Reflections on the Best Business School in the World

Good evening, and welcome to Palm Beach and the beautiful Club Colette.

I am Greg Purcell, Chicago Booth class of 1994. For the past decade, I have served on the school’s Private Equity Council and, for the last five years, on the broader Council on Chicago Booth.

My wife Francine and I are proud donors of the Purcell Venture Investment Award, which supports the Edward L. Kaplan, MBA ’71, New Venture Challenge—led so brilliantly by professors Mark Tebbe [adjunct professor of entrepreneurship] and Steven Kaplan [Neubauer Family Distinguished Service Professor of Entrepreneurship and Finance and Kessenich E.P. Faculty Director at the Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation]. Each winner receives seed investment from the fund, and all future profits are 100% recycled back into the NVC to fuel the next generation of entrepreneurs. Our deep involvement with the NVC has been one of the most rewarding parts of our Booth journey—watching bold ideas turn into world-changing businesses.

Francine and I are thrilled to see so many South Florida Booth alumni here tonight. We’re especially looking forward to the conversation, which will be led by two dear friends: Madhav Rajan, dean and the George Shultz Professor of Accounting at Chicago Booth, and Anil Kashyap, the Stevens Distinguished Service Professor of Economics and Finance.

Dean Rajan is marking nine remarkable years leading Booth, while Professor Kashyap celebrates an incredible 35 years of shaping minds and markets.

Like so many of you, Chicago Booth molded my graduate education—and, to a great extent, my professional success.

In the early 1990s, I was fortunate to attend Booth during a period of global economic turbulence—the aftermath of the 1980s: bank crises, recession, recovery, explosive growth in finance, and the rise of private equity, which became my career for the past 30 years.

My close group of Booth friends were cut from the same cloth as I was—unapologetic GSB super-fans. We weren’t there simply to earn an MBA—we came for the knowledge, hungry to absorb it from the world’s leading academics in economics, finance, accounting, operations, marketing—you name it. Our intellectual appetites were insatiable because we knew the depth of knowledge at Booth would fuel something audacious down the road.

In retrospect, we may have driven our professors crazy! We would linger after class, pressing Nobel-caliber minds about core assumptions, math, and variables—the efficient markets hypothesis, interest-rate sensitivity, beta, CAPM, risk-free rates of return and the cost of financial distress. In the house of Friedman and Fama, we felt unstoppable.

I sometimes wonder if Professors Douglas Diamond, Gary Eppen, Steven Kaplan, Sidney Davidson—and yes, Anil Kashyap—ever complained about that troublesome group of 1993–94 students who asked one too many questions.

One year ago, I had lunch with David Booth, MBA ’71, in New York. He described his own experience with Rex Sinquefield, MBA ’72, and their DFA colleagues: seven studious friends, questioning everything, driving professors nuts, then grabbing beers after major exams. It sounded eerily similar to ours. What is it about Chicago Booth?

After graduation, we entered the professional world and quickly appreciated just how rigorous our Booth education had been. Two things stood out:

1. Many of the textbooks used by our peers were written by our faculty.
2. Their programs covered roughly half the material we did.

We were dumbfounded. How do you market, “Come to Chicago Booth—do twice the work for the same degree”? Or “Learn 2X MORE than the competition”? Tricky slogan, but the rigor was exhilarating. It propelled us.

Six years after graduation, I co-founded a specialized private equity firm that invested $4 billion and acquired over 100 food companies across North America. Along the way, we earned strong press and were honored with Buyouts Magazine’s Best Deal in the World Award three times, most recently receiving Agri Investor’s Award for best global food investor.

One of my quieter Booth friends took a different path but with the same fire. Inspired by what he had learned, he hunted for an opportunity to test his skills. Sixteen years after Booth, he led a leveraged buyout of a struggling company and spent years rebuilding it into a world-class organization. The payoff? His business won the 2016 World Series.

Yes—that’s Tom Ricketts, AB ’88, MBA ’93, here with us tonight. While he’s proud of that ring, he may be even prouder of his 2025 Daniel Burnham Award and the Chicago Cubs Charities’ $28 million donated to Chicago sports programs.

Tom and I are just two examples. Sit in on a Booth Council meeting, and you will be among global leaders at the helm of companies across sectors and industries.

The common denominator is our world-class Chicago Booth faculty. My education—and ongoing involvement—has shown me the unmatched intellectual depth and rigor here. I often tell Dean Rajan that our faculty is the source code of modern economics, finance, and business.

Professor Anil Kashyap is a cornerstone of that source code—a luminary in financial markets, regulation, banking crises, monetary policy, interest-rate sensitivity, the Japanese economy, and corporate finance. We’re lucky to have him—and relieved that, despite my annoying ’94 crew, he stayed!

So, without further ado, please join me in welcoming Dean Madhav Rajan, who, in my view, leads the best business school in the world.

Thank you.