Dean James became the dean of the Wharton School on July 1, 2020. Trained as an organizational psychologist, Dean James is a leading expert on crisis leadership, workplace diversity and management strategy. Prior to her appointment at Wharton, Dean James 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 141-year history. As such she has paved the way for women in leadership both in education and corporate America. Dean James has been instrumental in developing groundbreaking executive education programs, including the Women’s Leadership program at the University of Virginia’s Darden School.

Dean James serves on the boards of Morgan Stanley, SurveyMonkey and The Philadelphia Orchestra and Kimmel Center, Inc. She is the co-author of the forthcoming book The Prepared Leader: Emerge from Any Crisis More Resilient Than Before (Wharton School Press; September 20, 2022) with Lynn Perry Wooten, President of Simmons University.

Michael Roberts is the William H. Lawrence Professor and Professor of Finance at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Professor Roberts is also a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research, an affiliate of the Institute for Law and Economics, and has founded and heads the Wharton Financial Analytics and Wharton Financial Proficiency initiatives.

Professor Roberts’ research spans corporate finance, banking, and investments. Recent work has examined equity pricing anomalies, collateralized loan obligation (CLO) performance, and machine learning applications in investment banking. His research has received several awards including two Brattle Prizes for Distinguished Paper published in the Journal of Finance, a Jensen Prize for best paper on Corporate Finance and Organizations published in the Journal of Financial Economics, and Best Paper awards from the Financial Management Association, Southwestern Finance Association, Rodney L. White Center for Financial Research, Jacobs-Levy Equity Management Center for Quantitative Financial Research, and Institute for Quantitative Research in Finance. Professor Roberts has served on numerous journal editorial boards, including the Journal of Finance of which he was a co-editor.

In addition to his research, Professor Roberts is an acclaimed teacher. At the Wharton School, his accolades include the David W. Hauk Award, five Excellence in Teaching Awards, and multiple nominations for the Helen Kardon Moss Anvil Teaching Award.  While at Duke University, he won the Daimler-Chrysler Core Teaching Award at the Fuqua School of Business. He has taught undergraduate, M.B.A., Ph.D., and executive education courses in Finance, Economics, Statistics, and Data Analytics. Outside of academia, Professor Roberts has worked as a financial engineer and consultant, providing services to many financial and nonfinancial corporations as well as expert testimony in corporate legal matters.

Professor Roberts earned his B.A. in Economics from the University of California at San Diego, and his M.A. in Statistics and Ph.D. in Economics from the University of California at Berkeley.

Daniel Taylor is the Arthur Andersen Chaired Professor of Accounting at the Wharton School, and is director of the Wharton Forensic Analytics Lab. He is an award-winning researcher and teacher with extensive expertise on corporate disclosures, insider trading, and fraud prediction. He has published extensively on these topics in leading academic journals; led seminars at dozens of top business schools across the globe; and won numerous academic and industry awards.

Professor Taylor’s research is relevant practitioners and regulators seeking to understand, detect, and deter opportunistic and illicit activity in capital markets. His research frequently appears in the business media, and has been cited in rules and regulations promulgated by the SEC. Most recently, his research on insider trading was the impetus behind the SEC’s proposed rule changes to 10B5-1 trading plans; changes to Form 144 filings; the Holding Foreign Insiders Accountable Act; and multiple investigations by the SEC, DoJ, and FBI

Taylor enjoys putting his research into practice and has provided expert and consulting services related to best practices in corporate disclosure, 10B5-1 trading plans, statistical analysis of trading activity, and fraud prediction, and he has co-developed and licensed intellectual property related to parsing SEC filings. His consulting clients include the DoJ, hedge funds, plaintiff and defense firms, and a Big 4 auditor.

Taylor teaches a cutting-edge undergraduate course — Forensic Analytics — that applies state-of-the-art analytic tools to corporate disclosures, and teaches undergraduate and doctoral seminars on data analysis. His doctoral students have gone on to become faculty at a variety of leading business schools, including Stanford, MIT, and Chicago. He received his bachelor’s degree from University of Delaware, his master’s from Duke University, and his PhD from Stanford University.