Why did you decide on UD? After nine years in London I was ready to “return home.” The University has a great history and inspiring plans. I am eager to draw on my experience to contribute to the progress of Lerner College.
Hometown: Wellesley, Mass. — 12 miles west of Boston
Major areas of research/scholarship: My academic field is information systems, and within that I study how technology improves the transparency and fairness of financial exchanges, and develop and test models of how trading is being transformed through software and digital markets.
One of your biggest (academic) accomplishments: I co-founded a joint industry-academic conference (GEMS) on business strategy for stock exchanges in 1996. Leading executives come to learn and discuss how to improve their market operations. It has been held in a number of cities including Istanbul, Geneva, Athens Frankfurt, and most recently, in Amsterdam, June 3–6 — that was our seventeenth. Initially, we were uncertain we’d draw an audience at all.
Current projects:
The most exciting project at Lerner College now is to launch an innovative and demanding Online MBA. It covers 16 key management subjects over 18 months, and we will have our first cohort of students in early 2013.
Another activity I look forward to is co-teaching a Fall 2012 version of the “Trading and Financial Market Structure” elective I have taught in New York and London. The course includes 5–6 competitive trading simulations that challenge students to practice what they learn.
Greatest inspiration: My father — he was a senior executive and a regulator in the energy industry and built two successful management consulting firms, but he always made his family his first priority. I lost my mother to cancer at a young age, so it was not easy.
What else should we know about you?
Although I have spent my entire 21-year faculty career in New York City and London, I have relatives that farm in central Ohio, and I spent summers there long ago working very hard.
I am a runner, and was a New England qualifier and raced in the NCAA Division 1 cross-country championships and broke the school record for the 3,000-meter run as an undergraduate at Harvard.