Meet the Management Team
Meet Graduate Leverage's Management Team
Dan Thibeault, President & Co-Founder
Dan holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and is the President of Graduate Leverage. After graduating from Dartmouth College in 1998, Dan worked in Fixed Income at Goldman Sachs where he worked with student loans and other debt instruments. After Goldman, he conducted strategic investments in GE Capital's private equity group before returning to school.
Andrew Solomon, Executive Vice President & Co-Founder
Andrew holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and a B.A. from Dartmouth College. After graduating from Dartmouth in 1996, Andrew spent two years in investment banking as a member of the Financial Sponsors Group at Salomon Smith Barney. He then moved into an operations role as Director of Business Development at EMusic that was later acquired by Vivendi/Universal. After EMusic, Andrew became an Associate with the former communications private equity arm of J.P. Morgan Capital.
Jeff Wanic, Executive Vice President, Sales & Co-Founder
Jeff holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and a B.S in Chemical Engineering from Michigan Technological University. Prior to Harvard Business School, Jeff spent six years at The Dow Chemical Company where he worked in various roles, including manufacturing, technical sales, marketing, and Six Sigma implementation and project management.
Todd Balsley, Executive Vice President, Business Development
Todd holds an MBA from Harvard Business School. After graduating from Duke in 1997, Todd joined Accenture's process consulting group, where he advised clients in a variety of industries. He then spent over three years in business development and consulting roles with a focus on the financial services sector at Ariba, a leading enterprise software vendor.
Bill Buescher, Executive Vice President, Sales & Marketing
Bill joined Graduate Leverage in February 2006 as Executive Vice President of Sales & Marketing. Bill has worked in educational lending for over fourteen years, serving colleges and universities in various capacities. Bill brings extensive experience in student lending, with additional background in loan servicing, secondary market sales, guarantee agency, and debt management initiatives. Most recently, Bill worked with NorthStar CMS, Inc., where he led sales efforts with Medical, Law, Dental, and MBA programs. Bill holds a B.A. from Southern California College.
Joe Del Bene, Executive Vice President, Sales
Joe joined Graduate Leverage in March 2006 as Executive Vice President of Sales. He has worked in student lending and higher education administration for over fifteen years. Most recently, Joe worked at both NorthStar & PNC Bank, where he managed sales and business development efforts with Graduate/Professional programs. Joe holds a B.S. from The Pennsylvania State University.
Garry Graham, Executive Vice President, Operations
Garry joined Graduate Leverage in August 2005 as Vice President of Operations. For the last seventeen years, Garry worked in various key management roles within Nelnet supporting loan servicing operations. He held senior leadership roles in Acquisitions, Loan Sale Transfers, Consolidations, Claims, Risk Management, and Imaging and Document Solutions. Garry holds a B.S. degree in Business Management from the University of Phoenix.
Mike Tassone, Executive Vice President, Capital Markets
Mike holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and an A.B. in Economics from Brown University. Prior to business school, Mike worked as an Associate in Textron's Debt & Capital Markets group where he managed the firm's global, short-term debt strategy and analyzed financial issues related to merger and acquisition activity.
