Brian Ainsworth
Brian Ainsworth ’85 is an executive at a private investment firm based in Seattle where he focuses on real estate asset management. Previously, he worked as managing director at Goldman Sachs as Co-CEO of the Realty Management Division. Prior to its integration into Goldman Sachs in 2013, Realty Management Division was known as Archon Group, L.P., a diversified international real estate services and advisory company with offices in Asia, Europe, and the United States.
While at Archon Group, L.P., Ainsworth lived in Paris, France, where he was the CEO for nine years of Archon Europe, which includes Archon Group France, Archon Group Italy, Archon Group Deutschland, and Archon Capital Bank Deutschland.
Ainsworth is a second-generation Austin College graduate (Rev. Jim T. Ainsworth ’61). He enjoys fishing, golfing, and skiing and lives in Seattle with his wife, Sharon, and their four children.
Thomas Corwin
Thomas Corwin ’91 is a U.S. and international labor and employment attorney working with multinational companies on all aspects of employee and labor relations in dozens of countries. Corwin has spent the past 23 years providing practical, real-world and business-friendly legal solutions to increasingly complex circumstances. Currently, he is Flowserve Corporation’s senior legal director for Global Labor & Employment Law, and has devoted a decade to managing its labor and employment issues throughout the U.S., Canada, Europe, Middle East, and Africa. Corwin routinely navigates the significant differences between U.S. and international labor and employment laws and customs to achieve business goals and resolve disputes with employees, labor representatives, and government authorities throughout the world.
Corwin holds a bachelor’s degree in business administration from Austin College and a law degree from Texas Tech School of Law. He is licensed to practice law in Texas and Colorado and is a member of numerous professional organizations. Thomas lives in the Dallas-Fort Worth area with his wife and two children. He is an avid snow skier, tennis player, and drummer.
Anirudh Damani
Anirudh Damani ’05 is a third-generation active investor, mentor, and entrepreneur. Damani has been actively investing in and mentoring disruptive tech-enabled ideas of tomorrow through Artha India Ventures (AIV). Since 2014, AIV has uniquely sustained investments into startups by matching cash requirements of investing with the cash flow distributions from renewable power projects. AIV’s current portfolio includes 47 startups.
Damani is also pioneering the Indian renewable energy sector by opening up investment avenues in clean energy backed by micro-level energy generation and consumption data, through his startup Artha Energy Resources. His data-backed investment banking startup has mapped out the energy infrastructure in India, putting it on a single platform. The information gained from this platform is used to identify greenfield, brownfield, and M&A opportunities before they come to the market.
Damani earned a bachelor’s degree from Austin College in business administration and economics. His investment acumen, sales and marketing experience, team building, and leadership quotient has been called on by investors and founders as he sits on the boards of various startups and is an active mentor for many of his investments. He is on the board of Venture Catalyst, India’s first seed investment and innovation platform.
Grant Newsham
Grant Newsham has had a varied career that included service as a U.S. Foreign Service Officer with postings in Japan and South Asia, handling commercial- and insurgency-related matters. He also spent 30 years with the U.S. Marines and was the first U.S. Marine liaison officer to the Japan Self-Defense Forces working to create a Japanese amphibious force.
In the private sector, Newsham worked for a decade with Morgan Stanley Japan in Tokyo, handling organized crime matters, and also spent a few years with Motorola Japan/Korea. He is currently a senior research fellow with the Japan Forum for Strategic Studies, principally focusing on Asian defense matters. He is frequently published and interviewed on related topics. He earned a bachelor’s degree in history at Principia College in Illinois and graduated from UCLA Law School with a special interest in public international law.
Scott L. Newstok
Scott L. Newstok is a professor of English at Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee, where he has won campus-wide awards for teaching. Before joining the Rhodes faculty, Newstok taught at Harvard, Oberlin, Amherst, Gustavus Adolphus, and Yale.
He has published three books: a scholarly edition of Kenneth Burke’s Shakespeare criticism; a collection of essays on Macbeth and race (co-edited with Ayanna Thompson); and a monograph on early modern English epitaphs. A fourth book, How to Do Things With Shakespeare, is under advance contract with Princeton University Press. Newstok’s work has been recognized by grants and fellowships from the American Philosophical Society, the Mellon Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the National Humanities Center.
At Rhodes, Newstok directs the Pearce Shakespeare Endowment, has served as the Humanities faculty member of the Rhodes Board of Trustees, and recently concluded his term as the president of Rhodes’ nationally recognized Phi Beta Kappa chapter. He is a trustee of Humanities Tennessee, the state chapter of the National Endowment for the Humanities, and a judge for the Christian Gauss Award for Literary Criticism.
William Radke
William Radke ’08 is a vice president in the Realty Management Division of Goldman Sachs. He began his career with the firm with a year in Singapore and has spent the past eight years living and working in Tokyo, Japan.
Radke graduated summa cum laude from Austin College with majors in international economics and finance and Asian studies. He earned honors in international economic and finance for his honors thesis on the counterfeiting of goods in China. He was selected as Austin College 2008 Outstanding Senior Man and received the J.M. Robinson Scholarship Medal at graduation.
Tim Smith, FIC, CFFM
Tim Smith ’13 is managing partner of Modern Woodmen Fraternal Financial, a not-for-profit financial services firm that prides itself on branding through distributing $20 million per year into local community organizations and non-profits nationwide. He recruits, trains, and mentors 10 financial advisors.
Previously, as a financial advisor, Smith focused on working with individuals and businesses to impact their retirement planning, insurance planning, advanced business planning, and employee benefits. He was one of the leading rookie advisors in the country before becoming managing partner with Modern Woodmen Fraternal Financial.
Smith is a graduate of Austin College, where he studied political science and business administration and was a four-year football letterman. Early in his career, Smith worked for the City of Denison, helping small business owners build business plans and guiding them through the permit and code office.
Elizabeth Wiley
Elizabeth Wiley ’03 is a consulting actuary for Cheiron, a national actuarial consulting firm, with 12 years of experience, primarily specializing in public pension plans. She provides annual actuarial valuation services and special consulting for over a dozen pension plans, both public and multi-employer.
She presents at a number of conferences and educational seminars related to the pension industry. Wiley has also made presentations before retirement boards, union leaders, city councils, state legislatures, and employee groups. She serves on a number of boards and committees of the Conference of Consulting Actuaries and the American Academy of Actuaries.
Wiley earned a bachelor’s degree in economics and psychology from Austin College and a master’s degree in actuarial science from The University of Texas. In addition, she is a Fellow of the Society of Actuaries, a Fellow of the Conference of Consulting Actuaries, an Enrolled Actuary under ERISA, and a member of the American Academy of Actuaries. While the majority of her work is with United States corporations, she works with clients providing pension benefits in Canada. She is also involved in activities of the North American Actuarial and Consulting Services, an association building international consensus in actuarial practice as well as involvement in international mortality research, particularly that of the United Kingdom.