Alumni Notes
Alumni Notes
2000s
Vik Thapar, BS’00, was recently promoted to managing director at Cypress Growth Capital, joining co-founders Bart Goodwin and Ed Mello in that role. He joined Cypress in 2012. Previously, he was the director of the North Texas Regional Center for Innovation and Commercialization, where he supervised the process of identifying, vetting and mentoring companies that were seeking funding from the State of Texas’ $200 million Emerging Technology Fund. He also has spent time in the information technology field. Vik often lectures at colleges, including UT Dallas, where he previously served on the Institute for Innovation and Entrepreneurship advisory board. In 2017, Vik earned one of the Dallas Business Journal’s Minority Business Leader awards. In 2016, he received the DBJ’s “40 Under 40” award.
Jeremy Gregg, EMBA’06, recently wrote his second children’s book and started in a new role at Arabella Advisors. Illustrated by Arlene Soto, the new book, Hunger Bugs Me (Dallas: Mission Allies Publishing LLC, 2021), features playful bugs who are sad to find out their friend Butterfly is hungry. Jeremy collaborated with the North Texas Food Bank (NTFB) to develop a “participatory design” to the story, so that Butterfly co-creates the solution to hunger along with her friends. Online resources help parents and teachers with further engaging children in the issue of hunger. As a fundraiser for NTFB, every book sold at www.NTFB.org/HungerBugsMe provides 90 meals.
In April, Jeremy joined Arabella Advisors as a managing director after selling his own consulting firm, Gregg Partners, now Mission Allies. Headquartered in Washington, D.C., Arabella is a B-Corp that collaborates with world changemakers to amplify the impact of their philanthropy, advocacy and impact investing. Last year, the firm directly supported over $2 billion in grants.
Prior to Arabella, Jeremy spent 19 years in nonprofit leadership with various organizations in Texas. He earned his Chartered Advisor in Philanthropy designation in 2019.
Jeremy’s other book, Daddy’s Time Out (Dallas: Mission Allies Publishing LLC, 2021), illustrated by Christian McGowan, was written in partnership with child psychologists and criminal justice experts as a way to explain incarceration to children whose parents are in prison.
More than a year ago, Kevin Patel, BS’06, MBA’10, did not envision his COVID-19 quarantine leading to a startup, called HermTac, which creates and manufactures healthcare devices for the U.S. Veterans Health Administration. One of HermTac’s products, its telehealth systems, are being used in various VHA settings, and Kevin has been to U.S. Northern Mariana Islands and Guam to conduct testing sessions on using the self-contained provider and at-home assessment kits. He also was a recent participant at the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society conference in Las Vegas.
Last year, the telehealth kits won a national challenge from the Veterans Administration in a Challenge America competition. CA is a nonprofit that primarily connects service members, veterans and their families to resources and runs competitions to discover new care solutions. HermTac’s submission, a case designed for nurses and in-home caregivers to administer COVID-19 tests, is being tweaked to be used as a one-stop telehealth clinic.
Kevin says VHA reps have told him they are eager to integrate his HermTac telehealth cases into remote care for everything from oncology to cardiology and more. He is planning for good news. “I’ve already lined up a local manufacturer assembler that has healthcare device manufacturing experience to scale,” he says.
Dan Bowman, MBA’09, executive director/CEO of Allen Economic Development Corp., and Rebecca (Webb) Buell, MS’11, were recognized in July for excellence in their organizations and communities with 2021 Dallas Business Journal 40 Under 40 Awards.
Dan attended classes nights and weekends at JSOM. He joined the Allen Economic Development Corporation — in his hometown — as an analyst in 2004 and was named to his current position in 2014.
Dan has a strong interest in the way policies can impact business, and is able to see that firsthand in his current role. His responsibilities include identifying and assessing funding opportunities for economic and community development growth, working to develop and implement a marketing strategy, developing effective working relationships with business and commercial contacts, and assuring the highest possible use of the land available for development.
Getting his MBA from the Jindal School, he says, “gave me the skills to evaluate companies and real estate, and to create a marketing strategy. It also taught me leadership skills.”
Among corporate projects that Dan has been instrumental in recruiting to Allen are Cisco Systems, NetSCOUT Systems, WatchGuard Video and KONE Elevators. He was actively involved in structuring the public-private partnership for the Watters Creek Hotel and Convention Center.
Previously, Dan worked for the San Antonio Economic Development Department. He is a graduate of Trinity University in San Antonio and of the Economic Development Institute at the University of Oklahoma.
He has served in several leadership roles with the Kiwanis Club and has volunteered with Leadership Allen and Allen Community Outreach.
Sid Keswani, EMBA’09, in May was named president of Centric Brands, a leading lifestyle brand collective that designs, sources, markets and sells high-quality products in the kids’, men’s and women’s apparel, accessories, beauty and entertainment categories. His responsibilities include finance, human resources, IT, legal, operations, planning, supply chain, warehousing and distribution, and sourcing functions. He came to Centric Brands from Pandora, North America, where he served as president. He previously was CEO of Houston-based Fiesta Mart Inc. and held senior executive roles at Aspen Heights. Prior to that, he was a senior vice president of operations for Susser Holdings, where he oversaw more than 625 locations for the convenience store chain. He also spent 19 years at Target, where he supervised 450 locations with $17 billion in revenue.
2010s
Rebecca (Webb) Buell, MS’11, and Dan Bowman, MBA’09, were recognized in July for excellence in their organizations and communities with 2021 Dallas Business Journal 40 Under 40 Awards.
The chief financial officer of National Breast Cancer Inc., Rebecca started her career as a bookkeeper and staff accountant for a Dallas luxury homebuilder. She soon decided to pursue a master’s degree in accounting and get her CPA. She chose JSOM in part because of its proximity to where she lived, but also because of the reputation and ranking of the part-time accounting program.
“I had wonderful professors that I still remember to this day,” she says. “Learning from their teaching styles has helped me to teach and develop my team as we work to improve and expand the systems and reporting processes we have in place.”
Rebecca joined the National Breast Cancer Foundation as a staff accountant. Over the course of 10 years, she has held positions in the finance department and managing the accounting team. She was named chief financial officer in 2018. She leads the foundation’s strategic planning and international operations, overseeing finance and accounting, risk management, human resources and information technology.
Rebecca is a 2008 graduate of Austin College. She serves on the board of Jewish Family Services of Greater Dallas and as chairman of the organization’s audit committee.
Tom Scott, MS’14, recently competed in the 2021 Summer Olympics, serving as captain of the USA karate team. He has been a member of the Men’s Senior Team since turning 18 and qualifying at the team trials and national championships each summer. He earned a gold medal in the 2015 Pan Am Games. Scott is an instructor and director of marketing at Academy of Classical Karate in Plano. He is a 15-time national karate champion and a 10-time USA Open champion.
Udyan Sharma, MBA’14, MS’15, recently joined Amazon Business as senior product manager, Healthcare, coming from Boston Consulting in the Chicago area, which he joined in 2019. He was previously employed by McKinsey & Co. as a management consultant. At JSOM, he was a 2013 Ericsson Scholar.
Luna Zenati, BS’15, is the broker and owner of REAL Dallas Properties and Management, the company she founded in 2019. After completing a concentration in real estate, she was inspired to combine her business background with her love for homes and people. She gained experience in the industry as a top-producing locator for Luxury Realtor & Apartment from 2015 to 2019. In her current role, Luna is the principal broker for more than 50 agents between her Houston and Dallas offices. She attributes her success to her growth and leadership skills acquired at UT Dallas and as Alpha Gamma Delta chapter president.
Grace J. Yang, BS’18, joined FTI Consulting in London in 2019 as part of the Energy Transition practice, a specialist advisory team dedicated to promoting and accelerating global decarbonization by providing commercial, economic and regulatory services to help organizations change the way they produce and consume energy. She achieved a Master’s of Philosophy degree in finance and economics earlier in 2019 from the University of Cambridge. At Cambridge, she received a Distinction for her thesis, which explored the economics of happiness and secondary education. At UT Dallas, Yang graduated with honors with a double major in finance and economics and a minor in psychology.