from The Wharton School of The University of Pennsylvania.

Eric W. Leathers is a Founding Partner of Further Global Capital Management, a $2.5 billion private equity firm focused on the financial services and business services sectors. Prior to co-founding Further Global, Mr. Leathers was a Partner with TPG Capital and led the firm’s investment efforts in the financial services sector. He has over 25 years of experience investing across the insurance, asset management, specialty finance and depository institutions sectors. Mr. Leathers currently serves on the board of Global Benefits Group, US Claims LLC, Coaction Specialty Insurance, AA Ireland and Fidelis MGU and has previously served as a director of numerous privately held and publicly traded companies. Mr. Leathers was previously a Partner with both Pine Brook Partners and Capital Z Partners, where he shared responsibility for the management of those firms’ financial services investment activities. Mr. Leathers began his career in the investment banking division of Donaldson, Lufkin and Jenrette, where he specialized in mergers and acquisitions and corporate finance transactions for financial institutions. He is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, where he received a B.S. in Economics from The Wharton School of Business and a B.A. in History from the College of Arts and Sciences and is a Senior Research Fellow within the Harris Alternative Investments Program at the Wharton School of Business.

Jim was founder, CEO and Chairman of Applied Predictive Technologies, which became the world’s largest cloud-based AI software company. Prior to founding APT, Jim developed pattern recognition software at AT&T Laboratories, and worked as a corporate strategy consultant. He is the author of several software patents, as well as the 2014 Harvard Business Review article “The Discipline of Business Experimentation.” Jim received an SB in mathematics from MIT, and was subsequently awarded a Dean’s Fellowship in statistics to the doctoral program at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

Sejal Chokshi Pietrzak has spent 25 years in leadership roles driving growth and operational excellence in fast-paced, global, and enterprise software companies.

Sejal currently serves as Chairman of the Board of two companies: Panopto and Comply. Panopto is a global leader in intelligent learning software and has been a pioneer in video capture software and search technology since 2007. Panopto now holds the largest repository of expert learning videos in the world. Comply is the global market leader in regulatory compliance solutions and combines regulatory technology, services and education to help more than 7,000 investment firms navigate the regulatory landscape. Sejal also serves as a member of the Board of Directors of WorkWave, a leading provider of SaaS software solutions for the field services industry.

Prior to joining these boards, Sejal was CEO and board member of DealerSocket, a leading provider of automotive software to over 9,000 dealerships in the US, Canada, and Australia that was owned by Vista Equity Partners, a global private equity firm. In 2021, she spearheaded the successful sale of DealerSocket to Solera.

The Software Report ranked Sejal at No. 7 on its annual Top 50 SaaS (Software as a Service) CEOs list in 2019, and she was the top ranked female CEO that year. Sejal was named to the Top 25 Women in Private Equity-Backed Software Companies list by The Lancer Group in 2020.  That year, she was also selected by Automotive News as one of the Top 100 Leading Women in the North American Auto Industry.

Prior to DealerSocket, Sejal held executive and leadership roles at a private equity-backed SaaS software company, ACTIVE Network, where she helped guide the company’s successful sale to Global Payments (NYSE: GPN) in 2017. Sejal’s career also includes leadership and strategic growth roles at Wells Fargo and as the Executive Director of the US-India Business Council in the international division of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. She was also a Strategy Consultant at the Boston Consulting Group.

Sejal earned an MBA from the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania and a bachelor’s degree with honors from the College of William & Mary. She and her husband, John, live in Dallas and have two teenage children and an Australian labradoodle. Their daughter is starting her sophomore year at Wharton / Penn this fall.

Ritcha is a technology leader, with over 20 years of experience growing products at scale and building revenue streams. Currently she is the VP of Microsoft Office Copilot Experiences, running a multi-disciplinary (engineering, data, design and product) team to build new AI productivity experiences. Prior to Microsoft, Ritcha held various leadership positions in Google Workspace, Ads and Payments. She has run ~20B in revenue and products with ~1B users. She has also held leadership positions at Yahoo and was a co-Founder and CEO of Five Pumpkins, a not for profit early childhood educational company. She has been recognized for her product work with a Google Founder’s award and holds several patents.

Having run P&L that relied on enterprise sales teams and product lead growth, she has a deep understanding of data informed product development and monetization strategies in the consumer, SMB and enterprise customers. She has a strong background in Data Strategy and Artificial Intelligence and understands how and where they can be integrated into a company’s overall strategy.

Ritcha has experience in corporate governance, having been a member of the BrightCove board, promotion and hiring oversight committees at Google, and Product Leadership Committee at Microsoft.

Ritcha earned an MBA from the Harvard Business School and a Bachelors in Engineering from the University of Waterloo, Canada.

Louis Salvatore is the Co-Head of Blackstone Credit’s Performing Credit team and a member of the Performing Credit investment committees. Mr. Salvatore is responsible for sourcing, diligencing, structuring and managing performing credit investments.  He is a Joint Portfolio Manager of Blackstone Credit’s mezzanine and direct lending funds.  Before joining Blackstone Credit, then known as GSO Capital Partners, in 2005 Mr. Salvatore was a Principal of DLJ Investment Partners, the mezzanine fund of CSFB’s Alternative Capital Division. Prior to that, he worked for Kidder Peabody.

Mr. Salvatore received a BA in Economics from Cornell University and an MBA from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.  He serves on the Board of Saint David’s School and North Park Hockey.

Apoorv Saxena joined Silver Lake in 2021 and is a Managing Director and Chief Data Scientist. In previous roles, he was the Global Head of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning Services at JPMorgan Chase & Co., Product & Business Lead for multiple AI products at Google Cloud, and the Co-Founder of AI Frontiers, the leading Applied AI conference in the Bay area. Apoorv also worked at McKinsey & Co. and Alcatel-Lucent, where he focused on delivering impact across strategy, operations, design and build, and sales and marketing for clients in the financial & tech industry.

Apoorv has a B.Tech. in Electrical Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology, Mumbai, an M.S. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Purdue University of Indiana, and an M.B.A., Major in Finance and Entrepreneurial Management from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

Dan Schwab loves family, friends, community, his company, sports, and giving back. Luckily, all those things have revolved around each other. He inspires his teams with simple insights: “Self-deprecation is a good thing; laugh at yourself,” he says. “Work hard but have fun, and make sure those around you do the same. Lead by example. Be kind. Hire smart people and stay out of their way.” Dan has served alongside brother Michael Schwab as Co-President at D&H since 2008. Their leadership has driven the company to its current status of nearly $6 billion in revenues. Dan is a graduate of the Wharton School of Pennsylvania and serves on its Undergraduate Executive Board. He is a regular guest lecturer at Wharton for both undergraduate and MBA courses in topics ranging from negotiation to strategy to scaling your business. Dan, his family, and the rest of the D&H management team made D&H an ESOP company in 1999 as a way to vest employees in the business, ostensibly making it their own. The organization has risen to as high as the # 84 spot on the Forbes List of America’s Largest Private Companies. Dan’s vision, positivity, and open-minded approach to collaboration has been a motivational force, driving strategy and sales since he joined the company more than 25 years ago. D&H is now the third-largest distributor in the technology sector, having demonstrated resilience and growth even through pandemic conditions.

Dr. Sanjay Shetty joined Humana in March 2023 as President, CenterWell. He is responsible for leading strategy, growth, and business operations across Pharmacy, Provider Services, and Home Solutions, in addition to scaling the company’s CenterWell capabilities to strengthen our payer-agnostic portfolio. Dr. Shetty is a member of the Humana Management Team and reports to President and Chief Executive Officer Bruce Broussard.

Before joining Humana, Dr. Shetty was President of Steward Health Care Systems in Dallas, Texas, one of the nation’s largest and most successful accountable care organizations. In his nearly 13 years at Steward, he served in progressive roles overseeing day-to-day strategy and operations across all business lines, while leading the company’s value-based care approach. Prior to his time at Steward, Dr. Shetty worked at Bain & Company, supporting healthcare strategy, private equity, mergers and acquisitions, and clinical innovation. He also served on the faculty of Tufts University School of Medicine and Harvard Medical School. He is a board-certified diagnostic radiologist.

Dr. Shetty is recognized throughout the healthcare industry as a thought leader, having published multiple scholarly articles, reviews, chapters, and books, in addition to frequently participating in speaking engagements, teaching, panels, and podcasts. He has served in multiple leadership roles for the American College of Radiology and the Massachusetts Radiological Society. Additionally, Dr. Shetty was most recently named to the Dallas 500 2023 by D CEO Magazine.

Dr. Shetty earned an A.B. summa cum laude in Biochemical Sciences, an A.M. in Biology, and an M.D. from Harvard University. He also earned an MBA in finance from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, where he was named a Palmer Scholar.

Philip L. Yang is the Founder, Chief Executive Officer, and Chief Investment Officer of Willowbridge Associates Inc., an alternative investment management firm. Mr. Yang founded Willowbridge in 1988, building upon the success of quantitating trading models he had developed and his experience managing a proprietary discretionary trading approach. Mr. Yang began his career at Commodities Corporation and later joined Caxton Corporation, where he was named Director of Research and Director of Commodity Trading. Mr. Yang has extensive experience in both quantitative and discretionary global macro trading styles.

Mr. Yang graduated magna cum laude and holds a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from the University of California at Berkeley, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. Mr. Yang earned his MBA from The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.

Jason Young is the Head of the Direct Investments Group (North America) for GIC, the sovereign wealth fund of Singapore. In this role, Jason oversees the firm’s large scale private equity investments in companies in North America. He is a member of GIC’s Global Leadership Group as well as the Management Committee and Investment Committee of GIC Private Equity. Jason currently serves on the board of directors of Valtech and Veritas Technologies and was previously on the boards of BMC Software, Neustar, Refinitiv, and Turnitin. He is also on the Analytics at Wharton Advisory Board.

Prior to joining GIC, Jason was a Principal at Silver Lake Partners, a technology-focused private equity firm, in New York and Hong Kong, where he helped establish the firm’s business in Asia. Earlier in his career, he was an investment banker at Goldman Sachs in the Technology, Media, and Telecom group in New York.

Jason graduated summa cum laude from the University of Pennsylvania’s Jerome Fisher Program in Management and Technology with a B.S. from the Wharton School and a B.S.E. from the School of Engineering and Applied Science.