Ezra Galston

Ezra is a 2nd year MBA student at Chicago Booth and holds a BA from New York University.

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Ezra is the proud father of a new baby boy, and in his spare time enjoys blogging, cooking, and red wine. His varying interests have also led him to produce a festival screened short firm and launch a record label yielding a Grammy nominated artist.

Ezra is currently an MBA Candidate at The University of Chicago Booth School of Business concentrating in entrepreneurship and strategic management. 

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Outside of school, Ezra is a Senior Associate at Chicago Ventures, an early stage Venture Capital fund where he focuses on evaluating IT deals across the Midwest, and engaging with entrepreneurs. Ezra also serves as an Entrepreneur Fellow at Foundation Capital, sourcing deals for the firm in the Chicago region and within the city's universities.

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In addition to his institutional roles, Ezra is an active angel investor and advisor with seed investments in DraftDay, Furnishly, BloomNation, Hold'em Manager, PocketGuide, and Instant Fantasy Sports (acquired by NBC Sports).

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Prior to Chicago Booth, Ezra raised nearly a million dollars from high net worth individuals to co-found The Poker Financing Fund, a poker specific 'hedge fund,' investing in over 100 unique players across 3,000 tournaments at The World Series of Poker. The fund's algorithm and diversification was built off Ezra's extensive experience as a professional poker player, successfully winning at high stakes poker games over several years.

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Before founding his Poker Fund, Ezra served as Director of Marketing at CardRunners ' an online poker training platform ' helping them scale from 1,000 paying subscribers on a $500k annual run rate to nearly 15,000 subscribers on a $5 million run rate in two years. While at NYU, he worked as Director of Interactive Marketing at Buzz Marketing Group, an NYC-based boutique youth/entertainment marketing firm consulting for clients such as Sony Records, Epic Records, and MTV.

Ezra is a member of Class 18 and performed his fellowship at Chicago Ventures.