Team

The members of the OCA Ventures team have a passion for building early-stage companies into market leaders, have long histories working with one another, and share common core personal and professional beliefs, while at the same time contributing different skills and perspectives.

This cohesive group has close business and personal relationships dating back more than 25 years.  John Dugan, Peter Ianello and Marc Berman were partners in the 1980s when they led O’Connor & Associates. Jim Dugan is John Dugan’s third son and Eddie Lou and Jason Heltzer both joined the team in 2001.




John Dugan - General Partner/Co-Founder

John is a Co-Founder and General Partner of OCA Ventures. John has board responsibilities for Net-HOPPER, National Billing Partners, Retention Education, and RedX Defense.  John is also Co-Founder and Board Director for Cancer Targeted Technologies.


John Dugan was the CEO of North America for Swiss Bank Corporation (SBC) and a member of the SBC Group Executive Board.  During his tenure as a managing director, he also served as a member of the board of SBC Warburg.  In 1992, Mr. Dugan was managing partner of The O'Connor Partnership, a leading derivatives trading and financial risk management firm in Chicago, when SBC purchased various O'Connor businesses and integrated them into its global Capital Markets & Treasury organization.  Before his tenure at O'Connor, Mr. Dugan served as executive vice president and chief financial officer at Purcell, Graham & Company.  Prior to that he was vice president and controller at Bear Stearns & Company, and vice president, operations and chief financial officer at Baker, Weeks & Company.  He began his career in financial services at Brown Brothers Harriman & Company.


John holds a BA in business administration from Pace College. He also attended the U.S. Naval Academy for two years.

OCA VENTURES

505 N LASALLE STREET
STE 500
CHICAGO, IL 60654
TEL: (312) 327 - 8400
FAX: (312) 542 - 8952