CBAP Faculty

Rod Shrader, PhD
Strategic Management  Director
Rod Shrader is the Faculty Director of the Institute for Entrepreneurial Studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago , he is the holder of the Coleman Foundation Chair  in Entrepreneurship, and an Associate Professor of Management and Entrepreneurship at the College of Business Administration. He is the Founder and Director of UIC's Technology Ventures Program. Since inception of the program in 2005, teams have successfully launched four biotechnology companies under his guidance. His award-winning entrepreneurship research has been published in top academic journals.  

Edward A. Allfrey
Strategic Management Program Director
Edward Allfrey, one of founders of the Certificate in Business Administration Program at UIC, has been a pioneer in the development of practical education and training. With more than 25 years of experience in management education and as a teacher, management tool developer, national trainer, speaker and consultant, he brings a unique strategy development and implementation process to the program. He is a principal partner of the Center for Enterprise Development, a business education, training and consulting company.

John Arends
Marketing Management

John Arends is President /CEO of ARENDS, a full-service marketing communications agency in Batavia, IL.  The ARENDS agency has been in the B2B marketing business in the Chicago suburbs since 1958. He specializes in the areas of digital marketing, advertising, public relations, sales promotion, Olympic sports marketing and sponsorship development. His industry/market experience includes manufacturing, lighting, electrical, electronics, technology, ERP Software, transportation, commercial building products and material handling.

P. Scott Bening
Strategic Management

P. Scott Bening is President and CEO and Board Member of MonoSol, LLC a Kuraray Company. Mr. Bening is a classic story of American entrepreneurship that emerged from a surprising background of big business.  His story follows an epic plotline, personally orchestrating every aspect of the company's initial independence from corporate giant Chris Craft, to leading its growth from new product development, to developing strategic growth plans and direction that has lead to MonoSol becoming the global leader in their industry.  Under Mr. Bening's direction, in the last three years, the company has tripled in size, and expects to triple again in the next three years. MonoSol has blown through the $100 million mark with a half billion in sight, and has grown from 25 employees to more than 430.  Global Strategic Management is reality in the business world, and the CBAP is the first executive education program to bring the people who are transforming the business environment into the "classroom".

Brian J. Carroll
Operations Management
Brian J. Carroll is a Principal of Performance Improvement Consulting, Inc. (PIC), a management consulting firm specializing in Lean Performance services located in Downers Grove, Illinois. He is the author of Lean Performance ERP Project Management: Implementing The Virtual Lean Enterprise, an Auerbach Publication, 2nd Edition publishing Summer 2007. Mr. Carroll is also an instructor in the Lean Performance Certificate series offered by the Center for Enterprise Development.

Joseph Cherian, PhD
Marketing Management
Joseph Cherian is an Associate Professor of Marketing at the Graham School of Management at Saint Xavier University. He has taught marketing and strategy in MBA programs and in executive education seminars, and he is equally comfortable in the academic and practitioner worlds. Dr. Cherian has been an instructor in the CBAP for over 15 years. Testimony to his value to the participants is that his phrase, "Marketing is Everything" and "Do Better for Some" is evident in the customer and market analysis and strategy at the center of all the strategic plans that are developed in the program.

 Anthony M. Pagano, PhD
Operations Management

Anthony Pagano is Director of the Center for Supply Chain Management and Logistics and an Associate Professor of Management at the University of Illinois at Chicago in the College of Business Administration. He teaches courses in supply chain and logistics, transportation economics and public policy and international business.  He is the author and co-author of over 150 articles, technical reports and papers presented at professional meetings and the co-author of the book, The External Environment of Business: Political Economic, Social and Regulatory.  He has been Project Director or Project Manager of over 35 separate research and consulting projects. Dr. Pagano was awarded a Fulbright Scholar grant to teach courses in international business, logistics and supply chain management at Santa Maria La Antigua University in Panama City, Panama.

Lyn Soo Hoo, CPA, MBA
Financial Management

Lyn Soo Hoo has consulted with businesses in a variety of industries for over 17 years. Her business experience includes auditing and analysis, accounting, budgeting, cash flow projections, valuation and strategic planning and operations management as it relates to financial objectives and tasks. Her training and facilitation experiences include instructional design and class and workshop presentations. In addition to working for a major accounting firm and an international consulting and training company she is the founder and President of Financial Works, Inc., a company specializing in providing hands-on accounting, financial and related training and strategic services to business organizations. She brings real world experience to her 13 years of instructing in the CBAP. Ms. Soo Hoo's MBA is from the J. L. Kellogg Graduate School of Management.

Thomas Trone, PhD
Strategic Management
Tom Trone is an Adjunct Professor at the University of Illinois Champaign teaching in Entrepreneurship and Strategic Management. He has been the business creator/owner/operator of 10 companies in 4 different industries with 3000 employees– Computer/IT, Food Manufacturing/Distribution/Retail, Real Estate Development, Professional Services – Engineering and IT Consulting. Since 1993 he has found time to guide Deere, a 150 year old American icon into the 21st century as both a consultant and now an employee in developing new business globally through acquisitions. He has taught in the CBAP since its inception in the areas of Managing Growth, Innovation and Change and Organizational Design.

John Udelhofen, MBA, CPA

Strategic Management

John Udelhofen is the co-founder of Laurus Technologies.  He has over 26 years of experience in entrepreneurship in middle market companies in a broad range of businesses.  He has worked in and managed start-ups, fast growing companies and turnarounds.  He has expertise in acquisitions, mergers, financial reporting, operations, automated systems, budgeting and planning, tax administration, risk and human resource management.  He was inducted into the Chicago Entrepreneurship Hall of Fame and a finalist for both the Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year and Illinois Technology Association CEO of the Year.  He holds an MBA from the Lake Forest Graduate School of Management.

Dean Walsh, MBA
Operations Management
Dean Walsh has consulted in the area of performance improvement for seventeen years and founded Sullivan and Walsh Associates in 1995, a management consulting firm dedicated to improving the way organziations perform their work. Dean was a Partner at Center for Workforce Effectiveness and a Consultant at Sibson & Company and at Hewitt Associates. Before that, he was the Director of Marketing for the Mason Shoe Comnpany, the world's largest direct marketer of footwear. Dean holds a Masters in Management degree from the J. L. Kellogg Graduate School of Management.