Sanger Advisory Board

Stan is the principal partner of Kerwick Capital in Los Angeles. The firm serves as a principal investor in middle market growth and turnaround situations. Kerwick has been both a capital partner and financial advisor to strong management teams that have created significant growth opportunities and returns. Stan has also acted as financial advisor in the restructuring of bank debt for troubled companies as well as financial advisor to several retail, healthcare and data center operations.

Stan is also Board Chair of Eisner Health, a federally qualified health center (FQHC) in Los Angeles, CA. Eisner, founded in 1920 provides primary care and related services to over 45,000 patients in 17 locations.

Prior to forming Kerwick, Stan was a Managing Director and Member of the North American Management Committee of BNP Paribas, an international investment bank based in Paris, France. Over fifteen years, he served in various roles at Paribas, including head of North American banking in New York, executive responsible for U.S. regional branches in Chicago, Houston and Los Angeles, head of West Coast region based in Los Angeles and head of several merger transition working groups. Stan was selected by the firm to attend an advanced management program at London Business School.

Stan received an MBA in Finance from New York University and a BBA from the University of Michigan. He is married to Christopher Murphy, a retired executive from the Walt Disney Company and they reside in Los Angeles, CA.

I have been involved in the Leadership Crisis Challenge for several years. Experiencing the immersive and transformative nature of this event for both the students and other participants made me eager to deepen my commitment to the Sanger Leadership Center. I hope I can help bring resources and experience to further enhance the Center. Learn more >>

Karim Bitar is Chief Executive Officer of Convatec Group plc.  Convatec is a leading global medical technologies company focused on solutions for the management of chronic conditions, with leading market positions in advanced wound care, stoma care, continence care and infusion care. Convatec products and services provide a range of clinical and economic benefits including infection prevention, improved clinical outcomes and reduced total cost of care.

Previously, Karim was Chief Executive Officer of Genus plc, a leading agricultural biotechnology company. During his eight-year tenure, the company was transformed into a technology pioneer with leading global franchises in dairy, beef and pork genetics. Prior to this, Karim worked for over 15 years with Eli Lilly & Company and was President of Lilly Europe, Canada and Australia before joining Genus. An ex- McKinsey & Company consultant, he worked across Asia and in Europe and also held management roles at Johnson & Johnson and the Dow Chemical Company.

Karim has a Masters (Hons) in Business Administration, University of Michigan, Ross School of Business and a Bachelor of Science in Biochemistry, University of Wisconsin.

Dr Chu currently serves as the Senior Vice President and Chief Medical Officer for Advocate Health (AH), the third largest health system in the nation. Serving 6 million lives across 6 states with 150,000 team members, AH formed from the merger of Atrium Health, Wake Forest, Advocate Health Care and Aurora Health Care in December 2022. Dr Chu joined as the SVP, Chief Quality and Safety Officer in August 2023 to integrate enterprise clinical quality and safety to enable a highly reliable organization focused on achieving clinical excellence and zero harm. 

Prior to her current role, Dr Chu served as Enterprise SVP, Chief Medical Officer for Henry Ford Health. She was responsible for oversight of clinical quality and patient safety, provider affairs, surgical services and clinical optimization. Her academic role as Breech Endowed Chair, Clinical Quality also led to the creation of a Center for Patient Reported Outcomes. 

Her recognitions include Michigan Women Forward – Women of Achievement and Courage Award 2021; DBusiness Powered By Women 2020, Esteemed Woman of Michigan in 2018, Crain’s Detroit Business “40 Under 40” in 2010 and the Asian Pacific American Chamber of Commerce Professional Leadership Award. She was appointed in 2020 by Governor Whitmer as the Co-Chair of the Michigan Nursing Homes COVID-19 Preparedness Task Force. In 2018, she served as the President of the Michigan State Medical Society.

Dr. Chu graduated from the University of Michigan Medical School Premed-Medical program, completed her residency in obstetrics and gynecology at Beaumont Health in Royal Oak, and received her MBA from the University of Michigan Ross Business School.

The leadership learning I experienced as a student at Ross was transformative for my career. I’m honored to serve on the Sanger Advisory board with our commitment to inspiring the next generation and educating the leaders and best!

Tamika Curry Smith is a global HR and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) executive who is currently Chief Diversity Officer at Arm Ltd., the world’s leading semiconductor intellectual property company. Tamika has previous experience leading DEI at Nike, Inc., Mercedes-Benz USA, Target Corporation, and Deloitte. Tamika also is an advisor to Goldman Sachs’ asset management division, in addition to early-stage start-ups and venture capital firms, such as Talenya, Mathison, and SemperVirens Venture Capital.

Business and Legal Executive currently leading People Operations; Talent & Organizational Effectiveness; Legal, Compliance, Sustainability, Regulatory and Government Affairs; Environmental and Occupational Health, Safety and Security; and Wabash Management System.

Edward Hightower is an electric vehicle OEM CEO, global automotive executive, entrepreneur, board director, and author. He is the founder and managing director of Motoring Ventures LLC, an investment, growth, strategy, and operations consulting firm focused on driving value + impact in the global automotive industry.

Previously, he served as chief executive officer and president of Lordstown Motors Corp., an original equipment manufacturer of electric vehicles for the commercial fleet market. In 2022, he led the operational turnaround of the company, implementation of a new asset-light business strategy, and launch of its first vehicle – the Endurance battery electric full-size pickup truck. In doing so, over 700 jobs were saved, and Endurance was selected as a finalist for 2023 North American Truck of the Year. Of all the new light-duty electric vehicle manufacturers, Lordstown was one of the very few (Tesla, Rivian, Lucid, and Lordstown) to have successfully developed, certified, launched, and delivered its vehicles to customers. Crain’s Automotive News magazine recognized Hightower as the first African American CEO of a publicly traded automaker. Hightower also served as CEO of the electric vehicle design and engineering joint venture between Lordstown and Foxconn.

Earlier, Hightower served in several new-product development, engineering, strategy, brand marketing, and senior executive roles between Ford, BMW, and GM. If you stand on any busy street corner in America for 60-seconds, you will see at least one of the automobiles for which he had a leading role in creating and bringing to market. Hightower also worked as a hands-on growth, strategy, operations, and M&A consultant at AlixPartners, LLP. He has also served on several public, private, and not-for-profit boards of directors.

Hightower authored the book Motoring Africa: Sustainable Automotive Industrialization, published in 2018. Based on his industry experiences in China, India, South Korea, Mexico and Brazil, Motoring Africa makes the case and offers an actionable roadmap for economic development by building sustainable automotive manufacturing businesses in six of the 54 countries in Africa.

Originally from Chicago, Hightower earned a BS in General Engineering from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and an MBA from the University of Michigan Ross School of Business. He serves on the Ross School Advisory Board, Sanger Leadership Center Advisory Board, and chaired the Ross Alumni Board of Governors. He is a two-time recipient of the Alumnus of the Year award from the Ross Black Business Students Association; and a recipient of the Bert F. Wertman Ross Alumni Service award. He is a lifetime member of both Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity, Inc. and the Council on Foreign Relations. An Eagle Scout, he previously served on the executive board of the Michigan Council of the Boy Scouts of America and is a recipient of the National Outstanding Eagle Scout award. Hightower is a 6th degree Master Black Belt and certified Sensei instructor in Isshinryu karate. He and his family live in metro Detroit.

Akshay is a senior partner at McKinsey with 20+ years of experience serving financial institutions on a broad range of themes, including strategy, transformation, growth, M&A, risk and compliance, and capability building. He lives in NJ with his wife, Rekha, and two kids, Aryana and Arjun. He loves to play golf, go biking with kids, take long road trips, and watch movies.

Akshay is passionate about supporting the University of Michigan and its students. “I am very keen to help the next generation of leaders understand what being a leader truly means in the real world,” Akshay shared. “I want to ensure that our students are supremely confident about themselves, their education, and their ability to drive substantive impact.” Learn more >>

Mr. Kaufman is the Founder and Managing Partner of Validor Capital. He is a senior private equity professional with more than 20 years of principal investing experience. Over the course of his career, he has led the execution of over 30 equity, debt and merger and acquisition transactions and has significant experience managing portfolio companies and turnarounds.

Mr. Kaufman was previously senior managing director with GSC Group, where he was a member of the investment committee of the private equity and distressed debt group. Prior to that he was director of corporate finance with NextWave Telecom and worked in private equity and M&A at The Blackstone Group and Bear Stearns.

Mr. Kaufman has served on the board of directors of numerous corporate and not-for-profit entities and has held steering committee positions in several bankruptcies. Select board memberships include Chairman of Pacific Aerospace & Electronics and Aeromet Holdings (both in the aerospace and defense industry), Burke Industries (commercial flooring), Day International Group (printing press consumables and chemical products), Safety-Kleen Corp. (environmental services) and Woods Equipment Co. (agricultural and construction equipment.)

Mr. Kaufman earned his BBA and MAcc degree from the University of Michigan.

Three reasons:

1) I have received so much benefit from my 35 year association with the University of Michigan and Ross that I wanted to give back and volunteer my time to an important cause that could have a meaningful impact to current and prospective students and their career paths.

2) I never received formal leadership training and, in hindsight, early in my career, I made mistakes and sub-optimized results while I learned leadership skills organically from observation and self-education. This drove home the value to me of leadership education sooner than later.

3) My current profession is buying sub $100 million revenue businesses in the manufacturing and industrials space. Most of the leaders we engage with in these markets have had little to no leadership training. We spend countless hours, days, and weeks coaching and mentoring our leaders. I wanted to get closer to the action on cutting edge tools to train leaders so I could be better at my job and have a more meaningful impact on the organizations we invest with.

David Pettrone Swalve is the top Inclusion executive for Life Time, Inc. (LTH – NYSE). He has also served as the Chief Solutions Officer as an external consultant for organizations across the US. David does this as a human-centered executive that creates systems to meaningfully implement change. He is a servant leader that creates communities of opportunity for an enterprise with 32,000 employees.

David is a musician for life as well and an active Pilates practitioner. He loves travel and spending the time outdoors with his family and friends across the world.

Leadership Development is my passion and I want to support Dr. Greer. As a leader of color, helping to shape the future of inclusive leadership at the prestigious Michigan Ross through the Sanger Leadership Center is such an incredible honor. Paying it forward for the workforce of tomorrow.

Stephen W. Sanger is chairman at Wells Fargo, a position he was elected to in October 2016 after serving on the board since 2003. He is also a director at Target Corporation (since 2001) and Pfizer (since 2009). Sanger served as chairman and chief executive officer of General Mills, Inc., during the final 13 years of his 34-year career with the company. During his tenure as CEO, the company’s net sales nearly tripled from $5 to $14 billion and its global workforce grew from 10 to 30 thousand employees. Perhaps his greatest legacy at General Mills was his fostering of a culture that attracted and developed great leaders. The company was regularly listed among Fortune’s Most Admired Companies and 100 Best Places to Work, and in 2007 and 2009 it was ranked No. 6 and No. 3 in Fortune’s list of the top global companies for the development of leaders.

Steve and his wife Karen Sanger extended that legacy of leadership development in 2015, when they donated $20 million to the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business to found the Sanger Leadership Center, which is dedicated to developing leaders with the mindset, skill set, and personal vision to make a positive difference in the world.

Jim is a senior partner and a 25+ year veteran in Deloitte’s Financial Services practice. He has over 30 years of experience in the financial services industry and specializes in operations and infrastructure improvement for global banks.

His areas of focus include:

• Large-scale operational and organizational transformation

• Operations risk mitigation through organizational restructuring and process redesign efforts

• Strategic planning and implementation

• Target operating model development for shared services functions

Jim also leads Deloitte’s US account leader program for Banking & Capital Markets and serves as the Advisory Partner for the Firm’s extended relationship with the University of Michigan. He received his MBA from The Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan and his B.S. in Economics from The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. Jim is married to Sabine (LS&A BA and Ross MBA), has two very active teenagers (Sophia & James), and spends any free time attending college field hockey matches (Sophia) and tennis matches and sailing regattas (James). He has been a runner for over 40 years, logging over 75,000 miles, and completed 20 marathons.

Because leadership is Michigan’s secret sauce. The Sanger mission is so important and its ability to deliver leadership experiences so early in a professional’s life is critically important to their long-term success.

Dave Webb is Vice President & Treasurer of Ford Motor Company, a role he has held since 2019. As Treasurer, Dave is responsible for leading Ford’s global Capital and Funding Strategy, Risk Management, Affiliate Finance, Asset Management, and Treasury Operations. He also is a member of Ford Motor Credit Company’s Board of Directors and a Trustee and Treasurer of the Ford Fund. Dave reports directly to Ford’s Chief Financial Officer. Prior to this role, Dave was Ford’s Assistant Treasurer and held various other leadership positions.

Dave earned a B.A. in Economics from Wheaton College (Magna Cum Laude) and an M.B.A. in Finance (with Distinction) from Michigan Ross. Dave presently lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan with his wife and two daughters.

To help develop the next generation of future leaders and accelerate Sanger’s ambition to become the world’s best leadership center.