Riley Kiltz Vice President at Concentric Equity Partners
About
My business education informally started at quite a young age. During my childhood, my parents started multiple ventures and brought me along in the process. At a very young age, I learned the value of hard work and the creative freedom allowed to business leaders, which is part of what drew me to the business undergrad program at TCU.
After graduating, I worked for a small private equity group called Cephas Partners that was responsible for real estate investments and asset management for Blackstone in Latin America. It was a great ecosystem to learn in, but ultimately, I left to start my own company. I ended up launching two ventures. One of them I scaled and sold. The other I crashed and burned. Definitely learned more on the latter!
After MMM, I joined Concentric Equity Partners, a family office based in Chicago, where I focus on growth equity investments. I've been on the investment team for several years now, working across the full investment lifecycle. The deals we do at Concentric tend to be smaller and more hands-on than traditional PE or growth equity, which I love. This allows me to be close enough to influence the product, strategy, and culture of the business.
Q & A
How has MMM made a difference in your career?
Business school was a great opportunity for me to reset. I was burnt out and tired after launching the two companies, and I wanted to go back to the drawing board and reflect on what went well and where I could've improved as a builder and entrepreneur. The MMM program provided a soft landing and an encouraging community to do this work. By the time I graduated, I had experimented with many ideas and ultimately landed in a role that I would not have had access to prior to MMM. Additionally, I felt equipped to re-enter and thrive in the next chapter of life.
What I didn't fully anticipate was how transferable the design thinking frameworks would be outside of a traditional tech or startup context. I am an investor now where I work with family-owned manufacturers, service businesses, niche software companies. These aren't organizations with product teams or design sprints on the calendar. But the underlying discipline, like deeply understanding your customer, pressure-testing assumptions before committing resources, iterating toward a solution rather than falling in love with your first idea, shows up everywhere.
When I'm evaluating a business or helping a portfolio company work through a strategic challenge, I find myself reaching for MMM instincts constantly. Who is the actual end user here, and what job are they hiring this product or service to do? Where is the team solving for the symptom rather than the root cause? What would we learn from a faster, cheaper experiment before we build the whole thing out? These aren't questions that come naturally in environments where speed and gut instinct have always been rewarded. But they tend to produce better outcomes, and they make me a more valuable partner to the operators I'm working alongside.
The design thinking piece also changed how I lead. I'm less interested in being the smartest person in the room and more interested in building the conditions where the right answer can surface...from the team, from the customer, from the data. That shift in posture is something MMM instilled early, and I've carried it into every room I've been in since.
What value do you think MMM graduates bring to industry now?
Swagger. Not in an arrogant way (that’s not the MMM vibe), but we’re quite confident in our distinctiveness. It starts at Kellogg over the first summer but carries into the marketplace post-grad.
Impact > Fame. We tend to be more focused on valuable outcomes for the collective whole than getting credit for the right idea. Curiosity, ethnography, and empathetic leadership are a part of the culture, so MMMs are often trying to draw out the answer together with teams and customers, not construct it individually.
Self-deprecation. Pairing business with a design process is fun, unless you don’t learn to laugh at your losses. The faMMMily dynamic is rooted in an understanding that each of us are human and flawed…and that it’s okay. I notice that many MMMs learn to take themselves less seriously and often sit at the edge of laughter despite the intensity of the moment. MMMs are able to stay level-headed and keep those around them at ease while still achieving incredible things.
What advice do you have for a student just starting the MMM Program?
Lean in and drop your mask at the door. The MMM cohort is a special group of people who you will want to grow with. Start by showing up as the person you are, not some achievement aggregating cyborg. Getting a couple of master degrees may be useful, but the most valuable component of the whole experience is the relationships that will stick with you for life. This looks different for everyone. Some people hit up every event and others lay low with a small group. You do you, but do not let these two years go by without being honest and vulnerable with this crew. I think you’ll be surprised how well they’ll care for you and support your development.