Faculty & Advisors
WBRG is based on the writings and speeches of these two teachers…
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Warren Buffett
CEO and Chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, Buffett is widely considered one of the greatest business leaders and investors ever (and also one of the best business writers/teachers).
He’s your teacher via his writings and speeches
Read why today’s high school students should learn from this 93 year old who was born before television, the Internet, the iPhone, TikTok, and three decades before air conditioning became common in the U.S.
Charlie Munger, DOD Mentor
Also one of the great business leaders, investors, and thinkers (and a great influence on Buffett). Sadly, he’s now passed away, but like Buffett he’ll be your teacher via his writings and speeches.
During his lifetime, Charlie taught the power of learning from the “eminent dead.” So, to honor him, we consider Charlie to be our DOD Mentor (“dead or distant mentor”).
Charlie Munger photo license. Original photo by Nick Webb
Your Class Includes
Your WBRG teacher
An experienced business person (see faculty below).
Your fellow students
Who will teach you (as you teach them).
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Founders
Phyl Terry, Founder & Teacher
Phyl is the founder of The WBRG, and by day is the CEO and founder of Collaborative Gain, a leadership community for digital executives. Phyl also runs their own private investment fund and coaches top-level executives at big technology and financial firms.
For 15 years, Phyl was CEO of pioneering customer experience consultancy, Creative Good and oversaw projects with Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, and many others. Before that, Phyl did a stint with McKinsey & Co and with the first startup that Amazon bought.
Phyl brings groups of CEOs out to Omaha for a private workshop and for the Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting with Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger and is the author of Customers Included, Never Search Alone, contributed a chapter to The Warren Buffett Shareholder: Stories from inside the Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting, and wrote "Who can Help the CEO?” in the Harvard Business Review.
Named by Fast Company as one of the Fast Company 100 – 100 leaders shaping the 21st century, Phyl is a graduate of the Harvard Business School and also founded and runs three additional pro-bono programs – Slow Art Day, Reading Odyssey, and the Never Search Alone global community.
Melissa Norcross, PhD, CoFounder & Teacher
Melissa Norcross is an accomplished strategy executive, having held leadership positions at organizations ranging from Fortune 100 to high growth technology companies. Her career spans three continents and multiple industries. Melissa currently runs Strategy & Research at Hyland Software. Despite starting out as an engineer, she spent most of her career working in strategy and consulting alongside extraordinarily smart and kind people. She has previously served as the Chief Strategy Officer for a financial software company, Strategy & Planning Executive for USAA and consultant for multinational strategy firms including McKinsey & Co. Her areas of expertise include strategy, process improvement, organizational transformation and leadership. She holds a BS in Engineering from MIT, an MBA from Harvard Business School, and a Ph.D. in Values-Driven Leadership from Benedictine University’s Center for Values-Driven Leadership.
Melissa is passionate about nerdy puns, building extraordinary teams, and solving wicked problems. Outside work, Melissa moderates Collaborative Gain’s peer-learning councils for C-level executives, volunteers for a portfolio of charitable activities, and publishes and teaches on strategy, teams, humility and change. She currently resides in San Antonio, Texas with her mother, husband and two beagles. Her son, a future engineer, and her daughter, a future data scientist, both attend university in the northeast part of the United States.
David Wagonfeld, CoFounder & Teacher
David is a Partner at Tandem Capital, a Silicon Valley venture capital firm, and before that spent more than a decade as a partner at value investing hedge fund, Standard Pacific Capital. David has a passion for education and youth development, and, among other things, sits on the Board of Directors of Americans for Ben Gurion University. David also has an MBA from Harvard Business School.
Current Teachers
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Will Bressman, Teacher
Will is a partner at BK Growth Partners, a family investment company started with his longtime business partner, G.J. King. Formerly, Will was the CEO of RIA in a Box. Will and GJ acquired RIA in a Box via a search fund (Rushmore Partners) in 2011. In 2018, they partnered with Aquiline Partners to recapitalize the business and accelerate its growth. In 2021, RIA in a Box was acquired by ComplySci, a portfolio company of K1 Investment Partners, a software-focused private equity firm.
Earlier in Will’s career, he worked at LX.TV, a digital media content provider acquired by NBC Universal and Good Morning America.
Will resides in Brooklyn with his family. Will is a director of search fund companies and non profits such as Hebrew Free Loan Society and the Jewish Communal Fund. Will holds an MBA from the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University and is a graduate of Harvard College magna cum laude with a degree in History.
Sumeet Goel, Teacher
Sumeet is the Founder of HighPoint Associates and directs company strategy. He is dedicated to creating transformational change for HighPoint client partners. His focus on growth has resulted in measurable, positive outcomes, and high rates of client retention. Sumeet’s breadth of experience and keen sense of intuition allow him to partner with clients to identify the roots of their challenges and how best to tackle them.
Prior to founding HighPoint in 2001, Sumeet was the head of Strategy & Business Development at an early stage venture firm that operated at the intersection of technology, media and entertainment. Before that, he served dozens of clients across industry and functional sectors from McKinsey & Company’s New York and Los Angeles offices.
Sumeet holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and a BS from the Wharton School of Business.
Amy Kadomatsu, Teacher
Amy is the President and CEO of Comply, a leader in compliance technology with more than 7,000 clients including the world’s largest financial institutions. Amy joined Comply as Chief Operating Officer in 2018 and was named President in December 2019 and subsequently Chief Executive Officer in October 2020.
Her entrepreneurial spirit led her to previously co-found Instabot, an enterprise chatbot platform, and ROKO Labs, a product strategy consultancy company. She has also served as a managing director at S&P Global, a Fortune 500 company, and chief product officer at TheMarkets,com, a consortium of the largest financial services firms.
Amy is passionate about innovation and diversity, which drove her to be an advisor to several start-up companies and she is a co-board chair for Mouse, a national nonprofit bringing coding curriculum and STEM programs to underserved youth.
Lauren McCadney, Teacher
Lauren is VP, Performance Marketing at CDW,a leading multi-brand provider of information technology solutions to business, government, education and healthcare customers. Lauren is passionate about building the next generation of talent; in addition to developing her own team she is on the CDW Emerging Leaders Steering Committee as well as a frequent contributor to several BRGs. She is an international speaker with teaching experience including UT Austin and The Fuqua School of Business at Duke University. Lauren has a BBA from Howard University. She earned her MBA at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.
Allison Mnookin, Advisor
Allison Mnookin is a Senior Lecturer of Business Administration in the Technology and Operations Management (TOM) Unit at the Harvard Business School. She co-leads the HBS Startup Bootcamp and brings two decades of experience as a technology executive for successful cloud and business software companies. She most recently was CEO of Quick Base Inc. and currently serves on the company’s Board of Directors. Prior to Quick Base, Allison held several leadership positions at Intuit. Most notably, she served as vice president and general manager of a $500M portfolio of small business products, including QuickBooks, which served more than 3 million small businesses at the time. Allison was also instrumental in the early formation and growth of Quicken Loans.
Allison also currently serves on the Board of Directors of LPL Financial (Nasdaq: LPLA), a firm that provides an integrated platform of proprietary technology, brokerage, and investment advisory services to independent financial advisors, and Bill.com (NYSE: BILL), a leading provider of cloud-based software that simplifies, digitizes, and automates back-office financial processes for small and mid-sized businesses.
Allison holds an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School and an AB with honors from Harvard College.
John Semel, Teacher
John is a Managing Director at Oaklins DeSilva+Phillips, a mid-market M&A advisory organization. Over the past 25 years he has been Chief Operating Officer of Roar Social; Chief Strategy Officer of Zovio, a leading provider of online education technology services; Chief Strategy Officer of Mood Media; EVP and Chief Strategy Officer of John Wiley & Sons; EVP Business Development at The Weinstein Company; VP Strategy and Business Development of MTV Networks; Director of Hearst Ventures; SVP of Investments US for eVerger; and, Vice President of Channel One Interactive. John has a BA from Brown University and an MBA from Harvard Business School.
Vince Tsai, Teacher
Vince has over 20 years of experience leading digital ventures for both Fortune 500 and high-growth technology companies. His expertise spans product management, strategy and operations and currently serves as a senior executive for Balluun, a software startup powering B2B digital marketplaces. Vince also served in leadership roles for Yahoo!, ReachLocal and Accenture and earned degrees from Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management (MBA) and Lehigh University (BSME).
Vince has a passion for education and youth development, having served as a school board member of Alliance College-Ready Schools, as well as Executive Board Member for the Taiwanese-American Foundation. As an avid investor in both public and private markets, Vince is excited to teach for WBRG and inspire the next generation of young business leaders.
Student Volunteers
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Grace Mueller, Site Administrator
A star student of the 2023 WBRG Class, Grace is the WBRG.com site administrator. She is a first-year student student in the Clark Honors College at the University of Oregon. She is passionate about economics, data science, running, and soccer. Grace participates in a number of campus clubs including Toastmasters, Women in Economics, and the Emerging Leadership Project.
McKenzie Williams, Founding Student & Registrar
A founding student of the summer and yearlong WBRG classes, McKenzie loves the program and is the WBRG Registrar. She is a student at Phillips Academy Andover. She is passionate about math, computer science, and business – of course! Her hobbies include fencing, photography, reading, and watching anime.
Join the Faculty
If you are an experienced executive who might want to join our volunteer faculty, then know that here’s what makes a great WBRG teacher:
⭑ 15+ years of experience in finance, tech or other industries
⭑ MBA from Harvard or other top program
⭑ Relatable to young people and not take yourself too seriously (have a sense of humor and silliness)