Investment Management Academy
Mike Murphy is currently co-director of the Investment Management Academy at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. In 2002, he co-founded Discovery Group, a private fund management company. The firm's flagship private partnership invested in small capitalization companies in anticipation of change-of-control transactions and consistently outperformed the market for over 15 years. Prior to Discovery Group, Mr. Murphy specialized in Mergers & Acquisitions at Piper Jaffray, PWC, and J.P. Morgan Chase. He earned an MBA from Chicago Booth and a BS in Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. In the summer he can be found in the Chicago area, cycling frequently, and in the winter skiing and guiding in Breckenridge, Colorado.
Richard Excell just retired as a Senior Portfolio Manager at Wolverine Asset Management in Chicago where he ran a global equity long/short hedge fund portfolio. In this role, he oversaw a portfolio that combined quantitative factor and discretionary macro analysis, with bottom-up fundamental analysis and derivatives trade implementation to create a concentrated long/short portfolio that aims to deliver high risk-adjusted returns for institutional investors. Before joining WAM, he was the CIO and a partner at Satori Investment Partners and a Portfolio Manager and Co-Head of the Fundamental Equity Market Neutral Fund. Earlier in his career, he built and managed foreign exchange, precious metals, and emerging market cash and derivatives trading businesses around the world while with Crédit Agricole Indosuez and has lived in Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Switzerland and the UK. Excell holds a B.S. in Finance with a minor in Accounting and Japanese Studies from the University of Illinois and an M.B.A. from the University of Chicago. Outside of work, he is Director of the Western Golf Association/Evans Scholars.
Michael Vitek currently serves as a director of the Investment Management Academy at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign where he also teaches courses in Applied Financial Analysis and Accounting for Financial Analysis. Before joining the Investment Management Academy, he served as a Managing Director at Mesirow providing analytical coverage on small-cap value and small-mid cap value strategies for the technology and healthcare sectors and in various Portfolio Management and Client Relations roles. Prior to joining Mesirow, he was a Senior Director and Research Analyst for Fiduciary Management Associates, LLC, a Portfolio Manager at Allstate, and an Equity and Fixed Income Analyst at State Farm. Vitek is a graduate of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign with a B.S. in Finance, holds an M.B.A. from the University of Chicago, and is a CFA charterholder and member of the CFA Society of Chicago and the CFA Institute.