Industry Advisory Group

Savyon Amit has extensive experience in global marketing strategy and insights-driven new product development and commercialization within the healthcare space. He has a proven track record of organizational impact, including building high-performing insights teams, identifying talent, and coaching with a focus on partnership and support of new market entry, corporate development, and business development. 

He has an MBA and a degree from the graduate program in health administration policy from the University of Chicago and a law degree from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Linda Burtch has over thirty years’ experience recruiting quantitative professionals and has dedicated her career to becoming an industry leader in analytics and data science recruiting. Linda is a frequent speaker on Big Data career topics at luncheons, conferences, corporate meetings, and webinar. Her insights have been featured in The Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Forbes, and more.

She has been a board member of the Chicago Chapter of the American Statistical Association for over a decade. She is also an active member of INFORMS, and hosts a popular blog with analysis and insights on the data science and analytics talent market.

Abbie Castiglione oversees strategic data operations and analytic initiatives across five labs and is the chair of the privacy and cybersecurity committee. She previously served as the Manager of Operations and Research Initiatives for the Crime Lab and Education Lab. 

She received her MBA from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business in June 2018, a BS in business management from DePaul University, and an MS in Industrial/Organizational psychology from California State University.

Before retiring, Harris led the Institute’s global research agenda in the areas of information technology and analytics. In more than thirty-five years at Accenture, she led various consulting practices. In 2009, she received Consulting Magazine’s Women Leaders in Consulting award for Lifetime Achievement. She has authored over 100 articles in business and technology publications and is an accomplished keynote speaker at major business and technology executive events. 

Harris is the co-author of Competing on Analytics: The New Science of Winning (2017), which explains how high-performance businesses are building competitive strategies around data-driven insights that are generating impressive results. Harvard Business Review editors named the bestselling book one of the top breakthrough ideas of the 21st century. Her previous book (with co-authors Tom Davenport and Bob Morison), Analytics at Work: Smarter Decisions, Better Results, shows how organizations can create an analytical capability that enables them to routinely make better decisions in every aspect of their business.

Zoher Karu is Managing Director, Head of Data and Analytics for Asia-Pacific Consumer Bank at Citi, based in Singapore. He is responsible for leveraging data and advanced analytics to help drive growth for all aspects of the consumer bank across 17 markets. In his previous role of Chief Data Officer at eBay, he worked enterprise-wide to create, organize, democratize, and act upon data, analytics, and insights from eBay’s 170 million active buyers and one billion individual listings, focusing on customer analytics and opportunities to drive growth from understanding individual as well as aggregate behavioral and transaction data to drive personalization, marketing strategies, and new site experiences. 

Author of the engineering textbook Signals and Systems Made Ridiculously Simple, Karu has a PhD in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from MIT and a BS in Electrical Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University.

Nihar Malaviya is responsible for strategy, analytics, operations, distribution, technology, and corporate marketing. His key focus is to create new capabilities for future success—from dynamic pricing, consumer insights and marketing to vendor-managed inventory. Before moving to Random House, he  started at Bertelsmann as a member of the Bertelsmann Entrepreneurs program. At Random, he worked on a variety of corporate functions in sales, technology, operations, supply chain, and production, and headed numerous projects including digital strategy, ebook pricing, sales reorganization, technology infrastructure consolidation, supply chain redesign, and production vendor renegotiations. Early in his career, he spent seven years on Wall Street working at the intersection of credit and market-risk management and technology.

Malaviya has an MBA in Finance and Marketing from NYU’s Stern School of Business, a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science, and is a CFA (Chartered Financial Analyst) charter holder.

Viktor Mirtchev is an experienced professional, leader and strategist in the area of analytics, specializing in big data custom solutions. He is known for springing insights from data and leveraging a diverse set of analytical approaches to ensure that companies remain agile and relevant. His experience includes developing/improving solutions and scaling/pivoting analytical methods to serve cross-country and cross-functional client needs. 

Before joining Nielsen in 2015, during his tenure at Kraft Foods and Baxter Healthcare, he held positions as a Six Sigma quality leader, a statistician, and a quality data analyst leading global project initiatives and executing a wide variety of statistical analysis. He is the co-author of Statistics for Food Scientists and a regular presenter for the consumer products industry. He holds an MS in Applied Statistics from DePaul University and an MBA from Lake Forest Graduate School of Management.

A native of Cleveland, Ohio, Victor Pascucci began his career in Chicago in 1994. He has over 20 years of experience in venture capital, fintech investing, and financial services. He has been a part of over $600M in venture capital and M&A transactions. He has taken multiple companies public and through successful acquisitions. He currently serves on the boards of Snapsheet, clearcover, and Sprout Social. He is also an advisor to the Chicago Blockchain Center, Currency, and Fintech 71. He is an active supporter of financial services innovation efforts. 

Prior to Lightbank, Pascucci built and managed USAA’s $330 million corporate venture capital program, where he led investments in fintech (insurtech, banking, investment management), consumer internet, enterprise technologies, and digital capabilities. He also had responsibility for the company’s M&A, joint ventures, and intellectual property transactions. More recently, he was a Partner with Munich Re| HSB Ventures, where he led their investment activities in insurtech including trov, super, slice and Next Insurance.

Morgan Vawter leads Caterpillar’s global Information Analytics team, where she sets the strategy for and creates value from analytics solutions for Caterpillar’s customers, 170+ dealers, and the Caterpillar enterprise. Before joining Caterpillar, Vawter held a number of top data analytics positions at leading firms, including Accenture Interactive, and consulted for more than 40 Fortune 500 companies on analytics.