Farley Faculty
Heather Aranyi
LecturerHeather Aranyi M.Ed., M.M. teaches at The Farley Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation at Northwestern. She is also the Coordinator for The Wildfire Pre-Accelerator Program at The Garage at Northwestern. Outside of Northwestern, she is on faculty at the Lyric Opera of Chicago, an ordained Cantor who serves at Congregation Beth Am, and the founder of Aranyi Enterprises, a consulting firm which specializes in personal branding and strategy. She is a noted keynote speaker and thought leader and has received numerous honors in recognition of her work, including a McCormick Fellowship.
Billy Banks
Adjunct LecturerBilly Banks is currently the Co-founder and CGO at ProHabits, President at Windsor Steel, and an Adjunct Lecturer at Northwestern. In the past, he has founded multiple companies, has extensive M&A experience, and advises numerous startups.
Hayes Ferguson
Clinical Associate Professor and Executive DirectorHayes Ferguson is the Director of Northwestern's Farley Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation and a clinical associate professor in the university's McCormick School of Engineering. Before joining Farley in 2020, Hayes spent 5 years at The Garage, Northwestern's student startup incubator, as an Entrepreneur in Residence and Associate Director.
Mark Fisher
Clinical Associate ProfessorMark Fisher is a principal at Mission Product Development LLC. Fisher is also a Clinical Associate Professor within Northwestern's Biomedical Engineering program. He has more than 30+ years of product and service development experience and has over 25 patents issued and/or pending.
Roozbeh Ghaffari
Research Associate Professor
Rich Gordon
ProfessorRich Gordon is a professor and director of digital innovation. At Medill, he launched the school’s graduate program in new media journalism. He has spent most of his career exploring the areas where journalism and technology intersect. Prof. Gordon was an early adopter of desktop analytical tools (spreadsheets and databases) to analyze data for journalistic purposes. At The Miami Herald, he was among the first generation of journalists to lead online publishing efforts at newspapers. At Medill, he has developed innovative courses through which students have explored digital content and communities and developed new forms of storytelling that take advantage of the unique capabilities of interactive media.
Jonathan Gunn, JD, PhD
Adjunct Lecturer
Tran Ha
Adjunct Lecturer
Joshua Lance, CPA, CGMA
Adjunct Lecturer
Elizabeth Lukehart
Lecturer and Associate Director of CurriculumElizabeth Lukehart is the Associate Director of the Farley Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation at Northwestern University and a lecturer in the McCormick School of Engineering. She has a law degree from the Pritzker School of Law, as well as a master’s in journalism from Medill. She has practiced law in a boutique firm providing legal services for tech startup companies and has held a variety of positions in marketing and communications. Lukehart has worked extensively with clean tech and sustainability-focused startups and also has experience in the nonprofit and social enterprise sector.
Marcelo Malakooti
Assistant ProfessorMarcelo Malakooti, MD, is an Assistant Professor of Pediatrics (Critical Care), and the ddirector of Innovation-IGNITE. He is also an attending Physician Pediatric Critical Care Medicine, at the Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago. Malakootie's research focuses on using innovation to improve patient outcomes and quality of care, while fostering dynamic strategies to minimize waste and optimize resources.
Curt Mastio
Adjunct LecturerCurt Mastio, CPA, is the founder of Founder's CPA, formerly known as Startup Accounting Advisors, an accounting firm that offers specialized accounting services to startups and small businesses. Previously, Mastio was a forensics accountant at Deloitte and served as Chief Financial Officer for Storage Squad. Mastio received his Bachelor's degree (2011) and Master's degree (2015) in Accountancy from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Peter McNerney
Adjunct ProfessorPete McNerney specializes in early stage health care operating and investing. He co-founded two venture capital firms, Coral Ventures and Thomas, McNerney & Partners. He was also the founder and CEO of Memtec North America and worked for Baxter Health Care in a number of management positions. He received his BA from Yale University and his MBA from Stanford University and is a CPA.
Mike Moyer
Adjunct LecturerMike Moyer is the founder of product development and merchandising company Bananagraphics, as well as outdoor clothing manufacturing company Moondog and Cappex.com. In addition to his entrepreneurial ventures, Moyer also has extensive experience in senior-level marketing He is the author of eight books: Slicing Pie, Pitch Ninja, How to Make Colleges Want You, College Peas, and Trade Show Samurai
Chris Riesbeck
Associate ProfessorChris Riesbeck is an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science at Northwestern University. He received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from Stanford University in 1974. He is a co-director of The Center for Computer Science and Learning Sciences, the director of the MS program in Computer Science, and a Fellow of the American Association for Artificial Intelligence.
John Rogers
Louis Simpson and Kimberly Querrey ProfessorProfessor John Rogers is the Louis Simpson and Kimberly Querrey Professor of Materials Science and Engineering, Biomedical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Chemistry and Neurological Surgery, where he is also the founding Director of the newly endowed Center on Bio-Integrated Electronics.
Professor John Rogers' research includes fundamental and applied aspects of nano and molecular scale fabrication as well as materials and patterning techniques for unusual electronic and photonic devices, with an emphasis on bio-integrated and bio-inspired systems. Professor Rogers has invented over 80 patents and patent applications, more than 50 of which are licensed or in active use by large companies and startups that he has co-founded, including Active Impulse Systems, Semprius, MC10,
Neal Sales-Griffin
Adjunct LecturerNeal Sales-Griffin is currently the Managing Director for Techstars Chicago, Techstars is a Worldwide Network that helps entrepreneurs succeed. Techstars was founded in Boulder, Colorado in 2006 by David Cohen, Brad Feld, David Brown, and Jared Polis. Through the Techstars Worldwide Entrepreneur Network, founders and their teams are able to connect to other entrepreneurs, experts, mentors, alumni, investors, community leaders, and corporate partners that will help their companies grow.
Cory Sandrock
Adjunct Lecturer
Birju Shah
Adjunct LecturerBirju Shah is currently a Group Product Manager at Uber Technologies LLP. He leads the product group for the sensor inference & vision platform teams at Uber. Prior to Uber, Birju was a product lead at Climate Corporation where he led the Yield Analytics team. Birju is also a board & product advisor to several start-ups, fortune 500, and venture capital firms. Birju draws upon 15 years of building enterprise and consumer products that are used by over 1+ billion users daily in 190 countries.
Trish Thomas
LecturerTrish Thomas is a 4x Founder. She is the Co-Founder and CEO of Evanston-based Whole & Free Foods which was founded to solve the primary pain point for the 60% of US impacted by dietary restrictions – eating with other people. Trish has coached dozens of entrepreneurs and consulted for companies including Dreamworks SKG, Redbox, IBM, and Nissan. Her areas of expertise include consumer packaged goods, media, entertainment and user-generated content. Her obsession, and research, is pioneering ways to improve the psychological resilience of founding teams as a means to improve the success rates of early-stage ventures.
Mark Werwath
Clinical Full ProfessorMark Werwath, a certified project management professional (PMP), has been an engineering project manager for 15 years, managing complex system (software) and product development, IT, and manufacturing and radio network system implementation projects in four continents. He currently operates, Werwath Portfolio Group, a consulting business in the portfolio management space. Werwath now teaches full time at Northwestern University as a clinical full professor and is also the director of the Masters in Engineering Management program at Northwestern’s McCormick School of Engineering.
David Zaretsky
Adjunct ProfessorDavid is an accomplished entrepreneur, researcher, technology advisor, lecturer, and published author with expertise in the fields of VLSI, high-performance computing, and data science. He has co-founded and developed technology for companies in areas of electronic design automation, aerospace & defense, high-frequency trading, ad tech, and social media. David is currently the CEO and Chief Scientist at Snips Media, the first performance-driven influencer marketing platform and network.