2019 Conference Speakers

Andrew Chen
Senior Economist, Federal Reserve Board

Andrew Y. Chen is a senior economist in the Capital Markets section at the Federal Reserve Board where he is responsible for covering stock market developments, corporate profits, and related aspects of financial stability and financial forecasting. His research area is theoretical and empirical asset pricing, with a focus on applying computational methods to stock market anomalies, statistical corrections for data mining, and understanding connections between the real and financial economy. His work has been published in the Review of Asset Pricing Studies and Review of Financial Studies, and has been featured in Bloomberg and Marginal Revolution. He has presented his research at the meetings of the American Finance Association, the Western Finance Association, and the American Economic Association. Prior to finance, Chen studied cellular biophysics at the National Institutes of Health, with publications in Nature Immunology and Journal of Cell Science. He holds a bachelor’s degree (with high honors) in physics from the University of Maryland, an MBA from Georgetown, and a doctorate in finance from the Ohio State University.

Patricia Dechow 
Robert R. Dockson Professor of Business Administration, USC Marshall School of Business

Patricia Dechow is the Robert R. Dockson Professor of Business Administration and a professor of accounting at the Marshall School of Business at the University of Southern California. She was previously a faculty member at the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley, where she served as Chair of the Accounting Group from 2008 to 2013. She has also taught at the University of Michigan and the Wharton School. One of the leading and most highly cited accounting researchers, Dechow’s research focuses on accounting accruals, the quality of earnings, and the effect of analysts’ forecasts on investors’ perceptions of firm value. She has developed measures to determine whether a firm has manipulated its financial statements and she is a co-author, with Catherine Schrand, of the book Earnings Quality. Her work has appeared in many journals including the Accounting Review, Contemporary Accounting Research, and Journal of Accounting and Economics. Dechow received the American Accounting Association’s Seminal Contributions to Accounting Literature Award in 2019 and its Distinguished Contributions to Accounting Literature award in 2010 and 2015. She is currently Managing Editor of Review of Accounting Studies. Dechow earned a bachelor’s degree at the University of Western Australia and a doctorate in accounting and finance from the W.E. Simon School of Business Administration at the University of Rochester.

Geoffrey Garrett
Dean; Reliance Professor of Management and Private Enterprise, The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania

Geoffrey Garrett is Dean, Reliance Professor of Management and Private Enterprise, a professor of management at the Wharton School, and a professor of political science at the University of Pennsylvania. He became dean of the Wharton School in 2014, and was previously a member of the Wharton faculty in the Management Department from 1995 to 1997. Prior to his return to Penn, Garrett was dean of the business schools at both the University of Sydney and University of New South Wales (UNSW) in his native Australia. He served as president of the Pacific Council on International Policy in Los Angeles and dean of the UCLA International Institute before his return to Australia in 2008 as founding CEO of the United States Studies Centre. A highly cited international political economist, he has been a professor at Oxford, Stanford, and Yale universities. Garrett is a fellow of the Australian Academy of the Social Sciences and sits on the Advisory Boards of the Indian School of Business and the Tsinghua University School of Economics and Management. He is a member of the board of directors of Park Hotels and Resorts and is a winner of the Foreign Policy Association Medal and the Advance Global Australian Award. A well-respected commentator on global business, economics, and politics in major media outlets, he writes a regular blog as a LinkedIn Influencer. He holds a bachelor’s degree (Honors) from the Australian National University, and a master’s degree and doctorate from Duke University where he was a Fulbright Scholar.

Christopher Geczy
Adjunct Professor of Finance; Academic Director, Jacobs Levy Center, The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania

Chris Geczy has been on the Finance Department faculty at the Wharton School since 1997. He is academic director of the Jacobs Levy Equity Management Center for Quantitative Financial Research and the Wharton Wealth Management Initiative at Wharton Executive Education. He previously worked for the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, Washington, DC in its Division of Research and Statistics. He currently serves on Intel’s U.S. Retirement Plans’ Investment Policy Committee, is a co-editor of Financial Planning Review, and formerly served on the Editorial Board of the Journal of Alternative Investments and the Economic Advisory Board of NASDAQ. His work has appeared in numerous books and scholarly journals including the Journal of Finance, Journal of Financial Economics, Journal of Portfolio Management, The Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology and the Journal of Political Economy. In 2018, Geczy and co-authors won the Investment for Impact Prize of the Center for Responsible Business at the University of California, Berkeley’s Haas School of Business for their research paper “Contracts With Benefits: The Implementation of Impact Investing.” He has a bachelor’s degree in economics from the University of Pennsylvania and a doctorate in finance and econometrics from the Graduate School of Business at the University of Chicago.

Bruce Jacobs
Principal and Co-Founder, Jacobs Levy Equity Management

Bruce Jacobs is principal and co-founder of Jacobs Levy Equity Management, where he is co-chief investment officer, portfolio manager, and co-director of research. His articles on equity management have appeared in Financial Analysts Journal, the Journal of Portfolio Management, the Journal of Investing, the Journal of Financial Perspectives, Japanese Security Analysts Journal, and Operations Research. Jacobs has received several Graham and Dodd Awards from Financial Analysts Journal, a Bernstein Fabozzi/Jacobs Levy Award from the Journal of Portfolio Management, and an Outstanding Article Award from the Journal of Investing. He serves on the Advisory Boards of the Journal of Portfolio Management and Journal of Financial Data Science, has served on the Financial Analysts Journal Advisory Council, and was an associate editor of the Journal of Trading. Jacobs is author of Too Smart for Our Own Good: Ingenious Investment Strategies, Illusions of Safety, and Market Crashes and Capital Ideas and Market Realities: Option Replication, Investor Behavior, and Stock Market Crashes, co-author with Ken Levy of Equity Management: The Art and Science of Modern Quantitative Investing, 2nd ed., co-editor with Ken Levy of Market Neutral Strategies, and co-editor of The Bernstein Fabozzi/Jacobs Levy Awards: Five Years of Award-Winning Articles from The Journal of Portfolio Management, Volumes One through Four. He was a featured contributor to How I Became a Quant: Insights from 25 of Wall Street’s Elite. Jacobs has a bachelor’s degree from Columbia College, a master’s degree in operations research and computer science from Columbia University’s School of Engineering and Applied Science, a master’s degree from Carnegie Mellon University’s Graduate School of Industrial Administration, and a master’s degree in applied economics and a doctorate in finance from the Wharton School.

Leonid Kogan
Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Professor of Management, MIT Sloan School of Management

Leonid Kogan is the Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Professor of Management and a professor of finance at the MIT Sloan School of Management. Prior to MIT Sloan, he taught at the Wharton School and was a senior researcher at Lehman Brothers from 2007 to 2008. His research interests include asset pricing theory, macro-finance, empirical asset pricing, and financial engineering. Kogan’s recent research has focused on the links between economic activity of firms and their stock price behavior, the effects of investor heterogeneity on aggregate asset prices, and the computational aspects of option pricing and portfolio choice. He has published extensively in leading academic journals, including the Journal of Finance, Journal of Financial Economics, Journal of Political Economy, and Operations Research. He has won numerous professional awards, including the 1998 Lehman Brothers Fellowship for Research Excellence in Finance for his work on the asset pricing implications of investment irreversibility; the 2004 FAME Research Prize and the 2006 Smith Breeden Prize for his work on the price impact and survival of irrational traders; and the 2007 Crowell Memorial Prize for his work on output durability and stock returns. He is currently a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. Kogan holds an MSc in mechanics and applied mathematics from Moscow State University, a doctorate in mechanics from Cornell University, and a doctorate in finance from MIT.

S.P. Kothari
Chief Economist and Director of the Division of Economic and Risk Analysis, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission

S.P. Kothari was named the Chief Economist and Director of the Division of Economic and Risk Analysis (DERA) at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in March 2019. In this role, he oversees economists, data scientists, and other professionals who provide financial economics and data science in support of the SEC’s mission. Kothari joined the SEC from the MIT Sloan School of Management, where he was a professor of accounting and finance and a former deputy dean. He spent nearly two decades at MIT, both as a professor and as an administrator. His research interests include financial reporting, valuation, asset allocation, international accounting practices, executive compensation, investment performance, and derivatives. Kothari has served as the Co-Chair of the Board of Governors Asia School of Business, Kuala Lumpur, faculty director of the MIT-India Program, and editor of the Journal of Accounting and Economics. In 2008, he served as global head of equity research for Barclays Global Investors, where he was responsible for research supporting the firm’s active equity strategies and for managing a team of approximately 50 PhDs based around the world. Kothari received his bachelor’s degree in engineering from the Birla Institute of Technology and Science, his MBA from the Indian Institute of Management, and his doctorate from the University of Iowa.

Kenneth Levy
Principal and Co-Founder, Jacobs Levy Equity Management

Ken Levy is principal and co-founder of Jacobs Levy Equity Management, where he is co-chief investment officer, portfolio manager, and co-director of research. His articles on equity management have appeared in Financial Analysts Journal, the Journal of Portfolio Management, the Journal of Investing, the Journal of Financial Perspectives, Japanese Security Analysts Journal, and Operations Research. He has received several Graham and Dodd Awards from Financial Analysts Journal and a Bernstein Fabozzi/Jacobs Levy Award from the Journal of Portfolio Management. Levy is co-author with Bruce Jacobs of Equity Management: The Art and Science of Modern Quantitative Investing, 2nd ed., co-editor with Bruce Jacobs of Market Neutral Strategies, and co-editor of The Bernstein Fabozzi/Jacobs Levy Awards: Five Years of Award-Winning Articles from The Journal of Portfolio Management, Volumes One through Four. He was a featured contributor to How I Became a Quant: Insights from 25 of Wall Street’s Elite. Levy has a bachelor’s degree in economics from Cornell University, an MBA and a master’s degree in business economics from the Wharton School, and completed all requirements short of the dissertation for a doctorate at Wharton. He is a CFA charterholder and has served on the CFA Candidate Curriculum Committee, POSIT Advisory Board, and the investment board of a community foundation.

Scott Richardson
Principal, AQR Capital Management

Scott Richardson is a Principal at AQR Capital Management, where he is the co-head of Fixed Income and a senior member of the Research and Portfolio Management team. He is also involved with the equity research for the firm’s Global Stock Selection group. Prior to AQR, he was a professor at London Business School, where he still teaches MBA and PhD classes. He has held senior positions at BlackRock (Barclays Global Investors), including head of Europe equity research and head of global credit research, where he oversaw research and investment decisions at BGI for both total return and absolute return products across credit and equity markets. He began his career as an assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania. He is an editor of the Review of Accounting Studies and has published extensively in leading academic and practitioner journals. In 2009, he won the Notable Contributions to Accounting Literature Award for his work on earnings quality and accruals. He earned a BEc with first-class honors from the University of Sydney and a doctorate in business administration from the University of Michigan.

Matthew Ringgenberg
Associate Professor of Finance, University of Utah

Matthew Ringgenberg is an associate professor of finance at the University of Utah. Prior to joining the University of Utah, he was an assistant professor of finance at Washington University in St. Louis. His research focuses on equity lending, short selling, ETFs, institutional investors, and the economics of information. His research on equity lending and short selling examines the causes and results of short sale constraints in opaque markets. In addition, he has studied the impact of index investing on the economy and he has investigated the impact of risk on arbitrageur behavior. His research has been published in the Journal of Finance, Journal of Financial Economics, and Review of Financial Studies and has been cited in the New York Times, Bloomberg, and the New Yorker. He currently serves as an associate editor for Management Science. Prior to his academic career, Ringgenberg worked as a consultant for Charles River Associates in Chicago. He earned a bachelor’s degree in finance and economics from the University of Wisconsin, and a master’s degree in economics and doctorate in finance from the University of North Carolina.

Catherine Schrand
Celia Z. Moh Professor, The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania

Catherine Schrand joined the faculty of the Wharton School in 1994, where she is now the Celia Z. Moh Professor, a professor of accounting, and the faculty director of the Wharton Research and Scholars programs. She previously served as vice dean of Wharton Doctoral Programs. Schrand’s research focuses on risk management and disclosure and has been published in top-tier academic journals including the Journal of Finance, Journal of Accounting and Economics, Journal of Financial Economics, and Review of Accounting Studies. She is an associate editor of the Journal of Accounting and Economics, Journal of Accounting Research, and Journal of Financial Services Research. She is the author of Earnings Quality (along with Patricia Dechow), and of Understanding Earnings Quality: A Review of the Proxies, Their Determinants and Their Consequences (with Patricia Dechow and Weili Ge). She has been actively involved in the accounting standard setting process through her past service on the Financial Accounting Standards Committee of the American Accounting Association and her involvement with the AAA/FASB Financial Reporting Issues Conference. She was a staff auditor and audit manager at KPMG Peat Marwick in Chicago before attending graduate school, and she is a Certified Public Accountant in Illinois. Schrand received a BBA from the University of Michigan and her doctorate from the University of Chicago.

Richard Sloan
Accounting Circle Professor of Accounting, USC Marshall School of Business

Richard Sloan is the Accounting Circle Professor of Accounting at the Marshall School of Business at the University of Southern California. From 2006 to 2009, he was a managing director in equity research at Barclays Global Investors. He has also held academic positions at the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley, the University of Michigan’s Stephen M. Ross School of Business, and the Wharton School. While at the University of Michigan, he was the founding director of the Tozzi Electronic Business and Finance Center. He is the author of several books and numerous articles that have appeared in publications including the Journal of Finance, the Accounting Review, Journal of Accounting and Economics, and Journal of Accounting Research. He currently serves as editor of Review of Accounting Studies and associate editor of Journal of Financial Economics. He has been recognized with several awards from the American Accounting Association including the Seminal Contributions to Accounting Literature Award in 2016 and the FARS Lifetime Achievement Award in 2018. Sloan holds a bachelor’s degree (First Class Honors) from the University of Western Australia, and a master’s degree and doctorate in business administration from the W.E. Simon Graduate School of Business at the University of Rochester.

Ingrid Tierens
Managing Director, Goldman Sachs

Ingrid Tierens is head of the Data Strategy team in the Global Investment Research (GIR) Division at Goldman Sachs. Her team contributes to clients’ investment processes through quantitative analysis and systematic solutions, and collaborates with GIR research teams to embed alternative data sources in their research. Previously, she was head of the Equities Execution Services Strats Group in the Securities Division, which advises clients on execution strategies across one delta equities. Before that, she headed Electronic Trading Strats for Goldman Sachs Execution & Clearing (GSEC) and the Sales Strats Group across Equity Derivatives and Global Securities Services. She joined Goldman Sachs in 2002 as a vice president in the Equity Derivatives Strats Group, focusing on quantitative equity and option-based strategies, portfolio construction and index related analysis. She was named managing director in 2006. Prior to joining the firm, she was a director in the Active-Quantitative Investment Product Group at Merrill Lynch Investment Managers in London, where she was responsible for designing and implementing activequantitative global equity investment processes. She also worked at JP Morgan Investment Management in London as a vice president in the Quantitative Financial Research and Development Division, constructing international equity investment strategies. She is a past president and board member of the Society of Quantitative Analysts in New York. She earned an MBA and a doctorate in finance from the University of Chicago. She is a CFA charterholder.

Jessica Wachter
Richard B. Worley Professor of Financial Management, The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania

Jessica Wachter is the Richard B. Worley Professor of Financial Management and a professor of finance at the Wharton School. She currently serves on the board of the Western Finance Association and as an associate editor of Quantitative Economics. Previously, she served as associate editor at the Review of Financial Studies and Journal of Economic Theory and as a board member of the American Finance Association. Her research interests include asset pricing models that incorporate rare events and behavioral finance. She has published numerous papers in the Journal of Finance, Journal of Financial Economics, Review of Financial Studies, and other journals. Wachter holds a bachelor’s degree in mathematics and a doctorate in business economics from Harvard University.

David Zion
Research Analyst, Zion Research Group

David Zion is the founder of Zion Research Group. He previously built 20 years of experience as a sell side accounting and tax research analyst at Bear Stearns, ISI, and most recently, Credit Suisse. He started his career as an auditor at Deloitte & Touche. Zion has been named to Institutional Investor’s All-America Research Team multiple times, and was ranked the number one or two accounting and tax analyst for 13 out of 14 years. He holds a bachelor’s degree in accounting from Binghamton University, and is a CFA charterholder and certified public accountant.