Steven G. Martin | Managing Member
Mr. Martin has more than twenty-five years of experience financing publicly traded companies and extensive experience in finance and venture capital. He was a founder and Managing Member of Fusion Capital, a Chicago-based investment fund started in 1999 that funded or committed to fund over $700 million in public company financings. While at Fusion Capital, Mr. Martin was responsible for the creation of the Fusion Capital investment structure and documentation used in virtually every Fusion Capital transaction. Prior to Fusion Capital, he was a principal at a $150 million Chicago investment fund where he originated, structured, and negotiated private placement investments in public companies. Mr. Martin was also a partner at the Chicago law firm of Katten Muchin Rosenman LLP. As an attorney, Mr. Martin represented institutional investors and public companies in highly complex private and public investments. Mr. Martin received his Juris Doctor degree with honors from Northwestern University School of Law. Mr. Martin graduated with high honors from the University of Michigan with a Bachelors of Business Administration, concentrating in finance.
Christos Komissopoulos | Principal
Mr. Komissopoulos has approximately thirty years of business experience in negotiating, financing and closing highly-complicated transactions. He was a principal at First National Development LTD for more than twenty years, where he negotiated and closed numerous transactions worth hundreds of millions of dollars. He has a strong interest in studying law as well as economics and has for many decades been a scholar in academia both as student and instructor: since 2003, he has been an adjunct professor at Chicago-Kent College of Law (IIT) where he teaches classes on agreement negotiations, real estate transactions and comparative transactional issues between the US and the European Union introducing students in the analytical tools of the law and economics discipline. Mr. Komissopoulos earned a Doctor of Juridical Science (S.J.D.) degree from Northwestern University School of Law, a Master of Arts (M.A.) in economics from University of Illinois at Chicago, a Master of Laws (LL.M.) degree from DePaul University College of Law, an LL.M degree from Northwestern University School of Law, and a Law Diploma from the National & Kapodistrian School of Law in Athens.
Erik J. Brown | Principal
Mr. Brown has over eighteen years of experience financing private and publicly traded companies. He spent seven years at Fusion Capital where he was responsible for deal origination and negotiation. Prior to this, he was the President of CGI Capital, a venture capital firm and NASD broker-dealer in Illinois. Mr. Brown began his career in finance at Merrill Lynch. He currently serves as a member of the Advisory Board of the Financial Markets Institute at Michigan State University. Mr. Brown has also served on the Leadership Council of the Chicago Public Education Fund, a venture capital fund focused on improving public education, and on the board of the Kellogg Alumni Club of Chicago. He earned his MBA from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, and his B.A. in finance from Michigan State University.
Kathryn A. Wilson | Vice President
Ms. Wilson has experience in investment fund operations & accounting. She joined Aspire Capital after working at Northern Trust Hedge Fund Services. Ms. Wilson originally joined Omnium LLC, an affiliate of Citadel Asset Management which was subsequently acquired by Northern Trust Corporation. While at Northern Trust, she helped lead the investor accounting team advising hedge funds and private equity funds on fund structure, investor treatment, and accounting issues. She previously worked for EY (formerly Ernst & Young), focusing on audit clients in the private equity and biotech industries. Ms. Wilson currently serves as the treasurer of Chicago Alliance Against Sexual Exploitation’s Associate Board, of which she has been a member since 2015. She earned her B.S. and a M.S. in Accountancy from Wake Forest University and is a Certified Public Accountant (CPA), licensed in Washington, D.C.
Michael P. Burrows, PhD | Vice President, Life Sciences
Prior to joining Aspire Capital, Dr. Burrows was a biomedical researcher at the University of Chicago where his work focused on better understanding the relationship between autoimmune disease and the microbiota. He has developed expertise in a number of disease models and his research has resulted in several publications in high impact journals including Immunity and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Additionally, Dr. Burrows gained significant experience in the technological and commercial assessment of early stage biotechnology projects while serving as a Chicago Innovation Mentors Fellow and a CIE Innovation Fund Associate. Previously, he worked as a research scientist for an immunotherapeutics company where he was responsible for drug development. Dr. Burrows received a Ph.D. in Immunology at the University of Chicago. He also received a M.S. in Microbiology from the University of Nebraska Medical Center and a B.S. in Microbiology from the University of Illinois.
Matthew Z. Sesterhenn, CFA | Analyst
Prior to joining Aspire Capital, Mr. Sesterhenn worked at The Vanguard Group, Inc. where he traded equities for Vanguard’s high net worth and ultra-high net worth clients. He has experience in portfolio theory, equity trading, fundamental analysis, financial mathematics, and financial modeling. Mr. Sesterhenn earned his B.S. in Finance and Technology Management from the Kelley School of Business at Indiana University. Mr. Sesterhenn holds the Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) designation and is a member of the CFA Society of Chicago. He also actively participates as President and committee member of the NorthShore University Health System’s Associate Board.
Felicia A. Phan | Analyst, Life Sciences
Prior to joining Aspire Capital, Ms. Phan was a graduate student researcher at Washington University in St. Louis where she worked on several oncology projects as part of their Molecular Cell Biology program. She has additional academic research experience in cytokine signal transduction from Northwestern University and development of an ultrasound-based alternative to chemotherapy from Vanderbilt University. Ms. Phan earned her B.E. in Biomedical Engineering from Vanderbilt University where she received awards for the design of a preventive device for Zika Virus and development of a novel stent for treating bifurcation aneurysms.
John W. Colson, PhD | Vice President, Life Sciences
Dr. Colson was previously at ClostraBio, Inc, a University of Chicago spinout creating new medicines to prevent and treat life-threatening allergies to food. As the company’s first employee, John led all company and scientific operations, accounting, and financing activities. Prior to ClostraBio, Dr. Colson was a postdoctoral scholar and an Associate, then Senior Associate, with the Innovation Fund at the University of Chicago. As part of a multidisciplinary Associates team, Dr. Colson led the diligence process on multiple deals in the cleantech and internet connectivity spaces and made go/no-go recommendations to the Fund's Investment and Advisory Committees. Dr. Colson earned his PhD in Chemistry from Cornell University in 2014 developing techniques to prepare and measure polymer films. In 2017, he was awarded the Henkel Award for Outstanding Graduate Research in Polymer Chemistry, a national award from the American Chemical Society. His work has been published in Science, Nature Chemistry, and other leading journals and he is a named inventor on 3 patents.
Leo Park | Analyst
Prior to joining Aspire Capital, Mr. Park worked at BDO USA LLP in the assurance practice, focusing on audits of asset management and technology clients. He previously worked at CliftonLarsonAllen, where he assisted in financial and compliance audits for nonprofit and government entities. Mr. Park has experience in GAAP accounting, financial reporting, and financial statement analysis. He earned his B.A. in Economics and M.A.C.C. from Washington University in St. Louis and is a Certified Public Accountant (CPA) licensed in New York.
Caleb K. Stubbs, PhD | Analyst, Life Sciences
Prior to joining Aspire Capital, Dr. Stubbs was a scientific researcher at Northwestern University where his work focused on oncogenic signaling in colon cancer. During his time at Northwestern, Dr. Stubbs has been awarded consecutive NIH/NCI training grants in carcinogenesis which helped fund his work, and has contributed to several publications in Nature Scientific Reports and Molecular Cancer Therapeutics. Dr. Stubbs received a Ph.D. in Cancer Biology at Northwestern University. In addition, he also received a certificate in business and management from Northwestern Kellogg School of Management.