Michael W. Ferro Jr. (born 1966) is an American businessman and tech entrepreneur, founder of
Click Commerce
Click Commerce, Inc. is a research software company based in Hillsboro, Oregon, United States. Incorporated in 1996 as Click Interactive, Inc. in Chicago, Illinois, the company historically supplied Business software, business application software ...
and
Higi, as well as several other companies including Merrick Ventures, a
Chicago
(''City in a Garden''); I Will
, image_map =
, map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago
, coordinates =
, coordinates_footnotes =
, subdivision_type = Country
, subdivision_name ...
-based
private equity firm
A private equity firm is an investment management company that provides financial backing and makes investments in the private equity of startup or operating companies through a variety of loosely affiliated investment strategies including leve ...
. From February 2016 to March 2018, he was the non-executive chairman of
Tribune Publishing
Tribune Publishing Company (briefly Tronc, Inc.) is an American newspaper print and online media publishing company. The company, which was acquired by Alden Global Capital in May 2021, has a portfolio that includes the ''Chicago Tribune'', the ...
, one of the largest newspaper publishers in the United States.
Ferro founded Click Commerce in 1994 and took it public in 2000 before its sale to
Illinois Tool Works
Illinois Tool Works Inc. or ITW is an American Fortune 200 company that produces engineered fasteners and components, equipment and consumable systems, and specialty products. It was founded in 1912 by Byron L. Smith and has built its growth on ...
in 2006. A multiple patent holder for
medical diagnostic imaging, in 2008, Ferro acquired a stake in Merge Healthcare, a medical data and imaging company, and served as its chairman until its acquisition by
IBM in 2016. In 2012, he founded Higi, a company that produces
biometric
Biometrics are body measurements and calculations related to human characteristics. Biometric authentication (or realistic authentication) is used in computer science as a form of identification and access control. It is also used to identify in ...
screening stations. From 2011 until early 2016, he served as the chairman of
Wrapports
Wrapports LLC was the American-based privately owned publisher of the ''Chicago Sun-Times'' and the '' Chicago Reader''. It was headquartered in the ''Sun-Times'' building in Chicago.
History
The company was launched in late 2011 by Michael W. F ...
, which owns the ''
Chicago Sun-Times
The ''Chicago Sun-Times'' is a daily newspaper published in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Since 2022, it is the flagship paper of Chicago Public Media, and has the second largest circulation among Chicago newspapers, after the ''Chicago T ...
''.
Early life and education
Michael W. Ferro Jr. was born in 1966 in
Merrick, New York
Merrick is a hamlet and census-designated place (CDP) in the Town of Hempstead in Nassau County, on the South Shore of Long Island, in New York, United States. , the population was 20,130.
Geography
According to the United States Census Bure ...
,
to Onna M. () and Michael W. Ferro. When Michael Jr. was 15 years old, the family moved to
suburban Chicago
The Chicago metropolitan area, also colloquially referred to as Chicagoland, is a metropolitan area in the Midwestern United States. Encompassing 10,286 sq mi (28,120 km2), the metropolitan area includes the city of Chicago, its suburbs and hi ...
,
Illinois
Illinois ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern United States. Its largest metropolitan areas include the Chicago metropolitan area, and the Metro East section, of Greater St. Louis. Other smaller metropolita ...
. Ferro earned a degree in psychology from the
University of Illinois at Chicago
The University of Illinois Chicago (UIC) is a Public university, public research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its campus is in the Near West Side, Chicago, Near West Side community area, adjacent to the Chicago Loop. The second campus esta ...
(UIC) in 1989.
Career
While attending high school, Ferro started his first company, Chem Roof, a roof
sealant
Sealant is a substance used to block the passage of fluids through openings in materials, a type of mechanical seal. In building construction ''sealant'' is sometimes synonymous with ''caulking'' and also serve the purposes of blocking dust, s ...
business. He continued to develop and operate the company full-time while attending UIC. In 1992, Chem Roof was acquired by Pettibone, an equipment manufacturer based in
Lisle, Illinois.
Ferro joined Pettibone at the time of the transaction, and at the age of 25, became the company's youngest division president.
He devised a plan for the company to place its inventory and price sheets on the Internet so customers could process their own orders, a revolutionary concept for the manufacturing industry at the time.
In 1994, Ferro left Pettibone to establish
Click Commerce
Click Commerce, Inc. is a research software company based in Hillsboro, Oregon, United States. Incorporated in 1996 as Click Interactive, Inc. in Chicago, Illinois, the company historically supplied Business software, business application software ...
,
a company that provides
business application software. At the age of 33, Ferro took Click Commerce public.
With an
initial public offering
An initial public offering (IPO) or stock launch is a public offering in which shares of a company are sold to institutional investors and usually also to retail (individual) investors. An IPO is typically underwritten by one or more investment ...
date of June 30, 2000, Click Commerce was one of the first tech companies to reopen the market after the tech crash in March of that year. Ferro's success in his early career made him one of the youngest people named to the
Forbes
''Forbes'' () is an American business magazine owned by Integrated Whale Media Investments and the Forbes family. Published eight times a year, it features articles on finance, industry, investing, and marketing topics. ''Forbes'' also re ...
"Tech's 100 Highest Rollers" list. During this time, Ferro was named Young Entrepreneur of the Year 2003 by the Collegiate Entrepreneurs Organization, and won the
KPMG
KPMG International Limited (or simply KPMG) is a multinational professional services network, and one of the Big Four accounting organizations.
Headquartered in Amstelveen, Netherlands, although incorporated in London, England, KPMG is a net ...
Illinois High Tech award as well as the
Ernst & Young
Ernst & Young Global Limited, trade name EY, is a multinational professional services partnership headquartered in London, England. EY is one of the largest professional services networks in the world. Along with Deloitte, KPMG and Pricewaterh ...
Entrepreneur of the Year in Technology award. In 2006, he sold Click Commerce to Illinois Tool Works, a client of the company, for $292 million.
In 2007, Ferro founded Merrick Ventures LLC, a private equity firm that connects investors with tech companies. He also founded the Illinois Accelerator (I2a) Fund the same year.
Through Merrick Ventures, Ferro acquired a stake in Merge Healthcare, a
Milwaukee
Milwaukee ( ), officially the City of Milwaukee, is both the most populous and most densely populated city in the U.S. state of Wisconsin and the county seat of Milwaukee County. With a population of 577,222 at the 2020 census, Milwaukee is ...
-based medical data company that he relocated to Chicago.
After he brought the company out of the brink of bankruptcy, Merge Healthcare was sold to
IBM in 2016 for $1 billion.
In 2012, Ferro founded
Higi with Khan Siddiqui. The company produces
biometric
Biometrics are body measurements and calculations related to human characteristics. Biometric authentication (or realistic authentication) is used in computer science as a form of identification and access control. It is also used to identify in ...
screening stations installed in public places that can measure a person's
weight
In science and engineering, the weight of an object is the force acting on the object due to gravity.
Some standard textbooks define weight as a Euclidean vector, vector quantity, the gravitational force acting on the object. Others define weigh ...
,
body mass index
Body mass index (BMI) is a value derived from the mass (weight) and height of a person. The BMI is defined as the body mass divided by the square of the body height, and is expressed in units of kg/m2, resulting from mass in kilograms and he ...
,
pulse
In medicine, a pulse represents the tactile arterial palpation of the cardiac cycle (heartbeat) by trained fingertips. The pulse may be palpated in any place that allows an artery to be compressed near the surface of the body, such as at the nec ...
and
blood pressure
Blood pressure (BP) is the pressure of circulating blood against the walls of blood vessels. Most of this pressure results from the heart pumping blood through the circulatory system. When used without qualification, the term "blood pressure" r ...
, which users can track using an
app. In 2013, Chicago-based rapper
Lupe Fiasco
Wasalu Muhammad Jaco (born February 16, 1982), better known by his stage name Lupe Fiasco ( ), is an American rapper, singer, record producer, and entrepreneur. He rose to fame in 2006 following the success of his debut album, ''Lupe Fiasco's ...
joined the company as creative director and was part of the company's debut with Ferro and Siddiqui at that year's
South by Southwest
South by Southwest, abbreviated as SXSW and colloquially referred to as South By, is an annual conglomeration of parallel film, interactive media, and music festivals and Convention (meeting), conferences organized jointly that take place in m ...
in
Austin
Austin is the capital city of the U.S. state of Texas, as well as the seat and largest city of Travis County, with portions extending into Hays and Williamson counties. Incorporated on December 27, 1839, it is the 11th-most-populous city ...
,
Texas
Texas (, ; Spanish language, Spanish: ''Texas'', ''Tejas'') is a state in the South Central United States, South Central region of the United States. At 268,596 square miles (695,662 km2), and with more than 29.1 million residents in 2 ...
.
As the chairman and CEO of Merrick Ventures, Ferro was the founding chairman of
Wrapports
Wrapports LLC was the American-based privately owned publisher of the ''Chicago Sun-Times'' and the '' Chicago Reader''. It was headquartered in the ''Sun-Times'' building in Chicago.
History
The company was launched in late 2011 by Michael W. F ...
which is the parent company of the ''
Chicago Sun-Times
The ''Chicago Sun-Times'' is a daily newspaper published in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Since 2022, it is the flagship paper of Chicago Public Media, and has the second largest circulation among Chicago newspapers, after the ''Chicago T ...
''. In February 2016, Merrick Ventures invested $44.4 million in the Chicago-based company
Tribune Publishing
Tribune Publishing Company (briefly Tronc, Inc.) is an American newspaper print and online media publishing company. The company, which was acquired by Alden Global Capital in May 2021, has a portfolio that includes the ''Chicago Tribune'', the ...
, which is the parent company of the ''
Chicago Tribune
The ''Chicago Tribune'' is a daily newspaper based in Chicago, Illinois, United States, owned by Tribune Publishing. Founded in 1847, and formerly self-styled as the "World's Greatest Newspaper" (a slogan for which WGN radio and television ar ...
''. This made Ferro and Merrick Ventures the then top shareholder of Tribune Publishing. Ferro was appointed non-executive chairman of Tribune Publishing. He donated his shares in the ''Sun-Times'' to a charitable trust to avoid
antitrust issues.
In March 2018, Ferro was allegedly involved in sexual harassment of two women,
Kathryn Minshew and Hagan Kappler. Minshew, the founder of career website ''
The Muse,'' accused Ferro making sexual advances toward her at a corporate apartment in Chicago in 2013.
Kappler, while working for the firm
Ingersoll Rand
Ingersoll Rand is an American multinational company that provides flow creation and industrial products. The company was formed in February 2020 through the spinoff of the industrial segment of Ingersoll-Randplc (now known as Trane Technologies) ...
, claims to have been groped by Ferro in a
Las Vegas
Las Vegas (; Spanish for "The Meadows"), often known simply as Vegas, is the 25th-most populous city in the United States, the most populous city in the state of Nevada, and the county seat of Clark County. The city anchors the Las Vegas ...
hotel suite in early 2016.
Ferro resigned from Tribune Publishing a few hours before the news about these allegations were published in media.
In November 2019, Ferro also sold his 25% share in Tribune Publishing to
Alden Global Capital
Alden Global Capital is a hedge fund based in Manhattan, New York City. It was founded in 2007 by Randall D. Smith. Its managing director is Heath Freeman. By mid-2020, Alden had stakes in roughly two hundred American newspapers. The company ...
.
Other memberships and philanthropy
In 2005, Ferro was named co-chairman of the Chicagoland Entrepreneurial Center alongside Jim O'Connor Jr. and served on the Mayor's Council of Technology Advisors under Mayor
Richard M. Daley
Richard Michael Daley (born April 24, 1942) is an American politician who served as the 54th mayor of Chicago, Illinois, from 1989 to 2011. Daley was elected mayor in 1989 and was reelected five times until declining to run for a seventh term ...
. He also founded the Merrick Momentum Awards, an annual event to honor the top three-year-old Chicago corporation. In 2006, Ferro was the Chairman of the Sports Advisory Council, a board of corporate citizens named by Mayor Daley to lead the
Chicago bid for the 2016 Summer Olympics
The Chicago bid for the 2016 Summer Olympics and Paralympics was an unsuccessful bid, first recognized by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) on September 14, 2007. The IOC shortlisted four of the seven applicant cities—Madrid, Spain; T ...
. Ferro and his wife, Jacqueline, co-chaired an event that raised 12 million dollars in one night for the Chicago 2016 bid.
In 2014, Ferro donated $2 million to build an incubator space for student entrepreneurs in a new project called "The Garage" located within Northwestern University.
The Michael and Jacqueline Ferro Family Foundation donated $1 million to the
Capital Gazette
Capital Gazette Communications, owned by Tribune Publishing through its subsidiary the Baltimore Sun Media Group, publishes the daily ''The Capital'' and the twice-weekly ''Maryland Gazette'' newspapers and the weeklies '' Bowie Blade-News'' and '' ...
Families Fund, to aid the families of victims of the newsroom shooting on June 28, 2018. The foundation with the
Annenberg Foundation
The Annenberg Foundation is a family foundation that provides funding and support to non-profit organizations in the United States and around the world. Some of the Foundation's core initiatives are the Annenberg/Corporation for Public Broadcast ...
also provided the initial funding for
Fallen Journalists Memorial Foundation
The Fallen Journalists Memorial Foundation (FJM Foundation) exists to construct a permanent memorial in Washington, D.C., to honor fallen journalists. The effort was launched as an initiative of the Tribune Publishing Company by its chairman, Dav ...
.
Personal life
Ferro is married to Jacqueline J. Ferro, president of Ferro Farms Cider.
They have three children.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ferro, Michael
American chief executives of financial services companies
American venture capitalists
1966 births
Living people
Philanthropists from New York (state)
Businesspeople from Chicago
People from Merrick, New York
Tribune Publishing
Philanthropists from Illinois