Academic Degrees
MBA, Finance, University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, 1979
BBA, Accounting, University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, 1977
Biography
Robert Gross is co-founder of Prairie Capital Advisors, an employee-owned company that provides investment banking and valuations services to support the growth and ownership transition strategies of middle-market companies. These include private sales, management buyouts, Employee Stock Ownership Plans (ESOPs) and others. Gross is a frequent speaker on valuation, ESOPs, ownership transition planning and other topics, and is a frequent author in industry trade publications, business publications and technical journals. He is also active in a variety of professional groups, including The ESOP Association, where he is a current member and former chair of the Advisory Committee on Valuation.
Since the 2014 academic year, Gross has been teaching undergraduate and graduate courses in finance as an instructor in the Department of Finance & Real Estate at DePaul University and Lake Forest Graduate School of Management. He has always derived great satisfaction from helping people learn, whether they are clients, employees or family members, and has committed to doing so on a more formal basis. He is the recipient of the 2021 Daniel Seiden Adjunct Teaching Award from the Driehaus College of Business.
Over a 40-year career, Gross has gained a massive amount of relevant experience in the fields of corporate finance and business valuation, bringing those experiences into the classroom to enhance and explain course content in real-world terms. Lastly, as a co-founder of a highly regarded, multi-office investment banking and valuation firm, he shares insights with students from both entrepreneurial and career perspectives.