SC Johnson College Announces its 10 Under 10 Notable Alumni for 2024

The Dyson School, Johnson School, and Nolan School celebrate 10 notable alumni who have graduated within the past 10 years.

A professor of agricultural and consumer economics who generates recommendations for growers and resource managers on how to balance economic and ecological objectives; a senior vice president of enterprise products and data operations at Major League Baseball; the founder of a fast casual Mexican restaurant in Ithaca’s Collegetown; a hospitality entrepreneur and founder of two startups in the luxury travel industry—these graduates of the Cornell SC Johnson College of Business are among the 10 Under 10 notable alumni selected as 2024 honorees by the recent alumni councils of the Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management, the Charles H. Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management and the Cornell Peter and Stephanie Nolan School of Hotel Administration.

The 10 Under 10 notable alumni list was launched in 2021 by the Johnson Recent Alumni Council (JRAC), an engaged group of recent graduates of the Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management. In 2023, the SC Johnson College expanded this honor to alumni of the Charles H. Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management and the Cornell Peter and Stephanie Nolan School of Hotel Administration who have graduated within the past ten years.

“Highlighting the success of not just Johnson School alumni but alumni from across the SC Johnson College of Business has been a genuine pleasure to spearhead on behalf of the college’s recent alumni councils,” said Angus McKenzie, MPS ’19, vice chair of the Johnson Recent Alumni Council. “The power of the SC Johnson College is rooted in the strength of the schools that make up its whole, so being able to extend the 10 Under 10 Notable Alumni list to include alumni from all three schools underscores the value that Cornell and the SC Johnson College can drive, while still honoring the distinct value that each school and its students and alumni bring to the table.”

This year, members of the classes of 2013 through 2023, numbering more than 10,000 recent graduates of the SC Johnson College, were eligible to be nominated as 10 Under 10 honorees. Each finalist was selected based on their professional success, engagement within their communities, and engagement with the Cornell community. The college’s recent alumni councils received more than 100 nominations from SC Johnson College students, staff, faculty, and alumni in response to its 10 Under 10 call for nominations.

“The success of this initiative is a testament not only to the talent and hard work of our honorees, but also to the dedication of our recent alumni councils,” said Andrew Karolyi, Charles Field Knight Dean of the SC Johnson College. “I’m encouraged to see the collaboration across these three groups college-wide—the Nolan School’s Dean’s Council of Young Alumni, the Dyson Recent Alumni Council, and the Johnson Recent Alumni Council. And I am so grateful to them for their time in painstakingly reviewing over 100 nominees. It’s quite an undertaking and they selected a fantastic cohort.”

Meet the 2024 10 Under 10 honorees

Here’s a first look at this year’s 10 Under 10 notable alumni. Be sure to watch for a series of Q&A profiles that will feature each one of them beginning in late May and running through October.

Kwesi Acquay ’14, is a principal at Redpoint Ventures, a venture capital firm that invests in startups across the seed, early and growth phases. Following graduation from the Dyson School, he joined J.P. Morgan as an investment banking analyst in the technology, media, and telecom group and became a technology investment banking associate in 2017. He left the firm in 2020 to earn his MBA at Harvard Business School and joined Redpoint Ventures in 2022. He serves as a board member at Cure Rare Disease, a nonprofit biotechnology company. Acquay also serves on the Dyson Advisory Council as cochair for the council’s engagement committee and on the advisory board for Entrepreneurship at Cornell.

Shadi Atallah, PhD ’14, is an associate professor of agricultural and consumer economics and an associate director of the Center for the Economics of Sustainability at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His research program generates recommendations to growers, landowners, and resource managers to manage their crops and natural resources in a way that balances economic and ecological objectives and constraints. Atallah earned his PhD in agricultural and resource economics at the Dyson School.

Madison Austrich ’19 is a transactions and portfolio growth manager at Hyatt Hotels in Chicago. She was formerly at Aimbridge Hospitality, where she held business analytics roles of increasing responsibility. A champion for women, Austrich served as vice chair of corporate development for a women’s leadership resource group at Aimbridge and now serves as events committee cochair for Women@Hyatt. Austrich is also an ambassador for the American Hotel & Lodging Association. A Nolan School graduate and 2019 winner of the Cornell Hotel Society’s Hotelie for Life prize, Austrich is the Cornell Hotel Society’s chapter president for northern Texas and a philanthropy committee member for the Cornell Club of Dallas-Fort Worth.

Marianne Boak, MBA ’23, is senior vice president of enterprise products and data operations at Major League Baseball, where she leads the strategic partnership between MLB’s business and enterprise technology initiatives. Before joining MLB in 2011 as a business relationship manager in technology, Boak was with PepsiCo for 10 years, where she designed and launched an ecommerce business in support of their large bottling network. Boak began her career with PwC, where she was responsible for building out the original requirements for MLB’s player transaction system and supported arbitration analysis for the league. Boak is a graduate of the Johnson School’s Executive MBA Metro NY program.

Jorge Bouras ’17 is founder and CEO of Dos Amigos, a fast casual Mexican restaurant in Ithaca’s Collegetown and Tres Leches, a bar below the restaurant. The restaurant is the culmination of a dream that began when Bouras was a Nolan School undergraduate and launched a successful food truck business featuring Cali-Mex style tacos together with fellow classmate David Farahi. After graduation, he gained restaurant operations management experience as an area lead for Wings Over. Bouras is committed to “making life a little better,” as the restaurant’s tag line proclaims, by creating a positive work environment for employees and “a great atmosphere, great service, and delicious food made in-house from scratch” for customers.

Raj Davé ’13, MBA ’18, CFO and cofounder of Scalable Care, a San Francisco-based healthcare AI platform that helps healthcare organizations deliver evidence-based digital therapies to patients around the world. Before joining Scalable Care, Davé was an investment banker at Mizuho and other firms, specializing in M&A, capital raising, and private equity. He started his career as an entrepreneur with Subway, as a multi-unit franchisee and director of development for Northern New Jersey. He is a council member with the Gerson Lehrman Group, providing expertise to private equity firms and management consulting firms. In 2016, Davé established the Raj Davé ’13 Professional Scholarship, which provides financial assistance to Johnson School MBA students who have demonstrated entrepreneurial success and/or a desire to pursue entrepreneurial ventures post-MBA.

Shawn Driver, MBA ’19, is a strategic industry engagements lead at Army Futures Command in Austin, Texas. A U.S. Army Special Operations veteran, Driver served as a helicopter pilot, platoon leader, and company commander, including a 12-month combat deployment to Afghanistan early in his Army career. As a student in the Johnson School’s Two-Year MBA program, he also taught as an Army ROTC adjunct professor of military science and worked to recruit talented military veterans to Johnson. Following graduation, he worked at Dell Technologies before joining Salesforce, where he led federal field marketing for the Tableau team. Last year, Driver joined the Army’s technology incubator, Army Applications Laboratory, as a full-time Army Reservist, where he engaged with startups, small businesses, and venture capital firms to rapidly develop and deliver emerging technologies to the military. He recently stood up a team at Army Futures Command headquarters to scale those efforts across the 17,000+-person organization.

Amanda Friedman ’19 is director of design and development and a founding member of SAMBAZON Hospitality Group, where she spearheaded and launched SAMBAZON Açaí Bowls, a quality quick-service restaurant concept dedicated to promoting health and wellness. She has successfully expanded SAMBAZON Açaí Bowls Shops across the United States, with locations in colleges and universities, Major League Baseball stadiums, and international airports. Friedman is a Forté Fellow and MBA candidate at Georgetown University and holds a certificate in hospitality interior design from the Parsons School of Design. Since graduating from the Nolan School in 2019, Friedman has been a guest lecturer in the school’s Spa and Wellness and Restaurant Development courses. She is also actively engaged in supporting student entrepreneurs through Hotel Ezra Cornell.

Chris Marino, MBA ’20, is a head of agency at Google , leading a team that drives large-scale digital transformation for independent media agencies across the U.S. Previously, Marino led global media and marketing technology at Bloomberg Media and held leadership roles at American Express in social media and performance marketing. He has been recognized by AdWeek as of one of 50 transformative media executives, Business Insider as a rising star of brand marketing and Brand Innovators as a 40 under 40. Marino is a champion of people, committed to paying it forward through his involvement as an advisory board member at Syracuse University. A graduate of the Johnson School’s Executive MBA Metro NY program, Marino has been an active ambassador for the program advancing admissions efforts through speaking engagements and serving as a mentor to students.

Sarah Peters ’19, a hospitality entrepreneur and founder of two startups in the luxury travel industry, is a founding team member at GovWell, a modern software solution for local governments. A Dyson School graduate, Peters cofounded and served as COO of Lucia, a marketplace that connects the luxury travel industry with freelancers, addressing the labor shortage crisis and helping businesses scale without hiring. She also cofounded and served as managing director of TripKit, a virtual assistant service for luxury travel advisors, which was acquired in 2022. Peters was selected as one of 30 founders in NYC to participate in the 2023 Startup Leadership Program NYC cohort; the same year, she and her team at Lucia were selected to participate in the Techstars Catalyst Accelerator program.