International Board of Advisors Member Biographies

Head of Origination, Vitol Group
London, UK

1988 B.B.A. (Marketing) UT Austin

Christopher Bake is a member of the Executive Committee at Vitol. He is also chairman of VTTI, a global provider of storage services for crude oil, refined petroleum products and LPG, and chairman of Vivo Energy, the Shell licensee operating 1,800 retail sites in 16 countries in Africa.

From 2006–2012 Mr. Bake established and ran the Vitol office in Dubai. During this time, he established a partnership with the Oman Oil Company to create Oman Trading International (OTI) and oversaw the acquisition of Fujairah Refinery Company Limited, one of Vitol’s key assets in the region.

Since joining Vitol in 1995, Mr. Bake has held several global leadership positions and served in Vitol’s offices in Bahrain, Buenos Aires, Dubai, Houston, and London.

Mr. Bake has worked closely with the UT Energy Institute and its deputy director and UT professor Dr. Michael Webber providing insight and guidance on a variety of issues.

Fashion Industry, Profession (retired)
New York, NY, USA

1986 B.S. (Speech Communication), UT Austin

Juliet Safro Berkowitz was born in England and raised in South Africa and Houston, Texas. Over the course of her career, she worked in advertising and worked as a fashion editor for several magazines, including Mirabella, Vogue and Mademoiselle. Ms. Berkowitz managed publicity for Christian Louboutin and opened the first store in the United States. She graduated from the The University of Texas at Austin with a Bachelor of Science degree. She also holds an associate degree in architectural design from the Parsons School of Design.

Ms. Berkowitz is involved in several educational and charitable not for profit institutions in the United States and South Africa, including the Institute of Race Relations and is a board member of the Kennedy Center International Committee.

CEO and Executive Director, Tullow Oil plc, London, UK
1994 M.B.A., University of Pennsylvania – 1991 M.S. (Petroleum Engineering), UT Austin – 1986 B.S. (Chemical Engineering), Indian Institute of Technology – New Delhi

Rahul Dhir was appointed chief executive officer and executive director of Tullow, an independent oil and gas company with interests in over 70 exploration and production licenses across 15 countries, on July 1, 2020. He joined Tullow from Delonex Energy, the Africa-focused oil and gas company he founded in 2013. Prior to establishing Delonex, Dhir served as managing director and CEO of Cairn India from its IPO in 2006 until 2012.

Dhir started his career as a petroleum engineer before moving into investment banking, where he led teams at Morgan Stanley and Merrill Lynch, advising major oil and gas companies on merger and acquisition and capital market-related issues.

Founder and CEO, ARZU, Inc., Chicago, Illinois, USA
Partner, Goldman Sachs & Co. (retired)
1979 M.B.A., University of Pennsylvania – 1976 B.A. (Plan II Honors), UT Austin

Connie K. Duckworth is a social entrepreneur who founded ARZU in 2004 to empower women weavers in rural Afghanistan. ARZU has transformed into a learning laboratory for holistic, grassroots economic development, growing from 30 weavers to an ecosystem of education, maternal health and community programs that employs more than 500.

Ms. Duckworth retired as a partner of Goldman Sachs after a twenty-year career where she was the first woman sales and trading partner in the firm’s history. She is a trustee of Equity Residential (EQR) and a director of Steelcase, Inc. (SCS). She previously served on the boards of Northwestern Mutual, Nuveen Investments, Smurfit Stone Container Corporation and DNP Select Income Fund.

As a philanthropist, Ms. Duckworth is a trustee of the University of Pennsylvania, an overseer of The Wharton School, and serves on the board of NorthShore University HealthSystem, where she was the first woman chair. She is a founding member of the U.S.-Afghan Women’s Council and a member of the Bush Institute’s Women’s Initiative Policy Advisory Council. She is married to husband Tom and the mother of four millennials.

Chairman, Douglas Holding AG, Hagen, Germany
1994 Ph.D. (Political Science), Christian-Albrechts-Universitat – 1990 MBA (Business Administration), UT Austin – 1989 B.B.A. (Honors Plan), UT Austin

Dr. Henning Kreke is Chairman of Douglas GmbH, a European cosmetics retailer as well as Managing Partner of Lobelia GmbH, a private investment company with diversified investments ranging from multi-channel retail formats to home metering, renewable energy, spirits and fashion.

Following his BBA (1989) and MBA (1990) completion at UT Austin, Dr. Kreke worked for Salomon Brothers Inc. in New York, London, and Frankfurt. He then went on to pursue a doctorate in finance / political science at the Christian-Albrechts-University of Kiel, Germany.

Kreke has served in multiple operational roles at the Douglas Group since the early 1990s and became Group CEO in 2001. From 2001 through 2016, he successfully developed Douglas from a diversified retail conglomerate, predominantly operating in Germany, into the leading pan-European cosmetics retailer.

Henning’s wife Jane is also a UT alumna (B.J. 1990 Moody) and originally from Dallas. Their two oldest daughters Katharina and Karolin (BSCS 2016, BSPR 2017 Moody) and their son Christopher (BBA 2019, MS 2020 McCombs) have also graduated from UT Austin and their youngest daughter Katelyn is in UT’s graduating class of 2025 at Moody. The Krekes are longtime supporters of the University of Texas at Austin, the McCombs School of Business, and the Moody College of Communication.

Co-Founder and Managing Director, Monk’s Hill Ventures, Jakarta, Indonesia
1988 M.S. (Computer Science), University of Illinois Urbana–Champaign – 1986 B.S. (Electrical Engineering), UT Austin

Peng Ong is an entrepreneur who invests in entrepreneurs primarily through his role as managing director at Monk’s Hill Ventures—a technology venture fund based in Southeast Asia that he co-founded. He is a trustee of the Singapore University of Technology & Design (SUTD) where he chairs the investment committee of SUTD’s Endowment Fund.

Mr. Ong has founded various companies including Encentuate, later purchased by IBM; Interwoven, Inc., now part of HP; and was co-founder and chief architect of Electric Classifieds, Inc.—the creators of Match.com (now part of IAC). Mr. Ong has co-authored numerous patents for technologies developed at his companies.

He has served on various high-level boards focused on future economic planning and entrepreneurship in Singapore, as well as positions with the National University of Singapore, the National Research Foundation of Singapore, and the Strategic Advisory Board of the Chancellor of the University of Illinois.

Mr. Ong has served as an informal advisor to UT’s Computer Science Department and its department chair, as well as counseled numerous faculty members in the College of Natural Sciences and the Cockrell School of Engineering.

Scholar and Community Advocate, Puebla, Mexico and Austin, Texas, USA
2015 Ph.D. (Iberian and Latin American Languages and Culture), UT Austin – 2007 M.A. (Iberian-American Literature), Universidad Iberoamericana–Puebla, Mexico – 2003 B.A. (Hispano-American Literature), UNIDES–Puebla, Mexico

As a nineteenth-century scholar, Dr. Adriana Pacheco is a member of the “Conservative Sensibilities” International Research Network (University of Bergen, Norway) and Mexico’s National Research System. She is a co-founder of the Nineteenth-Century Section of the Latin American Studies Association, co-creator of the scholarly exchange program between Universidad de las Americas Puebla (UDLAP) and the University of Bergen (the first ever under the sponsorship of the European ERASMUS program), and member of the inaugural board of the Visiting Fellowship agreement between UDLAP and the University of Cambridge, England.

A Texas Book Festival featured author, she is a passionate community advocate, founder of “Casa del Sol,” an orphanage for 100 children in operation since 1992. She has worked with rural and low-income communities, and organizations such as Austin Partners in Education, KLRU-TV Austin, UNIVISION and several schools, promoting education. She is part of the Review Board of the Mex-Austin Scholarship Awards.

Adriana’s husband, Fernando Macias, received his Ph.D. and M.S. in electrical and computer engineering from UT Austin, and their daughter Andrea is also a graduate of UT in radio television and film.

Partner, Investment Banking Division, Goldman Sachs, New York, NY, USA
1995 B.A. (Humanities) UT Austin

Dina is global head of sustainability and inclusive growth. In this role, she partners with leaders globally to advance our sustainability efforts across all of our businesses. Dina is also global head of the firm’s sovereign business, responsible for helping build and enhance the firm's relationships with global sovereign clients. She serves on the Management Committee and the Firmwide Client and Business Standards Committee. Dina rejoined Goldman Sachs in 2018 as a partner in the Investment Banking Division after serving as the US Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategy from 2017 to 2018.

Dina initially joined the firm in 2007, and from 2007 to 2017, she led the Impact Investing Business and the Environmental Markets Group, which deployed more than $5 billion in market-based loans and equity to drive sustainable economic development and revitalize under-served communities. During this same period, she was also president of The Goldman Sachs Foundation, developing and overseeing two major initiatives to drive economic growth and opportunity — 10,000 Women and 10,000 Small Businesses — that successfully provided business education and capital to women and small businesses, respectively.

Earlier in her career, Dina served as Assistant Secretary of State for Educational and Cultural Affairs and Deputy Undersecretary of Public Affairs and Public Diplomacy and as a senior White House advisor as Assistant to the President for Presidential Personnel.

Dina is currently a non-resident Senior Fellow at the Future of Diplomacy Project at Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs.

President and Owner, Quintanilla Hache Y Asociados (QHYA), Monterrey, Mexico
1980 MBA (Finance), Cornell University – 1976 B.S. (Chemical Engineering), Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey

Carlos Quintanilla is the owner and president of Quintanilla, Hache y Asociados (QHYA), a family business focused on investments in the financial services industry in Mexico and industrial park developments in the United States. Mr. Quintanilla is a founder and active participant in several financial services companies, including securities brokerage houses, asset management companies, and banks. He has been a member of the board of directors of several prominent Mexican financial groups, including Grupo Financiero Value, Banpais (Northern México Chapter) and Banamex-Citibank (Northern Mexico Chapter), and a member of the Advisory Council of Grupo Financiero Banorte.

Mr. Quintanilla is an active member of the University of Michigan–Ann Arbor College of Engineering Advisory Council and the Cornell University Johnson Graduate School of Management Advisory Council. His father was an engineering graduate from UT Austin and his sons studied engineering at UT as well. Mr. Quintanilla and his wife Clara started an endowed scholarship fund at UT in 2013 to support engineering students of Mexican heritage.

Managing Director and Co-head of China, Warburg Pincus, Shanghai, China
2002 M.B.A. (Business Administration) Harvard University – 1995 B.S. (Electrical Engineering) UT Austin

Frank Z. Wei joined Warburg Pincus in 2002 and co-leads the firm’s investments within China. Frank is also a member of the firm’s Executive Management Group (EMG).

Prior to his work at Warburg Pincus, Frank was part of the investment banking division of Morgan Stanley in Hong Kong, as well as McKinsey & Company in Shanghai. In addition, he is currently a director of CAR Inc., Jiuyue Education and Technology Group Inc. and the ZTO Express.

Frank received a B.S. in Electrical Engineering in 1995 from The University of Texas at Austin and an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School. Frank currently resides in Shanghai, and his home country is China.

Co-Founder and Executive Chairman, 111, Inc.
1982 B.S. Wuhan University
1986 M.S. (Physics) Cornell University
1990 PhD (Decision Sciences) University of Pennsylvania

Serial entrepreneur Gang Yu co-founded Shanghai-based 111, Inc., formerly known as New Peak Group, in 2010 and took it public in 2018. A leading mobile and digital healthcare platform operator in China, the company provides hundreds of millions of consumers with access to pharmaceutical products and healthcare services directly through its online retail pharmacy and indirectly through its offline pharmacy network.

Previously, he joined the president of Dell China, in founding Yihaodian as a business-to- consumer e-commerce website providing customers with a platform to shop for groceries online in China. Dr. Yu also served as a faculty member in UT Austin's McCombs School of Business, serving as the Jack G. Taylor Professor in Business in the Department of Management Science and Information Systems. He was also director of the Center for Management of Operations and Logistics and co-director of the Center for Decision Making under Uncertainty.

Dr. Yu has received the 2002 Franz Edelman Management Science Achievement Award from INFORMS, the 2002 IIE Transaction Award for Best Application Paper, the 2003 Outstanding IIE Publication Award from the Institute of Industrial Engineers. He has published over 80 journal articles, 6 books, and he holds 3 US patents.

Dr. Yu received a doctorate degree in Decision Sciences from The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, an undergraduate degree from Wuhan University and an MS in Physics from Cornell University.