Guidance, enrichment, leadership

The Bill Munday School of Business recognizes the support of its Advisory Board. Through member efforts and continued contributions, our school has been able to actualize visions of academic excellence and integrity.

Ruoyun Xu Killian ’13

Human Centered Business Advisor and Speaker

Ruoyun Xu Killian, Human-Centered business advisor and speaker, is on a mission to put the human experience back into marketing and business. For the last 15+ years, Ruoyun has advised brands to get out of the marketing fluff and back into building relationships and impact in their communities. She believes that by humanizing the way we do business, in turn society can lean into humanity. 

She loves solving puzzles for brands as they continue to scale sustainably. She has helped create sustainable marketing systems with brands such as BigCommerce, Serenity Kids, Slow North, University of Texas Center for Sports Communication and Media & others through her individual work and at C3nami, the digital marketing agency she founded in 2015.

Her passion for empowering the humans behind the brand to be the human beings that they are has given Ruoyun a platform to speak at a variety of organizations and events including Bumble Bizz, St Edward’s University, University of Texas, Concordia University, ACC Fashion Incubator, Texas Women in Business Conference, to name a few.

Gregory Gibson Jr. ’09, MBA ’12

Founder & Executive Director, HBCU Battle of the Brains

Gregory earned his BBA and his MBA in the Bill Munday School of Business. Early in his career, he worked in the corporate tech sector at AMD and Dell. Frustrated with the lack of diversity in the tech industry, he sought to make change by working in higher education and founding his own nonprofit organization. 

Gregory is the Founder & Executive Director of the HBCU Battle of the Brains, a business and tech invitational competition held annually for HBCUs. Sixty HBCUs from around the country send their best and brightest to compete representing various areas – Business, Communications, Engineering, Mathematics, Marketing, Public Policy, Science, and Technology. Teams are required to provide a comprehensive solution to the designated issue. HBCU Battle of the Brains has been wildly successful at highlighting diverse talent and creating opportunities for underserved students. Tech and business firms big and small come to the Battle every year to mentor competitors, judge the competition, and recruit for their businesses. He is expanding these opportunities to Hispanic serving institutions with the founding of HSI Battle of the Brains in 2020. 

In 2012 Gregory founded Dashingfoot, a brand strategy consulting firm that combines technological know-how with branding expertise to help their clients evolve from a logo to fully formed corporate identities. From 2013-2018 he served as president of the Austin Chapter for the National Black MBA Association. 

For four years, Gregory served at Huston-Tillotson University, a local HBCU. He participated on the advisory board for Huston-Tillotson’s School of Business and was an adjunct professor for small business management. He is passionate about developing business opportunities for members of underserved communities and about creating diversity within the technology sphere.

Kyle Ballarta, MBA '11

Founder & CEO, Falkon Ventures

Kyle is the founder and CEO of Falkon Ventures, an innovative venture capital fund designed to catalyze innovation in the new entrepreneurial landscape for companies that have the mission to positively change industry and the world. Prior to Falkon Ventures, Kyle was a member of the initial team at LifeProof, a San Diego-based consumer electronics company that grew its force from three people to over 250 employees on three continents in three years. LifeProof’s meteoric growth led to its successful acquisition by Otterbox in 2013.

He is also the co-founder of Syndicap, a venture capital network that is changing the attitude of the industry by incentivizing venture funds to collaborate across different stages and verticals to match the convergence of industry. Kyle’s creative curiosity and passion for collaboration that innovates drives him to work with initiatives in the impact space, including The Hispanic Alliance, A Reason to Survive, The Andy Roddick Foundation and The Bill Munday School of Business at St. Edward’s University. His work with non-profits, foundations and social enterprises focuses on creating sustainable and scalable impact by implementing social enterprise models and pioneering new venture funding models.

Br. Richard Daly

St. Edward’s University

Claire England

Investment Partner, GPG Ventures  

A seasoned investor and executive, Claire England is Investment Partner with GPG Ventures, a healthcare venture capital firm with more than 100 portfolio companies nationally. GPG opens venture-quality investing opportunities in the $4.3 trillion U.S. healthcare market to family offices and individuals, who invest in companies directly alongside the firm's partners. The firm is built on more than 60 years of healthcare, operational, and financial experience with an extensive syndicate investor network and offices in Dallas, Houston, and Austin.

In addition to GPG, she's a partner in two Portfolia funds, Food & AgTech and FemTech I, where she made 22 investments, and a partner in an impact investing advisory firm, LOHAS. She's also a Kauffman Fellow, a leading innovation post-graduate program and global network of 880+ values-based VCs and LPs, and a member of Private Equity Women Investor Network, or PEWIN.

Previously, Claire grew a Texas LP network, Central Texas Angel Network, into a nationally recognized early stage investing community with 200 individual and family office investors and the #1 ranking in the U.S. Under her leadership, LPs deployed $75M into 95 new startups and dozens of portfolio companies in five years, while far exceeding VC return averages.

Prior to that, she directed a large-scale founder and investor conference that was pivotal to evolving Austin’s entrepreneur ecosystem into what it is today. She developed her passion for entrepreneurship as the first full-time employee of a social media services startup. Before startups, she spent a decade leading marketing, communications, and fundraising in the nonprofit sector.

Claire has extensive public speaking experience, is a skilled panel moderator, and has taught university undergraduate and postgraduate business school classes as a guest lecturer. She graduated college with honors and Dean's List recognition and was a national journalism honor society inductee.

She serves on St. Edward’s University’s Business School Board of Advisors and mentors founders at accelerators, including Capital Factory and Techstars. Claire’s work has been recognized with the Kauffman Fellows Leadership Award and Austin Business Journal’s Profiles in Power Finalist Award.

Kevin Fincher

Tax and Business Advisory Partner, RSM US LLP

As a tax and business advisory partner for RSM, Kevin leads the Austin office technology and life sciences industry practice. He has over 20 years of experience in public accounting, dealing with a wide range of tax and industry topics.  

His expertise covers corporate taxation issues, equity compensation, mergers and acquisitions, restructuring, research and development tax credits, partnership/LLC matters, international tax structuring and compliance, and state and local income or franchise reporting and planning.

Kevin is one of the founding board members of the Austin Regional Manufacturers Association (ARMA) and currently serves as the Treasurer. He has also been honored as a Volunteer of the Year by ARMA. He also serves as President of the University of Arizona AustinCats Alumni Chapter.

Kevin holds dual BSBAs in Accounting and Finance from the University of Arizona and is a licensed Certified Public Accountant in the states of Arizona and Texas. He is a member of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants and the Texas Society of Certified Public Accountants. 

Paul Gerling, MBA '98

Senior Vice President, Comerica Bank

As senior vice president of Comerica Bank’s Technology and Life Sciences Division, Paul is responsible for the technology lending practices and portfolio management for the central and south Texas regions. Paul earned a bachelor’s degree in finance from The University of Texas at Austin and an MBA from St. Edward’s University.

Chris Ragland, BBA '05, MBA '10

CEO of Ragland Capital

For over twenty years Chris has served as a partner or principal in dozens of companies providing various levels of leadership and support. He possesses a diverse set of strategic management skills and continues to sharpen and demonstrate his uncanny ability to successfully grow businesses through the creation of loyal teams, fanatic culture, and personal growth of those around him.

Chris has a broad base of industry experience including real estate, private equity and high-tech, among others. In addition to domestic engagements, Chris possesses a background in international business having worked on several projects in Latin America, Europe, and Asia.

He has worked with businesses at all levels ranging from enterprise clients such as Adobe, Bosch, BMW, and American Express, to locally owned and operated small businesses. He has held leadership positions in Capital Markets, Operations, Finance, and Executive Office, while participating in multiple merger and acquisitions.

Active in his local and global community, Chris has volunteered for dozens of mission-oriented and professional non-profit organizations. He has served as a Board member or Committee member for many organizations such as Ballet Austin Guild, The Trail Conservancy, Seton Cove, Soccer Assist, American Association of Private Lenders, and many others. In 2019 Chris was appointed to the Board of Trustees for St. Edward’s University where he is a member of the fiduciary, trustee, and institutional oversight for student affairs committees. In 2022 Chris was nominated and appointed to the Board of Directors for The Trail Conservancy where he serves on the Endowment Committee. Chris is a two-time nominee for the Austin 40 Under 40 Award for his work in the community. In 2019 he was awarded the prestigious Member of the Year Award, by the American Association of Private Lenders, for his contribution to the association and the
industry.

In 2020 Chris realized a lifelong dream and founded his “forever company”, an alternative investment management company simply known as “Ragland” where he works closely with family offices and high net worth individuals on their capital deployment strategy in various markets, foreign and domestic. In 2021 Ragland launched its first private investment fund, allowing accredited investors to participate in the same strategy as family offices. Since that time, Ragland has added additional offerings in diverse sectors including Real Estate, Aviation, Banking, Hospitality, and International Private Equity.

Chris serves as the Americas Region lead consultant for the German based organizational development and management consultancy, Synnecta, and as the controlling Principal of Ragland Holdings LLC, his family investment firm with more than two dozen interests in its portfolio.

Chris holds a BA in Entrepreneurship as well as an MBA in Global Entrepreneurship from St. Edward’s University in Austin, Texas, and is “all but dissertation” for the Doctoral program in Economics and Business from Universitat Jaume Primero in Castello, Spain.