Graduate Alumni Chapter

Christopher (Chris) Lay’s background includes professional practice in the Healthcare, Financial Services, Technology, and Specialty Finance industries, as well as deep experience operating in Private Equity and Hedge Fund investment environments. As the Founder and CEO of Endeavour Capital Partners, Lay led the acquisition of Wave Crest Financial LLC, a leading provider of specialty finance (Factoring & ABL) services.

He has also served as an Operating Partner at BayView Capital, holding positions both as COO and CFO of 123 Home Care Services LLC, a provider of high-quality non-medical home care services.

Prior to his work as a Financial Services professional, Lay accumulated fifteen years of experience in the healthcare industry, including preclinical research and neuropharmacology. His work has included therapeutic drug monitoring at The Scripps Research Institute and fundamental research in ischemic stroke at the University of California. This research has led to the authorship of 22 peer-reviewed journal publications and two fellowships from the University of California and the American Heart and Stroke Association.

As a Postdoctoral Scholar, Chris served as a neuroscientific consultant for Ultrawave Labs, a biotech startup whose mission was to develop the next generation of high-resolution medical imaging. Lay’s role at Ultrawave included evaluating the safety and feasibility of adapting Ultrawave’s proprietary technology for use in neuroimaging. These efforts culminated in seed-stage financing by Johnson and Johnson.

Lay holds a B.S. in Biology form the College of Idaho, a Ph.D. in Neurobiology from UC Irvine and an MBA from the University of Southern California. He is the recipient of a University of California Distinguished Fellowship in Neuroscience, an American Heart Association Fellowship in Cerebrovascular Disease, and a Guilford C. Babcock Fellowship in Finance from USC.