Ryan CraigManaging Director
Ryan is the Co-Founder and Managing Director of UV. Ryan’s commentary on where the puck is going in higher education regularly appears in the Gap Letter, Forbes, TechCrunch, Inside Higher Education, Fortune, HR Dive, and VentureBeat, among others. He is the author of A New U: Faster + Cheaper Alternatives to College (Ben Bella, 2018), which describes the critical importance of last-mile training and the emergence of bootcamps, income share programs, staffing and apprenticeship models as preferred pathways to good first digital jobs, and was named in the Wall Street Journal as one the Books of the Year for 2018. He is also the author of College Disrupted: The Great Unbundling of Higher Education (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), which profiles the coming shift toward competency-based education and hiring.
Prior to UV, Ryan led the Education & Training sector at Warburg Pincus where he was the founding Director of Bridgepoint Education (NYSE: BPI), one of the largest online universities in the United States. His prior experience in online education was at Columbia University. From 2004 to 2010, Ryan founded and built Wellspring, a national network of boarding schools and summer camps for overweight and obese children, adolescents, and young adults. He began his career at McKinsey & Co.
Ryan received bachelor's degrees summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Yale University, and his law degree from the Yale Law School.
While Ryan knows where the puck is going in higher education, he actually knows what to do with a puck because he hails from Toronto, Canada.
Daniel PiankoCo-Founder and Managing Director
Daniel Pianko is co-founder and managing director at UV. With over a decade of experience in the education industry, Daniel has built a reputation as a trusted education adviser and innovator in student finance, medical education, and postsecondary education. A frequent commentator on higher education, Daniel’s insights have been featured in national media outlets including The Wall Street Journal, CNBC, TechCrunch, Inside Higher Ed, and The Chronicle of Higher Education.
Daniel began his career in investment banking at Goldman Sachs, and quickly became intrigued by the potential of leveraging private capital to establish the next generation of socially beneficial education companies. After leaving Goldman, Daniel invested in, founded, advised, or managed a number of education-related businesses that led to the creation of UV. Prior to founding UV, he established a student loan fund, served as chief of staff for the public/private investments in the Philadelphia School District, and worked as a hedge fund analyst.
Daniel graduated magna cum laude from Columbia University, and holds a M.B.A. and M.A. in Education from Stanford University. He is the proud father of three children.
Gregg RosenthalManaging Director
Gregg Rosenthal is a founding Managing Director of UV. Prior to UV, Gregg was Vice President of Corporate Development at Bertelsmann SE & Co. KGaA (>$20b in revenues, >100,000 employees across 60+ countries). Gregg created and led the group's education services strategy, building a strong network among the sector's leading firms, entrepreneurs and stakeholders.During his tenure at the company, Gregg participated in multiple education deals spanning numerous business segments and foreign markets targeting early-stage, growth and buy-out investments. He joined Bertelsmann AG as part of the Entrepreneurs Program (BEP), focusing exclusively on education as of 2009. Previously, Gregg was founder and CEO of Language Adventures Inc., a multi-national firm offering immersion language education to school and affinity groups. He began his career as an international Media executive holding corporate development and operational roles at KirchGruppe and Sony.He has an MBA from INSEAD, having previously studied at The Wharton School, NYU-Stern and The University of Texas at Austin. Gregg speaks English, German, Spanish, French and Japanese.
Troy WilliamsManaging Director
Troy Williams is a Managing Director of UV. Prior to UV, Troy was a senior executive at Macmillan where he was CEO of Macmillan Enterprise Solutions and President of Macmillan New Ventures, managing an edtech portfolio of seven companies with a focus on data and analytics, university systems and student performance and outcomes. Troy founded and for nine years was CEO of Questia Media, an early ebook company ultimately sold to Cengage Learning.
At UV, Troy leads the firm's investments in education technology with a particular focus on software and systems for universities generally. Troy received his bachelor's degree in History, Phi Beta Kappa, from Rice University, and his law degree from the Harvard Law School where he was a member of Harvard Law Review. He is on the Advisory Board of Rice University's School of Humanities.
Aanand RadiaManaging Director
Aanand Radia is a Managing Director at UV. Prior to UV, Aanand was a private equity investor at BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, where he focused on Financial Services and Special Situations. Prior to BlackRock, Aanand worked at EdisonLearning (formerly Edison Schools), an early pioneer in the charter school movement and later a diversified K-12 education technology and services company, where he focused on corporate strategy, business development, and new product and finance initiatives. While at Edison, Aanand helped to develop an alternative education product offering delivered through a hybrid/blended learning environment. Aanand started his career at Patriot Capital, a middle market private equity firm, where he made investments across a broad range of industries. Aanand received his B.S. in Economics from Carnegie Mellon University.
Aanand focuses on opportunities in student finance and education to employment pathways.
Cassidy LeventhalPrincipal
Cassidy Leventhal is a Principal at University Ventures. Prior to her tenure at University Ventures, Cassidy was a management consultant at McKinsey & Company, where she served public and private sector clients across strategy, organization, and technology initiatives. Key experiences included developing a cost strategy for a leading global education company, managing an agile website and mobile application development team of 10+ as a Digital Product Owner (DPO), and leading McKinsey’s women's recruiting efforts across multiple college campuses. Cassidy received her bachelor's degree summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Barnard College, Columbia University.
At UV, Cassidy focuses on opportunities in education technology and education to employment pathways. Cassidy sits on the Board of Yellowbrick, and on the portfolio and deal teams of multiple investments including Tiber Health, Avenica, AdmitHub, Ready Education, and Techtonic.
Corinne SpearsPrincipal
Corinne Spears is a Principal at University Ventures. Previously, Corinne was a consultant with McKinsey & Company where she served private and social sector clients in retail, K-12 education, workforce development, and healthcare. During her time at McKinsey, Corinne spent a year with Generation, a non-profit founded by McKinsey to recruit, place, and train opportunity youth in career launching jobs with now over 50,000 graduates. While at Generation, Corinne led the development of Generation’s first global digital program. Corinne received a bachelor degree summa cum laude from the University of Southern California with a BS in Industrial and Systems Engineering.
Lauren GoldmanAssociate
Lauren Goldman is an Associate at University Ventures. Prior to joining UV, Lauren worked as a consultant at McKinsey & Company in their digital practice focusing on building solutions at the intersection of business and technology. Her work spanned the topics of online learning, future of work, eCommerce acceleration, and digital marketing across education and consumer/retail clients. During her time at McKinsey, Lauren was an active member of her office’s pro bono committee, developed an allyship and inclusion training for North American colleagues, and participated in a weekly mentorship program with high school students in Newark, NJ. Lauren holds a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from Cornell University.
