The founder of the Women’s Leadership Community at Red Hat, Alexander received a 2015 Stevie Silver Women in Business award in recognition of her leadership in advancing opportunities for women in technology. She serves on the executive committee for the Council for Entrepreneurial Development (CED); the board of directors for Raleigh Chamber of Commerce and Innovate Raleigh; and the board of advisors for the Bull City Ventures, NC State University Poole College of Management and SoarTriangle

Alexander joined Red Hat in 2001 and served in the office of general counsel until mid 2006, most recently as assistant general counsel and assistant secretary. She received her JD degree from the Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason University.

Autor has received numerous awards for both his scholarship—the National Science Foundation CAREER Award, an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Fellowship, the Sherwin Rosen Prize for outstanding contributions in the field of Labor Economics, the Andrew Carnegie Fellowship—and for his teaching, including the MIT MacVicar Faculty Fellowship.

In 2017, Autor was recognized by Bloomberg as one of the 50 people who defined global business. In March of 2019, he was christened “Twerpy MIT Economist, David Autor” by John Oliver, host of Last Week Tonight, during a segment on automation and employment. Autor is currently determining how to merchandise this title.

Specifically, he investigates how institutional factors shape the perception of firms by critical stakeholders. His research also explores the antecedents and consequences of human capital mobility and how different forms of employee movement impact a firm’s ability to compete with rivals.

Dr. Bermiss teaches courses in people analytics, managing human capital, leading for impact and organizational theory and design

He is a Fellow at the Filene Institute where he leads the research efforts of the “War for Talent” Center of Excellence.

His award-winning research has been published in the Academy of Management Journal, Administrative Science Quarterly, Organization Science, Strategic Management Journal and Research in Organizational Behavior. His research has been highlighted by Harvard Business Review, The Wall Street Journal and National Public Radio.

He was honored as a Poets & Quants 2018 Top Undergraduate Professor at the University of Texas at Austin, where he served on the faculty before joining UNC Kenan-Flagler.

Before entering academia, Dr. Bermiss worked for Deloitte Consulting in New York City.

He received his PhD and MS management and organizations from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, and his BS in chemical engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

During the COVID19 pandemic, he continued to serve as president of Emergency Medicine and was named chair of the COVID Task Force for Envision. Envision’s CEO also appointed him to the role of executive sponsor of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI). In 2021, Adam became Envision’s Chief Impact Officer while continuing his pandemic response and DEI roles. Adam frequently serves as a medical contributor in print media and on national television. He has been featured on CBS News, CNN, BBC, BNC News, and Yahoo Finance. In 2022, Adam left Envision to start ABIG, a healthcare strategic advisory firm and is a Professor of Practice at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill in the school of business.

She previously served as the chief of staff to the former CEO of Mastercard after several years leading strategic engagement, thought leadership and executive communications for that company. She also ran her own strategy consultancy and was an adjunct associate professor at the NYU Robert F. Wagner School of Public Service, a vice president of global communications and creative services at several marketing agencies, and a reporter for Advertising Age.

Brooke holds a Master of Arts in media studies from the Schools of Public Engagement at The New School and a Bachelor of Arts in sociology and anthropology from Middlebury College.

He has worked in both the public and private sectors focusing on the intersection between financial markets and economic fundamentals. During the Obama Administration Gerald was Deputy Assistant Secretary for Macroeconomic Analysis at the U.S. Department of Treasury where he helped formulate and evaluate the impact of policy proposals on the U.S. economy. Prior to Treasury, he co-managed a global macro fund at Ziff Brothers Investments.

Gerald holds a bachelor’s of science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a Ph.D. in Economics from Harvard University and is a contributing author to 30-Second Money as well as a co-author of Political Cycles and the Macroeconomy.

As the youngest state Senator, Dave is a new voice and brings a fresh perspective to Raleigh in order to better represent every North Carolinian. He believes education is the foundation for success, that everyone deserves an opportunity to make a living, and that those who serve causes greater than themselves deserve our respect, gratitude, and admiration. One of his first acts as Senator was to secure passage of relief to North Carolinians suffering from the economic effects of COVID-19.

Dave developed a passion for his community early. He skipped his Eighth Grade graduation ceremony to serve as a page to the late Rep. Arlie Culp in the N.C. House of Representatives. Recognizing Dave’s commitment, Culp called Dave an “eternal page” because of his dedication. Years later, while attending the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, Dave put his passion for service to work, getting involved on campus and eventually being elected Student Body President and serving on the Board of Trustees.

Prior to joining the Milken Institute, Fanarakis helped co-lead the University of Maryland’s Center for Financial Policy, a think tank focused on topics at the intersection of financial markets and regulatory policy. While in this role, she also launched her own small business, Senza Tempo, a Los Angeles-made, sustainably-minded women’s luxury apparel brand. As a founder, she regularly wrote, spoke, was quoted in the press on a variety of policy issues facing the apparel industry, advocated for domestic manufacturing, and testified to the California State Senate on behalf of other domestic apparel brands. Prior to this, she spent over a decade working on Wall Street in foreign exchange trading and investment management for such firms as Merrill Lynch and Citibank. She holds a BA in economics and political science from the University of North Carolina (UNC) at Chapel Hill and an MBA from UNC’s Kenan-Flagler School of Business. She also holds an MS in international economics from Suffolk University.

An award-winning teacher and researcher and academic leader, Dr. Frank was named dean of UNC Kenan-Flagler effective Aug. 15, 2023.

She is a Triple Tar Heel, an academic fellow at the UNC Tax Center and has taught in the Master of Accounting Program.

Dr. Frank returns to UNC Kenan-Flagler from the University of Virginia Darden School of Business, where she was senior associate dean for faculty development, John Tyler Professor of Business Administration.

She also was co-founder and academic director of the Institute for Business in Society. In that role she led the development of the P3 Impact Award, which recognizes leading cross-sector collaboration to improve communities around the world, in partnership with the U.S. Department of State’s Office of Global Partnerships and Concordia. Her passion for cross-sector collaboration also led her to establish the Tri-Sector Leadership Fellows program, which brings together graduate students from business, law and public policy.

She also served on the faculty of University of Chicago Booth School of Business, where she received its Phoenix Award in recognition of the faculty who, in addition to classroom responsibilities, has greatly enriched the learning experience of campus students.

Dr. Frank served as a board director and chairperson of the audit committee of a small publicly traded company, The Female Health Company, for 14 years, which merged with a biotech company in 2016 to become Veru Inc. The medical device company’s mission was to empower women, most of whom were from developing economies, to protect themselves against HIV and AIDS.

She practiced as a CPA and senior tax consultant for Arthur Andersen in Washington, D.C, before she returned to UNC Kenan-Flagler to enroll in the PhD Program in accounting.

She received her PhD, Master of Accounting and BSBA from UNC Kenan-Flagler.

He teaches courses in organizational behavior, leadership and the complexities of middle management.

Dr. Hofmann served as associate dean for the full-time MBA Program, area chair of organizational behavior and senior associate dean of academic affairs.

A specific focus of his research is the impact of leadership and organizational culture on safety and errors in organizations that operate in high-risk environments. He has edited two scholarly books on these topics, including “Errors in Organizations” with Michael Frese.

In recognition of his work’s applied implications, he received the American Psychological Association’s Decade of Behavior Research Award in 2006.

He received a Fulbright Senior Scholar Award to study errors and safety issues in organizations at the University of Giessen in Germany, and Robert Wood Johnson Foundation grant to investigate error management and organizational learning on nursing units.

He has served on two National Research Council/National Academy of Engineering committees. The first investigated the causes of the BP Deepwater Horizon accident, and the second focused on how to improve safety culture in the offshore industry.

Dr. Hofmann has presented his research or conducted executive development sessions in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Netherlands, Singapore, Spain, Switzerland, UAE and the U.K.

He earned his PhD in industrial and organizational psychology from Pennsylvania State University, his master’s degree in industrial and organizational psychology from the University of Central Florida, and his bachelor’s degree in business administration from Furman University.

He previously served as the institute’s director of business development and finance. Prior to joining the institute, David was director of economic development and engagement for UNC’s Renaissance Computing Institute (RENCI), where he led the formation of two public-private partnerships: the National Consortium for Data Science and the iRODS Consortium.

David has a master’s degree in international relations from the University of Virginia, and a bachelor’s degree in political science from the University of Missouri-Columbia.

Kevin joined Fifth Third in 2005 as senior vice president and head of national corporate health care lending. In January 2009, he was named senior vice president and managing director of large corporate and specialized lending, a role in which he oversaw international and large corporate finance in addition to national health care finance. He most recently served as head of corporate banking.

Before joining Fifth Third, Kevin served as commissioner of the Tennessee Department of Financial Institutions, responsible for overseeing all Tennessee-chartered depository and non-depository
financial institutions. Before that, he was co-founder and executive vice president of MediSphere Health Partners Inc., a private specialty physician practice management company. He began his career as group vice president for health care lending with SunTrust Bank Inc.

Much of his research focuses on venture capital and private equity organizations. (This research is summarized in Boulevard of Broken Dreams, The Money of Invention, Patent Capital, and The Venture Capital Cycle.) He also examines policies on innovation and how they impact firm strategies. (That research is discussed in the books The Architecture of Innovation, The Comingled Code, and Innovation and Its Discontents.) He co-directs the National Bureau of Economic Research’s Productivity, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship Program and serves as co-editor of their publication, Innovation Policy and the Economy. He founded and runs the Private Capital Research Institute, a nonprofit devoted to encouraging access to data and research, and has been a frequent leader of and participant in the World Economic Forum projects and events.

In the 1993-1994 academic year, he introduced an elective course for second-year MBAs. Over the past two decades, “Venture Capital and Private Equity” has consistently been one of the largest elective courses at Harvard Business School. (The course materials are collected in Venture Capital and Private Equity: A Casebook, now in its fifth edition, and the textbook Venture Capital, Private Equity, and the Financing of Entrepreneurship.) He also established and teaches doctoral courses on entrepreneurship, teaches in the Owners-Presidents-Managers Program, and leads executive courses on private equity. He is the Jacob H. Schiff Professor.

Among other recognitions, he is the winner of the Swedish government’s Global Entrepreneurship Research Award and Cheng Siwei Award for Venture Capital Research. For information on Josh’s compensated outside activities, please see www.bella-pm.com.

He teaches courses on macroeconomics for managers, investment management, including mutual and hedge fund analysis, and global financial markets, including emerging market finance and development.

Dr. Lundblad serves as area chair of finance, associate dean of the PhD Program, director of research at the Frank Hawkins Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise and director of the Center for Excellence in Investment Management. He holds a courtesy appointment as a special-term professor at the People’s Bank of China School of Finance at Tsinghua University in Beijing.

His research has been published in top academic journals such as the Journal of Finance, Review of Financial Studies and Journal of Financial Economics. He is associate editor at the Journal of Banking and Finance and Financial Management and previously served as an associate editor for the Journal of Finance.

He served as a financial economist at the Federal Reserve Board in Washington, D.C., where he advised the Board of Governors on international financial market developments.

Dr. Lundblad is the recipient of  Executive MBA and OneMBA Teaching Excellence awards.

He served as associate dean of the PhD Program, area chair of finance and director of research for the Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise.

He received a PhD in financial economics and a master’s degree in economics from Duke University. He earned his BA in economics and English literature with highest honors from Washington University in St. Louis.

Frances has over 20 years of experience spanning strategy, technology, and healthcare and is passionate about building market-leading companies. She has spent the last decade working for and advising mid-sized healthcare IT companies, including past executive roles at Connecture, a market leader in online health plan enrollment software, and Aesynt, a leading hospital pharmacy automation company. In between executive roles, Frances consults independently on strategy, market, and M&A.

Frances began her healthcare focus as part of McKesson’s Corporate Strategy and Business Development Group. Prior to McKesson, Frances was a management consultant at Bain & Company and CGI.

Frances graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Government and International Studies from the University of Notre Dame and was a Forte Fellow and Dean’s Scholar at the University of North Carolina’s Kenan-Flagler Business School, where she earned a Master of Business Administration degree.

She has several research projects looking at income inequality and the role of firms. She also has researched ESOP (employee share ownership plans) and employee stock options and their impact on labor productivity, wages and turnover.

Her research agenda is concentrated at the juncture of finance and labor economics. She is interested in how decisions studied in finance impact employee stakeholders – specifically how those effects are reflected in firm performance and, hence, corporate finance decisions.

Her work has been published in the American Economic Review, Journal of Finance, Review of Financial Studies and Journal of Financial Economics.

Paige worked at The Center for Clean Air Policy, an independent, nonprofit think tank working on climate and air quality policy at the local, U.S. national and international levels.

She received her Ph.D. and MBA from the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan and her B.A. from Dartmouth College.

From 2014 to 2017, Raskin was the second-in-command at the Treasury Department, where she was known for her pursuit of innovative solutions to enhance Americans’ shared prosperity, the resilience of the country’s critical financial infrastructure, and the defense of consumer safeguards in the financial marketplace. She was a champion of cybersecurity in the financial sector both nationally and internationally, helping to elevate this issue with corporate executives and boards. Her efforts, including leading the development of the G-7 Fundamental Elements of Cybersecurity for the Financial Sector, contributed to a more secure and resilient financial sector in the face of increasingly frequent and sophisticated threats.

Earlier, Raskin was a governor of the Federal Reserve Board and a member of the Federal Open Market Committee, where she helped conduct the nation’s monetary policy and promote financial stability. She also served as commissioner of financial regulation for the State of Maryland from 2007 to 2010. She and her agency were responsible for regulating Maryland’s financial institutions during the height of the Great Recession.

As a Rubenstein Fellow, Raskin collaborated with faculty across the university to improve understanding of markets and regulation. She led an agenda focused on shaping a new relationship between regulation and resilience in financial markets and deepening understanding of the management of systemic risks from diverse sources such as financial instruments, cyber breaches, and climate events. She also mentored and advised undergraduate and graduate students on careers in the public sector, guest-lectured in courses, participated in public events, and led collaborative research projects.

Raskin, a graduate of Harvard Law School, has throughout her career worked across public and private sectors in both legal and regulatory capacities. Her work has centered on financial institutions, financial market utilities, consumer protection issues, the adaptation of financial regulatory tools as they pertain to climate risk, bolstered prudential standards, and resolution planning. Her private sector experience includes having served as managing director at the Promontory Financial Group, general counsel of the WorldWide Retail Exchange, and at the law firms of Arnold and Porter and Mayer Brown. Earlier in her career she served as banking counsel for the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs.

She currently is a member, with Professors Lawrence Baxter and Gina-Gail Fletcher, of the Regenerative Crisis Response Committee, a group of leading experts in law, economics, and public policy focused on the use of fiscal, monetary, and regulatory policies in a climate-transitioned economy.

Roberts is a longtime advocate for higher education and for the state of North Carolina. He served as a member of the UNC System Board of Governors and as the chair of its budget committee. He has held positions on the State Board of Community Colleges, North Carolina’s Banking Commission and the Board of Visitors at Duke University’s Sanford School of Public Policy, where, for the last five years he taught public budgeting to graduate students. Roberts has also served as a board member at the Golden LEAF Foundation, which invests in educational and economic opportunities for North Carolina’s rural communities. He was honored to serve as state budget director under Gov. Pat McCrory from 2014 to 2016.

Before serving as interim chancellor, he was the co-founder and managing partner of SharpVue Capital, a North Carolina investment firm that specializes in stewarding institutional funds and growing local economies.

Prior to his General Assembly service, Ross was Mayor of the City of Burlington where he worked extensively on Economic Development. In the General Assembly he chairs both the Commerce Committee and the Finance Committee and continues to work on Economic Development.

With more than 20 years of experience as an operator and consultant, Ms. Sjoholm identifies, develops and implements creative solutions to overcome the most complex business challenges across supply planning, inventory management, sales and operations planning (“S&OP”), procurement, budgeting and strategic sourcing. A strategic thinker with deep retail industry knowledge, she drives change and performance improvement as an advisor to clients.

Notable client engagements include leading a mission-critical COVID-19 project for the State of Rhode Island, with ownership of the program’s organizational structure including supply chain, inventory management, modeling and more than 40 resources. Ms. Sjoholm built a complex network of vaccine administration locations and scaled solutions ranging from high-volume “mass vax” sites to bespoke clinics for home-bound residents. She established a program that ranked top three nationally in all metrics by age. Ms. Sjoholm also served as a trusted consultant and strategic advisor to a global consumer products manufacturing company, aligning three business units on a single set of S&OP processes, Key Performance Indicators (“KPIs”) and delivery requirements.

Prior to joining FTI Consulting, Ms. Sjoholm was the Head of Global Operations for Marmot Mountain and ExOfficio at Newell, a $250 million apparel company. One of her most notable achievements was developing and implementing an organizational restructuring, which included an offshore transition to China and re-direction of resources to resolve bottlenecks and mitigate business risk while simultaneously reducing costs. She created a roadmap of key actions and critical milestones required to improve on-time delivery, achieving 500 basis points improvement in year one and setting strategic initiatives to achieve an additional 1,500 basis points improvement over three years.

Prior to Marmot Mountain, Ms. Sjoholm held key supply chain leadership roles at both Restoration Hardware and Pottery Barn. While at Restoration Hardware, she led a vendor collaboration program across 10 strategic vendors for the $2 billion home-furnishings company. The efforts resulted in a 26% reduction in receipts, $500,000 savings in invoice discrepancies and headcount reductions.

Dr. Staats integrates work in operations management and human behavior to understand how and under what conditions individuals, teams and organizations can perform their best. His field-based research in such settings as healthcare and software services, consulting, call centers and retail, uses archival data and field experiments to provide an interdisciplinary perspective to improve both operations’ theory and practice.

He is the author of the award-winning book “Never Stop Learning: Stay Relevant, Reinvent Yourself and Thrive” (Harvard Business Review Press, 2018). He shares original research, outlines why success demands continuous learning and provides a practical framework for becoming a dynamic learner.

Dr. Staats leads the Center for the Business of Health, a cross-disciplinary initiative targeting some of the biggest healthcare challenges of our time. UNC Kenan-Flagler is leading efforts to grow this initiative, which is by design a pan-university effort that draws upon the wide health sciences strengths across campus, including our top-ranked schools of pharmacy, public health, nursing, dentistry, arts and sciences, medicine and business. By building on this collaborative powerhouse of resources and talent through the Center for the Business of Health, UNC Kenan-Flagler seeks to distinguish both itself and the University as leading national voices in education, research and thought leadership in the business of healthcare.

He received the 2016 Warren Bennis Prize for his article “Why Organizations Don’t Learn” in Harvard Business Review. The award honors the previous year’s best article on leadership. He publishes frequently in leading academic journals and practitioner-focused journals. He is an associate editor at Management Science, Manufacturing & Service Operations Management and Production and Operations Management.

He received his DBA in technology and operations management and MBA from Harvard Business School, and his BS with honors in electrical engineering and BA with high honors in Plan II and Spanish from The University of Texas at Austin.

She is also Professor Emeritus of Management and Organization at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business. Her research program has been devoted to investigating how organizations and their members cope with uncertainty and how organizations can be designed to be more reliable and resilient. She has investigated organizational safety, high reliability and resilience practices in oil exploration and production, wildland firefighting, and in healthcare. She has been awarded multiple research awards and her research has appeared widely in management and healthcare journals. A recent book co-authored with the late Dr. Robert Wears is titled Still Not Safe: Patient Safety and the Middle Managing of American Medicine (Oxford University Press, 2020). She is currently serving as a member of the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine Transportation Research Board Committee on Emerging Trends in Aviation Safety.

He teaches courses in global operations, global execution models and global supply chain strategy and management. Dr. Swaminathan has published more than 100 articles on these topics and is the author of “Indian Economic Superpower: Fiction or Future?”

He has received numerous awards, including the National Science Foundation CAREER Award, George Nicholson Prize, Schwabacher Fellowship and Weatherspoon Distinguished Research and Excellence in Teaching awards.

He has been a principal investigator on grants from the National Science Foundation, Obama-Singh Knowledge Initiative and U.S. Department of Education.

He is an inducted fellow of the three prominent professional organizations: INFORMS (The Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences), POMS (The Production and Operations Management Society) and MSOM (Manufacturing and Service Operations Management Society), a recognition of his lifetime intellectual contributions.

A fellow of the Academic Leadership Program in the Institute of Arts and Humanities at UNC, Dr. Swaminathan has served UNC Kenan-Flagler in many leadership roles including senior associate dean for academic affairs, associate dean for the Global OneMBA Program and UNC-Tsinghua Dual Degree EMBA Program, director of the Global Business Center and chair of the operations area.

He has also served as vice president of INFORMS and MSOM society and as president of POMS College of Supply Chain Management. He currently serves as a department editor for Management Science and Production and Operations Management journals.

Dr. Swaminathan has consulted with numerous firms over the last two decades, including AGCO, Agilent, CEMEX, Cisco, IBM, Kaiser, McKinsey, Nokia, Public Health Institute, Railinc, Samsung, Sara Lee, Schaeffler Group, TVS Motors, UNICEF and the U.S. Navy.

His work with UNICEF led to major changes in the global supply chain planning and execution for Plumpy’Nut (RUTF) into Africa. His work to configure-to-order assembly using vanilla boxes impacted the electronics industry in the 1990s.

He received his PhD and master’s in industrial administration from GSIA (now Tepper) at Carnegie Mellon University and his bachelor’s degree in computer science and engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi.

He is the recipient of several honors, including the 2016 Best in Business award for Columns and Commentary from the Society of American Business Editors and Writers. He is the author of the national bestselling book Hit Makers: How to Succeed in an Age of Distraction, which has been translated into a dozen languages.

Following a successful initial public offering of Citizens in September 2014, Van Saun has led the bank through a dramatic transformation journey, including the build out of the Commercial Bank, the launch of Citizens Private Bank, and the expansion into New York Metro through the strategic acquisition of HSBC’s east coast branches and Investors Bancorp.

From 1997 to 2008, Van Saun held a number of senior positions with Bank of New York and later Bank of New York Mellon, including Vice Chairman and Chief Financial Officer. Earlier in his career, he held senior positions with Deutsche Bank, Wasserstein Perella Group and Kidder Peabody & Co.

Van Saun has served on several boards in both the U.S. and the U.K. He is currently a director of Moody’s Corporation, a member of The Clearing House Supervisory Board and serves on the board of the Partnership for Rhode Island.