Mark Agnew

Mark Agnew is best known as the former President and Chief Executive Officer of Lou Malnati's Pizzeria, the iconic Chicago deep-dish institution. His connection to the company dates to his teenage years at New Trier High School, where the school's basketball coach, Rick Malnati — of the founding family — took him under his wing and put him to work in the catering call center packing frozen pizzas. Agnew rejoined Lou Malnati's in 2011 and led the business for nearly a decade. Under his leadership the company grew to more than 4,000 employees and 58 company-owned locations across Chicagoland and Phoenix, plus the eCommerce operation Tastes of Chicago, and was named a top workplace by the *Chicago Tribune* nine years in a row.

Agnew's earlier career was in finance and private equity. Before returning to Lou Malnati's, he spent five years as a Vice President at Dixon Midland Company, a Chicago-based private investment firm, where he sourced platform and add-on acquisitions and took on hands-on operational duties at portfolio companies. Prior to that he was a private equity Associate at Glencoe Capital (focused on basic industries) and an investment banking Analyst at Deutsche Bank, where he concentrated on leveraged finance and M&A.

Today Agnew is an Adjunct Professor of Entrepreneurship at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, where he teaches a course called "Entrepreneurship Through Acquisition," and serves as an Advisory Board Member & Strategic Partner at NextGen Growth Partners, a Chicago- and Austin-based private equity firm that backs operators to acquire, run, and grow lower-middle-market companies. He is also cofounder and Chairman of Pickles Group, a nonprofit providing free resources and community to children navigating a parent's cancer diagnosis.

Agnew holds a BS from Cornell University and an MBA with honors from the University of Chicago. He was named to Crain's Chicago Business "40 Under 40" in 2016. He lives in Winnetka, Illinois, with his wife Carolyn and their four children.

• Invests at the pre-seed and seed stage as an angel, drawing on a career that blends private equity, M&A, and hands-on company operating experience.
• Strong orientation toward "entrepreneurship through acquisition" — the search-fund / operator-buyer model he teaches at Booth and advises on at NextGen Growth Partners — meaning he gravitates to founders and operators who can actually run and scale a business, not just pitch one.
• Operator-investor lens: having scaled a 4,000-person, multi-location food and eCommerce business, he brings practical value on operations, people/culture (nine-time top-workplace track record), unit economics, and growth execution.
• Sector-agnostic in practice, with visible activity in healthcare / behavioral-health technology (Regroup Therapy) and credibility in food, consumer, and services businesses.
• Network-centered: his deals and roles cluster within the Chicago startup and Booth/Polsky ecosystem (e.g., co-investing alongside Hyde Park Angels, OCA Ventures, Impact Engine, and other local funds).