Distinguished Alumni Awards 2025

Dave Liguang Chenn left China right after graduating from college in Beijing. He had $100 in his pocket and a graduate-school offer in Houston. “It was a simple idea: to pursue my dream in the US,” he says. The first in his family to go to college, Chenn felt he had nothing to lose by starting from scratch on the other side of the world. It was 1992, and his region offered few opportunities. 
 
“That $100 didn’t last a month,” he says. “I had to work part time. I worked at a motel and at a Chinese restaurant. It was challenging. I didn’t have time to be homesick since I had to survive.” 
 
Chenn graduated with a master’s degree in engineering two years later and landed a job at Emerson, an industrial automation firm in Chicago. “I was very satisfied with myself. It was a dream life, working as an engineer. I was young and single with a nice income.” 
 
After a couple of years, though, he wanted out. “I thought, ‘Is this why you left China? Do you want to have it simple and easy your whole life? No.’ I needed to change, to challenge myself.” 
 
Chenn enrolled at Chicago Booth to explore opportunities, he says. “It was eye-opening for me—a change in mindset. I reshaped myself.” A less-than-stellar grade on an early exam kindled a desire to learn as much as possible, even beyond his coursework. He audited an entrepreneurship class, taught by professor Steve Kaplan, and learned to research and evaluate businesses—skills he uses today running Oceanpine Capital, his Beijing-based investment-management firm that he started in 2018. 
 
After business school, he headed to Silicon Valley and joined Oracle, where he worked in product management and product marketing roles for six years. 

“It was the American dream. I bought a nice million-dollar house. I played golf on weekends. One day, again I asked myself: ‘Is this it?’ And my answer was the same, ‘No, I want to accomplish something big! I want to start a business with vast market potential.’” 
 
Chenn saw his opportunity in China and returned in 2005. From scratch, he built China Century Group, which has grown into a $5 billion conglomerate with interests in technology, healthcare, hospitality, energy, and real estate. A dozen Booth graduates are among its senior management positions. He jokes about starting a “gang of Chicago in China.” 

Chenn says he’s an introvert, but friends describe him as a warm-hearted person who is willing to help, contribute, and make an impact. In addition to his $15 million donations to the University of Chicago and Booth, he has also contributed $20 million to his alma maters in China, and has supported a number of investment funds and companies of Booth alumni in both China and the United States. 

These days, Chenn is busy with Oceanpine Capital. Thus far, the firm has invested $2.5 billion directly in hundreds of companies, focusing on advanced tech, green tech, biotech, and medtech.  
 
“I saw that in China, we have ample engineers and scientists working on cutting-edge technologies. The advantage here has evolved from cheap labor to a huge supply of talent in engineering and science. With capital, industrial resources, and business know-how, I am able to support and foster their growth.” 

He adds: “Given the enormous size of China’s economy already and amid the volatility in the worldwide economy and geopolitical complications, in the long run, the return on investment is bigger and safer here than in other places.” 

Steve Kaplan is the Neubauer Family Distinguished Service Professor of Entrepreneurship and Finance and the Kessenich E. P. Faculty Director at the Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation. 

John Ehara grew up in Tokyo, the third of five children born to Korean immigrants. Ehara jokes that his parents sent him to the United States because they needed to get rid of one kid; in fact, they recognized his brilliance and gave him the chance to study architecture at MIT. 

“That was quite a bold decision they made for me,” says Ehara, who chose a career in investment banking but still practices architecture on the side. From MIT, where he also earned a degree in civil engineering, Ehara went directly to Booth. 

A summer internship at Morgan Guaranty Trust Company introduced him to the Wall Street banking business. His real education in the field, he says, came at Goldman Sachs, which he joined in 1980. “Goldman Sachs taught me well how to conduct a first-class business in a first-class manner,” he says. 
 
Ehara became the first Japanese partner at Goldman Sachs, in 1988. He contributed significantly to the explosive growth of the company’s Tokyo office—from six employees in 1982 to 1,000 in 1996—creating a stronghold for the firm in Asia. Ehara was working grueling hours, sleeping as little as three hours a night, and still found the job unfulfilling. In 1996, the firm had a record year. With that, Ehara felt he could leave gracefully.

Ehara and his family—his wife, Kayoko, and their three children—packed up and moved to San Diego for a sabbatical. “It was one of the best decisions I ever made,” he says. “I’d sacrificed my family life working like that.” 

Two years later, Ehara was back in Tokyo with a plan to create Unison, a private equity firm. At the time, private equity was nonexistent in Japan. It is now an $18 billion industry. “Ninety-five percent of investors I pitched were against me. They didn’t understand the concept. But the ones who supported me—oh my gosh—our first fund was $350 million.” 

“Profit is the key to our long-term success,” he says. “Most businesses are short-term greedy. I decided to be long-term greedy.” 

Ehara keeps the business at 100 employees, all in Japan and Korea. “At that size, we know each other and each other’s families.” Ehara is mindful of work-life balance, saying, “I discourage people from the cultural practice of having dinner and drinks for work. When they ask me, I say, ‘Don’t waste your time. Go home and enjoy your family.’” 

Architecture remains a big part of his life. He has even designed three of his houses. And in San Diego, he and Kayoko design and build award-winning spec houses in exclusive neighborhoods. “I enjoy working together to come up with something better,” he says. “Building businesses and architecture are my passions.” 

Roxanne M. Martino started her career as an auditor in the late 1970s. She observed a pattern that piqued her curiosity. Women ran some of the commodity trading companies at the Chicago Board of Trade. In that era, many hedge funds were in commodity trading. “This is intriguing,” she thought. “I should lean into this.” 

When she learned that her firm had started offering to pay MBA tuition for a few employees who applied to Chicago Booth and were accepted, Martino took the GMATs, applied, and got in. 

“I would be in class and think, ‘I’ll use this tomorrow,’” she recalls. “I credit those professors. They were so creative in their thinking, developing strategies to value new instruments and manage capital. I carried that into the next chapter of my life.” 

Martino was most influenced by the late professor and Nobel laureate Merton Miller, who taught complex concepts in a simple fashion, she recalls. “I work in a complex industry, and because of him, I remind myself, ‘Let’s explain it in a way people can grasp.’” 

Post-Booth, Martino joined Grosvenor Capital Management, a hedge fund started by two graduates: Richard Elden, MBA ’66, and Frank Meyer, LAB ’60, AB ’64, MBA ’65. “They took a chance on me,” she says. ”It was a small firm, and I became a partner in short order.”

A first-generation college graduate, Martino showed early promise, skipping her last year of high school and starting college at the University of Notre Dame at 16. “It sounds so dramatic,” Martino says with a laugh. “I think I was an old soul.” 

She entered the workforce when social clubs were closed to women and “subtle discrimination” was in the air. As one of just six women at the first hedge-fund conference she attended, in the mid-1980s, she says, “We didn’t think about it; we weren’t looking for trouble, and we all became very good friends.” 

Martino went on to lead Aurora Investment Management, rising to CEO and investment chair and managing $14 billion. 

At the same time, her husband, Rocco, was at the helm of LaSalle Capital, a firm he cofounded. The parents of two boys, the power couple made it work. “When the kids were young, I aimed to be home while it was still light out so we could play. I thought, ‘This problem will be here tomorrow.’ When I got there, I was present. I took weekends to recharge.”

In 2016, Martino founded OceanM19, a single-family investment firm focused on patient capital, with her husband and one of their sons, Daniel Martino, MBA ’15. “We still take our weekends,” she says with a laugh.

Few people join a company in crisis. Richard F. Wallman did just that when he signed on at Chrysler in 1979. “Six weeks after I joined, the company announced that if it didn’t receive $1.5 billion, it would go out of business. It was like getting on the Titanic,” he recalls. Wallman stayed nearly 15 years, learned a lot, and grew to deeply admire CEO Lee Iacocca.   

“When you’re that close to the edge of the cliff, you have to spend your limited funds on what is critical. You learn that a lot of things people say are important are not always that important. You have to make some difficult choices and balance the short and long run, and that’s what we did.” 

Wallman went on to a career of working for Fortune 500 companies, retiring in 2003 from Honeywell, where he was senior vice president and CFO. He spends his time now serving on corporate boards and giving away money with Amy Wallman, MBA ’75, his wife. “We have plans to give away everything we have,” he says. “It’s a conscious decision we’ve made—our effort to make the world a better place. We were fortunate in our careers and greatly benefited from the help of some wonderful people. We want to help others in turn.” 

Wallman met Amy as she was moving into graduate housing at the University of Chicago. After graduating from Booth, she joined EY as an auditor and eventually became a partner. She spent 10 years as a director at Omnicare, a healthcare company, before retiring in 2015.  

A college friend had pointed Wallman to Chicago Booth. “I’d planned to go elsewhere for business school. My friend made me go to the library—this was in the days before Google—and look up business-school rankings,” Wallman says. “I give him all the credit. Chicago was a wonderful school.” 

Booth’s high standing swayed Wallman, who had become interested in business school after studying electrical engineering at Vanderbilt, where he learned that the trade was not for him—even though he’d done well in classes, earning his degree in three years.  

Wallman’s experience at Booth led to his first job, as a financial analyst at Ford. From there, he worked for a who’s who of business leaders. First was Iacocca, whose successful engineering of that $1.5 billion government loan allowed Chrysler to restructure and innovate. 

At IBM, Wallman was a vice president and controller and worked for CEO Lou Gerstner during a much-ballyhooed corporate makeover in the early 1990s. Under Gerstner, IBM became more collaborative and customer focused. By 2003, the company’s market cap had grown from $29 billion to $168 billion. 

Wallman says his favorite corporate gig was at AlliedSignal, where he was CFO. His boss was Lawrence “Larry” Bossidy, chairman and CEO. “Working for Bossidy was phenomenal,” says Wallman. “He was strategic. He had an incredible business mind. He asked rigorous questions. He inspired me.”

After AlliedSignal acquired Honeywell in 1999, Wallman stayed to close out his career before dedicating himself to philanthropy.  

Through Amy and Richard’s shared philosophy of giving, they’ve supported students, professors, and health institutions. In 2017, they made a $75 million gift, their largest at the time, to Booth. In recognition of the gift, each year, graduating Booth students with high honors are named Wallman Scholars. 

In 2023, the Wallmans committed another $75 million, this time to the university broadly, launching a giving challenge that will establish 30 endowed professorships across the entire school.

At the annual Wallman Scholars dinner, Wallman meets students and shares his 14 points for success with them. No. 1: “Work for the smartest and most successful people you can,” he tells them.  

“Careers are a marathon,” he says. “I was a late bloomer. My career had some spurts and some lulls. What helped it accelerate was working for some incredibly gifted people who helped me grow.” 

Steven Wymer grew up in Central Illinois and remembers mornings with his father, who worked in the town’s General Motors plant. “I’d read the Chicago Tribune business section and talk about it with him at breakfast,” Wymer recalls. 

For his 10th birthday, he asked for his first stock: Marriott Corp. “Marriotts seemed very nice,” he says. It was his first foray into investing, a world that in his teens felt incredibly far away. 

At nearby University of Illinois, he chose to study accounting, a major that fell in line with his business interests yet also seemed approachable. “I didn’t really know about Wall Street, investment management, or how even to access that,” he says. After graduation, he took a job in Dallas doing small-business consulting. 

Two years later, he was back in school earning his MBA from Booth. He focused on learning all he could about finance, and he got what he felt he lacked: exposure to the markets. “It gave me the knowledge, background, and confidence to continue in the field,” he says. “I really gained an appreciation and respect for the markets.” 

An internship led Wymer to Fidelity Investments, where he stayed on in a full-time role after graduation. Today, Wymer heads the Fidelity Growth Company Fund and its related funds, which amount to about $200 billion with market appreciation and performance. When he took over the fund in 1997, it was worth $9.1 billion.  

Investing is more competitive today, and the pressure to find companies with room for growth is more relentless, Wymer says. “Compared with 20 years ago, there are more participants looking at the market from every different angle,” he observes. “And while it’s harder to gain insights, there are also a lot of dynamic and groundbreaking companies.” Wymer spotted this in AI giant NVIDIA, which he first purchased for the fund in 2008, already convinced of the company’s technology prowess. 

Wymer says his secret is discipline—a characteristic that’s getting even more important with information overload, when it’s possible to keep busy without prioritizing your efforts toward your goals. “Don’t focus on just what’s in front of you and being offered to you. What has served me well is that ability to say no,” he says. “Use your judgment and focus on what you think is important.”