An expert in macroeconomics and financial markets, Joao Gomes’ recent research covers the determinants of corporate investment and financing decisions of firms, with particular interest in the links to movements in financial markets. He has also examined the role of financial leverage in determining the cost of capital, the causes of performance variation across asset classes, and the quantitative importance of financial market imperfections on corporate decisions and economic cycles.

Joao’s research has been presented and discussed at major academic conferences and seminars around the world.  He has won several awards, including the Smith Breeden Prize for Best Asset Pricing Paper published in the Journal of Finance, with a study on the links between leverage and returns. He was also nominated for the Brattle Prize for Best Corporate Finance Paper in the Journal of Finance for his earlier work on the performance of conglomerates.

His previous academic appointments include a professorship at the London Business School. Early in his career, he also served as an ad-hoc economic advisor to the Ministry of Industry of Portugal. He has a PhD from the University of Rochester.

Itamar Drechsler works in the areas of asset pricing, financial intermediation, and monetary policy. He is currently an associate editor of the Journal of Finance and the Journal of Political Economy and a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research. He graduated with a PhD in finance from the Wharton School and has an MA in mathematics and bachelor’s degrees in finance, mathematics, and computer science from the University of Pennsylvania. Prior to returning to Wharton, he worked for nine years in the finance department at NYU’s Stern School of Business.

Presentation: Credit Card Banking
Synopsis:
Focus on what large-scale data reveals about pricing, consumer behavior, and market power in the credit card market. Highlight the role of marketing, operational costs, and behavioral responses in shaping credit card rates.  

Sean Myers’s research areas are macroeconomics and finance, with a particular interest in subjective expectations. Prior to joining Wharton, he was a post-doctoral fellow at the NBER.

Presentation: The Cross-section of Subjective Expectations: Understanding Prices and Anomalies
Synopsis:
An analysis on the differences in valuation ratios and what the data highlights about short-and-long term market growth projections.

Nikolai Roussanov is the Moise Y. Safra Professor of Finance at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, and research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. His research focuses on areas of interaction between asset pricing and macroeconomics, including equity and fixed income, currency, and commodity markets, as well as entrepreneurship and individual financial behavior. His articles have been published in the Journal of Finance, the Quarterly Journal of Economics, the Journal of Financial Economics, the Review of Financial Studies, Journal of Monetary Economics, and Management Science, and won a number of prizes, including the 2015 AQR Insight Award. He currently serves on editorial boards of the Journal of Finance and Journal of Monetary Economics, as editor of the Review of Asset Pricing Studies, and president of the Macro Finance Society. At Wharton he has taught courses on behavioral finance and fixed income securities to undergraduate and MBA students, as well as empirical methods in finance aimed at students in the doctoral program.

Roussanov received an undergraduate degree in mathematics from Harvard College in 2001 and a PhD in finance from the University of Chicago in 2008.

Presentation: Reconstructing a Century of U.S. Corporate Bonds: Credit Risk in Historical Perspective
Synopsis:
Reconstruction of 100+ years of corporate bond data and what it reveals about credit risk premiums. 

Presentation: When Insurers Exit: Climate Losses, Fragile Insurers, and Mortgage Markets
Synopsis:
Focus on how combining mortgage and insurance data reveals hidden distortions in credit allocation and taxpayer exposure, and how mispricing of climate risk shapes real economic outcomes.  

An expert in macroeconomics and financial markets, Joao Gomes’ recent research covers the determinants of corporate investment and financing decisions of firms, with particular interest in the links to movements in financial markets. He has also examined the role of financial leverage in determining the cost of capital, the causes of performance variation across asset classes, and the quantitative importance of financial market imperfections on corporate decisions and economic cycles.

Joao’s research has been presented and discussed at major academic conferences and seminars around the world.  He has won several awards, including the Smith Breeden Prize for Best Asset Pricing Paper published in the Journal of Finance, with a study on the links between leverage and returns. He was also nominated for the Brattle Prize for Best Corporate Finance Paper in the Journal of Finance for his earlier work on the performance of conglomerates.

His previous academic appointments include a professorship at the London Business School. Early in his career, he also served as an ad-hoc economic advisor to the Ministry of Industry of Portugal. He has a PhD from the University of Rochester.

Selen is the Global Research Lead for Accenture Products and Life Sciences, overseeing a global team that shapes thought leadership across industries including Life Sciences, Consumer Goods, Aerospace & Defense, Industrials, and Auto/Mobility. She defines the research agenda on scientific innovation, technology convergence, and market disruption, with Life Sciences at the core of her work. Selen brings a unique blend of research leadership and strategy consulting experience. In her consulting career, she advised biopharma clients at the C-suite level on business transformation and growth. In her current role, she develops CEO perspectives and convenes CEOs through Accenture’s annual Life Sciences CEO Forum. Her latest research examines how agentic AI is reshaping companies and their workforce, and she also leads the research program for Accenture’s partnership with the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

Kenneth Munie is a Senior Managing Director and Global Products Industry Strategy Lead at Accenture Strategy. He oversees strategy engagements for leading consumer, life sciences, and industrial companies, helping executives use digital, data, and AI to drive growth, productivity, and competitive differentiation. Since joining Accenture in 2004, Kenneth has specialized in applying digital technologies, advanced analytics, and now agentic and generative AI to transform operating models and accelerate decision-making. He brings more than two decades of experience advising global biopharma and medical technology leaders across major markets. Kenneth leads the Products Industry Group’s agentic/gen AI go-to-market initiatives, academic collaborations, and AI-focused training programs for Accenture leaders and clients. He also serves as Accenture’s executive sponsor for the Neurodiversity Employee Resource Group and leads Accenture’s collaboration with Wharton on advanced AI research and executive education.

Lauren Weymouth is a Senior Director at Ripple, where she leads the University Blockchain Research Initiative (UBRI) that funds financial technology curriculum development, research, technical projects, entrepreneurship, and student activities. Since launch, she has activated more than 60 global university partnerships, driving 1,600+ research projects in blockchain, cryptocurrency, cryptography, and digital assets. She hosts the Webby award-winning podcast All About Blockchain. Previously, Lauren held leadership roles in education, private equity, and at technology startups, pioneering ventures that grew record-setting profits.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/weymouth/

Dalila Wilson-Scott serves as Executive Vice President and Chief Impact & Inclusion Officer of Comcast Corporation and President of the Comcast NBCUniversal Foundation.

In this role, Dalila leads strategic impact and inclusion efforts that leverage the power of Comcast’s talent, connectivity, and platforms to create opportunities in areas aligned with its global media and technology businesses. This includes Project UP, the company’s comprehensive $1 billion digital opportunity initiative to help expand internet access, deliver digital skills training, and drive economic mobility through programs and community partnerships across Comcast, NBCUniversal, and Sky. She also developed and directs the company’s philanthropic portfolio, employee engagement, and volunteerism activities spanning U.S. and international markets.

Dalila joined Comcast after more than 15 years at JPMorgan Chase & Co., where she served as the Head of Global Philanthropy and President of the JPMorgan Chase Foundation. In this capacity, she led philanthropic and economic opportunity initiatives while also helping to set the firm’s overall corporate responsibility strategy. Prior to joining the Office of Corporate Responsibility, Dalila served in a number of roles throughout finance, strategic planning, and market and business development.

Trained as an organizational psychologist, Erika H. James is a leading expert on crisis leadership, workplace diversity, and management strategy.

Prior to her appointment at Wharton, she was the John H. Harland Dean at Emory University’s Goizueta Business School from 2014 to 2020. An award-winning educator, accomplished consultant, and researcher, she is the first woman and first person of color to be appointed dean in Wharton’s 139-year history.

As such, James has paved the way for women in leadership both in education and corporate America. She has been instrumental in developing groundbreaking executive education programs, including the Women’s Leadership program at the University of Virginia’s Darden School.

She holds a PhD and Master’s degree in organizational psychology from the University of Michigan, as well as a Bachelor’s degree in psychology from Pomona College of the Claremont Colleges in California.

Ron is an Associate Professor of Marketing at the Wharton School. He focuses his research on online marketing, marketing analytics, and the marketing actions of startup firms. His recent research looks at how advertisers incorrectly attribute sales to online advertising which results in suboptimal campaigns, and how search engine optimization (SEO) may improve search engine results contrary to common belief.

Ron’s previous experience includes working on Internet and Media investments as a venture capitalist at Carmel Ventures, and developing software for the IDF. Currently Ron mentors startups at the UpWest Labs accelerator and spends time meeting and advising young entrepreneurs.

Ron holds a PhD and MSc in Business Administration (Marketing) from the University of California, Berkeley, an MBA and MSc in Computer Science from Tel-Aviv University, and a BSc in Computer Science, Physics and Mathematics from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

Presentation: Blocking LLMs
Synopsis:
As content publishers face threats from LLMs, this analysis considers whether firms should fight or cooperate with GenAI, and the potential impact of blocking.  

Prasanna (Sonny) Tambe’s research focuses on the use of data science and AI for HR applications and on the economics of labor markets for high-tech workers. His research has been published or is forthcoming in a number of academic journals including Management Science, Information Systems Research, MIS Quarterly, The Review of Financial Studies, Industrial and Labor Relations Review, Communications of the ACM,, and Information Economics and Policy. His research has also won a number of awards, including the Best Published Paper in Information Systems Research and the Best Published IS Paper in Management Science. He currently serves on the editorial board of Management Science and was previously on the editorial board of Information Systems Research. Professor Tambe received his SB and MEng in electrical engineering and computer science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and his PhD in managerial science and applied economics from Wharton.

Presentation: AI Reskilling
Synopsis:
Focus on reframing reskilling as question of where algorithmic literacy needs to exist to make individual.

Lynn Wu is an Associate Professor (with tenure) at the Wharton School. She teaches MBA, undergraduate and PhD classes about the use and impact of emerging technologies on business.

Her research examines how emerging information technologies, such as artificial intelligence and analytics, affect innovation, business strategy, and productivity. Specifically, her work follows three streams. In the first stream, she examines how data analytics and artificial intelligence affect firm innovation, business strategy, labor demand, and productivity for both large firms and startups. In her second stream, she studies how enterprise social media and online platforms affect work performance, career trajectories, entrepreneurship success, and the formation of new type of biases that arise from using technologies. In her third stream of research, Lynn leverages fine-grained nanodata available through online digital traces to predict economic indicators such as real estate trends, labor trends, and product adoption.

Lynn has published articles in economics, management, and computer science. Her work has been widely covered by media outlets, including, NPR, the Wall Street Journal, Businessweek, New York Times, Forbes, and The Economist. She has won numerous awards such as Early Career awards from INFORMS and AIS, best paper awards from Information System Research, AIS, ICIS, HICSS, CHITA, and Kauffman. She has also won the Dean’s teaching award.

Lynn received her undergraduate degrees from MIT (Finance and Computer Science), her master’s degree from MIT (Computer Science), and her PhD from MIT Sloan School of Management (Management Science). Lynn has experience working with a variety of firms in the technology industry (e.g. IBM, SAP, Google, Facebook etc), government agencies, and think tanks (e.g the World Bank, the Russel Sage Foundation). She has also consulted and advised several startups. Prior to academia, she was a software engineer and a research scientist at MIT AI lab and IBM.

Presentation: AI, Ceo Turnover, and the Exploration Orientation of Firm Innovation
Synopsis:
Study on how AI investment shapes, and is shaped by, the highest-stakes moment in a firm’s life: its leadership transition.

Pinar Yildirim is Associate Professor at the Marketing Department of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and a Senior Fellow at the Leonard Davis Institute. Yildirim authored numerous journal and conference articles, white papers, and popular writings on topics such as diffusion of information on social networks, political communication on social media, and influence of technology on society. Her research appeared in top management and economics journals including Marketing Science, Journal of Marketing Research, Management Science, and Journal of Marketing. Her research has been covered by numerous media outlets such as the Wall Street Journal, NPR, Forbes, Politico, Newsweek, and Vox.

Yildirim received awards including the Erin Anderson Award for Scholar and Mentor in 2020, an award given to the top female scholar in the field of marketing for research and mentoring contributions. She was elected a faculty fellow for the American Marketing Association Consortium in 2019. She was the inaugural winner of the Seenu Srinivasan Award in Quantitative Methodology in 2018, an award given to the junior scholar with the highest contributions to the theory and empirics of quantitative methodology in marketing. Marketing Science Institute recognized her with the “Young Scholar” award in 2017, recognizing her as a future thought leader in her field.

Yildirim is also recognized for her teaching and service. She received Excellence in Teaching Award at the Wharton School and several Distinguished Service Awards from the Informs Management Science Journal. She is on the editorial boards of top business journals including Marketing Science, Journal of Marketing Research, and Marketing Letters. Yildirim received an MS and a PhD in Industrial Engineering and a PhD in Marketing in Business Economics from the University of Pittsburgh.

Presentation: Technological Change & Value of Careers
Synopsis:
This research questions what happens to careers and organizational structure as workplaces integrate AI & automation.

Eric Bradlow is the Vice Dean of AI & Analytics at Wharton and Chairperson of the Wharton Marketing Department, as well as the K.P. Chao Professor of Marketing, and a Professor of Economics, Professor of Education, and Professor of Statistics and Data Science.

An applied statistician, Bradlow uses high-powered statistical models to solve problems on everything from Internet search engines to product assortment issues. Specifically, his research interests include Bayesian modeling, statistical computing, and developing new methodology for unique data structures with application to business problems.

Bradlow’s research has been published in the Journal of the American Statistical Association, Psychometrika, Statistica Sinica, Chance, Marketing Science, Management Science, and the Journal of Marketing Research. His most recent study is “Putting a Price Tag on Facebook: Quantifying the Value of Online Social Networks.”

Bradlow has won numerous teaching awards at Wharton, including the MBA Core Curriculum teaching award, the Miller-Sherrerd MBA Core Teaching Award and the Excellence in Teaching Award. In 2009, he published (with Keith Niedermeier and Patti Williams) Marketing for Financial Advisors (McGraw-Hill).

Peter Cappelli is the George W. Taylor Professor of Management at The Wharton School and Director of Wharton’s Center for Human Resources. He is also a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research in Cambridge, MA, served as Senior Advisor to the Kingdom of Bahrain for Employment Policy from 2003-2005, was a Distinguished Scholar of the Ministry of Manpower for Singapore, and was Co-Director of the U.S. Department of Education’s National Center on the Educational Quality of the Workforce from 1990-1998. He was recently named by HR Magazine as one of the top 5 most influential management thinkers, by NPR as one of the 50 influencers in the field of aging, and was elected a fellow of the National Academy of Human Resources. He received the 2009 PRO award from the International Association of Corporate and Professional Recruiters for contributions to human resources and an honorary Doctorate degree from the University of Liege in Belgium. He is a regular contributor to The Wall Street Journal and writes a monthly column for HR Executive magazine. His recent work on performance management, agile systems, and hiring practices, and other workplace topics appears in the Harvard Business Review.

Cappelli has expertise in industrial relations and labor economics. Previously, he was a faculty member at MIT, the University of Illinois, and the University of California at Berkeley. An international speaker and advisor, Peter led discussions on unemployment and workforce skills at the Davos Annual Meeting of the 2012 World Economic Forum.

Presentation: In Praise of the Office
Synopsis:
Examination on how remote and hybrid work have fundamentally reshaped the execution of office work by shifting the balance from collaborative, interdependent tasks toward more individualized performance. 

Judd Kessler is a Professor of Business Economics and Public Policy at Wharton. In his research, Judd uses a combination of laboratory and field experiments to answer questions in Behavioral Economics, Public Economics, Labor Economics, and Market Design. He investigates the economic and psychological forces that motivate individuals inside and outside of firms: with applications including job choice, worker effort, organ donation, and charitable giving. His research also explores racial and gender biases in labor market environments and gender differences in labor market behavior. Judd’s research has appeared in a wide range of top academic journals and been covered by media outlets such as the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post. Judd received a BA in Economics from Harvard University, a MPhil in Economics from Cambridge University, and a PhD in Business Economics from Harvard University.

Presentation: AI, Skill Signaling, and the Future of Hiring
Synopsis:
Analysis on how AI is changing labor-market signals and candidate evaluation, including information frictions, skill signaling, and how employers interpret applications when traditional signals like cover letters become easier to generate.  

Henning Piezunka’s teaching is focused on startups and entrepreneurship, with a particular emphasis on guiding entrepreneurs in building, scaling, and growing their business ideas and ventures. He teaches this material to MBA students, executives, and corporations, and coaches start-up CEOs and entrepreneurial leaders. He has received outstanding teaching ratings, been on the Dean’s list for excellence in MBA teaching, and won the INSEAD Best Teacher award multiple times.

Henning is an award-winning researcher. He studies how organizations can tap into the knowledge of their members to foster greater inclusion, innovation, and diversity. He has also conducted research into the crowdsourcing of ideas and the wisdom of the crowds. In another stream of research, Henning studies collaboration and competition, such as the factors that escalate competition into dangerous conflict. He has further researched succession in family firms and how people can improve their ability to interact with others by leveraging artificial intelligence (AI).

Through his research, Henning has also developed significant expertise across various domains, including start-ups, technology companies, family businesses, and a range of sports. He has leveraged data from sports such as Formula One, soccer and chess to shed light on effective management practices. Henning’s work and expert opinions have been featured in leading business media, including Time Magazine, The Economist, and Harvard Business Review.

Henning obtained a PhD at Stanford University, a Master of Science at the London School of Economics, UK, and a Diploma Kaufmann from the University of Mannheim, Germany. Before starting his academic career, he co-founded a web design company in 1998 and acted as its founder-CEO until selling it in January 2016. By 2016, Henning’s company employed more than 30 people and served customers in more than 80 countries.

Presentation: Rivarly Reduced
Synopsis:
A study on the problem of misaligned perceptions through an analysis of competition in collaboration. 

Michael Platt is a neuroscientist known for asking some of the most challenging questions in 21st-century neuroscience — and conceiving innovative ways to find the answers. Principle questions focus on the biological mechanisms that underlie decision making in social environments, which has broad-scale implications for improving health and welfare in societies worldwide. Broad expertise in psychology, economics, evolutionary biology, and ethology — in addition to collaborations with colleagues in these fields — has enabled him to reach ever-deeper levels of understanding about the neural bases of cognitive behavior.

As a Penn Integrates Knowledge (PIK) Professor, he has appointments in the Department of Neuroscience in the Perelman School of Medicine, the Department of Psychology in the School of Arts and Sciences, and the Department of Marketing in the Wharton School.

Michael received his BA at Yale and his PhD at the University of Pennsylvania, both in anthropology, and did a post-doctoral fellowship in neuroscience at New York University. His work has been supported by the National Institutes of Health, the Klingenstein Foundation, the James S. McDonnell Foundation, the EJLB Foundation, Autism Speaks, the Broad Foundation, the Klarman Family Foundation, the Simons Foundation, and the Department of Defense, among others. He is the winner of a MERIT award from the National Institute of Mental Health and the Ruth and A. Morris Williams Faculty Research Prize in the Duke University School of Medicine, and was an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Fellow. He has given the SAGE Lecture at UC Santa Barbara and has received the Astor Visiting Professor award at Oxford University (deferred). Michael has authored over 90 peer-reviewed papers and over 40 review and opinion papers, and his work has been cited over 4,000 times. Michael is an editor of major textbooks in neuroscience and cognitive neuroscience, and he is a former president of the Society for Neuroeconomics.

A revered instructor and mentor, Michael won the Master Teacher/Clinician Award from the Duke University School of Medicine. He is the former director of the Duke Institute for Brain Sciences, former director of the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience at Duke University, and founding co-director of the Duke Center for Neuroeconomic Studies. Michael’s work has been featured in the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, the Guardian, and National Geographic, as well as on ABC’s Good Morning America, NPR, CBC, BBC, and MTV. He has also served as a consultant on several films, including The Fountain (Warner Bros., Darren Aronofsky, director); as a scientific advisor to NOVA; and on the Scientific Advisory Boards of several companies.

Presentation: Hidden Signals: How Neuroscience Is Transforming Leadership and Workplace Performance
Synopsis:
A focus on how neuroscience can reveal hidden biological and behavioral signals that shape leadership, psychological safety, team dynamics, creativity, workplace relationships, and entrepreneur success.  

Nancy Rothbard received her AB from Brown University and her PhD in Organizational Behavior from the University of Michigan. Prior to joining the faculty at Wharton, she was on the faculty at the Kellogg Graduate School of Management, Northwestern University. Professor Rothbard’s research focuses on the interplay between emotions and engagement in multiple roles. Specifically, she explores how people’s emotional responses to one role or task affect their subsequent engagement in another role or task. She has examined these questions in the context of work and family roles and in the context of multiple tasks that people perform within the work role. Her work has been published in academic journals such as Administrative Science Quarterly, Academy of Management Review, Organization Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Organization Science, and Personnel Psychology. In addition to her academic articles, Professor Rothbard has authored several Harvard Business School case studies. Her teaching cases touch on the topics of leadership, corporate culture, and organizational change. Professor Rothbard received the 2000 Likert Dissertation Award from the University of Michigan. She is also the recipient of the Gerald and Lillian Dykstra Award for Teaching Excellence and the 2010 Wharton Teaching Commitment and Curricular Innovation Award.