INSTITUTE FOR PRIVATE CAPITAL - Key Persons
Job Titles:
- Program and Events Manager, IPC
Brooke is responsible for planning and producing the Institute for Private Capital's robust calendar of in-person events and workshops. Brooke brings to IPC experience planning meetings and events both on a national and local level. Before coming to IPC, Brooke worked in various event roles including a software consulting firm planning their trainings and events and as the Events Coordinator at the Office of Admissions at UNC. . She received her undergraduate degree from University of North Carolina at Greensboro.
Job Titles:
- VP & Chief Investment Officer, U.S. Steel
Bryan Lewis joined U. S. Steel in August 2019 as vice president and chief investment officer. He has executive responsibility for the company's global investments for both the defined contribution and defined benefit plans, as well as other related programs. Prior to that, he was the Chief Investment Officer of the Pennsylvania State Employees' Retirement System. Previously, Lewis served as executive director of the $20 billion Illinois State Universities Retirement System, where he led fund administration and investment management for two defined benefit plans and one defined contribution plan. Previously, Lewis spent six years as manager for the North Carolina Department of State Treasurer working on the state's retirement systems. He holds a MBA from the University of Miami and a bachelor's degree in economics from the University of Maryland College Park.
Job Titles:
- Research Associate
- Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Celine Fei is a postdoctoral research associate whose research interests include venture capital and private equity, entrepreneurship and fintech. She is most interested in studying the financing of entrepreneurial activities and understanding the intersection of public and private equity markets. Celine is a current Ph.D. student at the Toulouse School of Economics in Toulouse, France, from which she also received a master's degree in economics. She graduated summa cum laude from Central University of Finance and Economics in China with a bachelor's degree in economics and mathematics.
Job Titles:
- Associate
- Director, Senior Fellow, IPC Edward M. O'Herron Distinguished Scholar and Professor of Finance, University of North Carolina, Kenan - Flagler Business School
Christian Lundblad's research spans asset pricing, investment management, and international finance, with a specialization in emerging market development.
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 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, 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 also 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 the Executive MBA and OneMBA Teaching Excellence awards.
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.
Christopher Jones leads private equity research at ADIA, with 15 years of experience in the field. He is responsible for overseeing research, portfolio construction, strategy, and the integration of data science into the investment process. Reporting into the CIO, his work supports informed decision-making and contributes to the strategic direction of ADIA's private equity investments.
Job Titles:
- Distinguished Professor of Finance, UNC Kenan - Flagler Business School
Dr. Conrad teaches financial management and investments. She has won three teaching awards, research and service awards at UNC Kenan-Flagler. She is the former senior associate dean for academic affairs and area chair of finance.
She has served on the board of directors of the Financial Management Association, the Western Finance Association and the American Finance Association. She is a past president of the Financial Management Association and the current chair of its board of trustees.
She received her PhD and MBA from the University of Chicago and her BS from Butler University.
Job Titles:
- Associate Director of Research, Center for Real Estate Professor of Real Estate Finance, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
- Professor
Professor David Geltner has been at MIT since 2002 where he has held the George Macomber Chair and currently is Professor of Real Estate Finance in the Department of Urban Studies & Planning.
Geltner served as Academic Director of the MIT Center for Real Estate during 2003-08 and from 2008-14 as faculty chair of MIT's Master of Science in Real Estate Development (MSRED) program.
Geltner has served as Academic Advisor to the National Council of Real Estate Investment Fiduciaries (NCREIF), and as Director of MIT's Commercial Real Estate Data Laboratory which has developed pioneering commercial property price and investment performance indices based on transactions prices (including the Moody's/RCA CPPI, the NCREIF-based TBI, and the FTSE-NAREIT PureProperty® Indices). Geltner served from 1999-2012 as the External Academic Member of the Real Estate Investment Committee of the State Teachers Retirement System of Ohio (a pension plan sponsor with over $5 billion of directly managed real estate holdings).
Prior to MIT, Geltner was the REEAC Professor of Real Estate in the Finance Department of the College of Business Administration at the University of Cincinnati. Geltner received his PhD in 1989 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in the Civil Engineering Department in the field of infrastructure finance & economics. He also has degrees in urban studies from Carnegie-Mellon University and the University of Michigan.
Job Titles:
- McGurn Professor of Real Estate and Director
- Professor
David Ling is the McGurn Professor of Real Estate and Director, Master of Science in Real Estate Program, Hough Graduate School of Business at the University of Florida. He has previously been a Visiting Professor at Hong Kong University and a Research Fellow at the University of Cambridge in addition to the Dean of the Weimer School of Advanced Studies in Real Estate and Land Economics. His research focuses on real estate finance, investments, and taxation and housing economics. David received a BSBA from Central Michigan University and both an MBA and PhD from The Ohio State University.
Job Titles:
- Professor of Finance at New York University Leonard N. Stern School of Business
Dorothy is responsible for IPC member communications and relationship management, and oversees all external-facing IPC events. She was formerly IPC's Program & Events Manager. Before coming to IPC, Dorothy worked at Boston University in the Office of the Provost, where she served as Administrative Coordinator and Visual Arts Specialist for the BU Arts Initiative. She received her master's degree in Arts Administration from Boston University's Metropolitan College.
Job Titles:
- Expert on Financial Economics
- Professor of Finance, University of North Carolina, Kenan - Flagler Business School
Jacob Sagi is an expert on financial economics, decision theory and real estate finance. His current research interests include risk and return in commercial real estate assets and related securities markets, text-analysis, the intersection of asset pricing with macroeconomics and real options. His decision theory interests include the modeling of decision making under uncertainty, unforeseen contingencies and reference-dependent choice. His research has appeared in such leading publications as Econometrica, The Journal of Economic Theory, The Journal of Finance, The Journal of Financial Economics and The Review of Financial Studies. Dr. Sagi's research has received numerous distinctions. His work on closed-end funds with Martin Cherkes and Richard Stanton, published in the Review of Financial Studies, received the Best Paper award at the 2006 Utah Winter Finance Conference, one of the most selective conferences in financial economics. His solo work on property-specific risk in commercial real estate was similarly honored in 2017. Dr. Sagi previously served on the faculty at the Owen Graduate School of Management at Vanderbilt and the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley.
He received his PhD in financial economics and a PhD in physics from the University of British Columbia. He earned his B.Sc. with honors in physics from the University of Toronto.
Job Titles:
- Founding Partner
- Finance & Real Estate, Indiana University Visiting Professor, Johns Hopkins Carey School of Business
Jeffrey D. Fisher, Ph.D. is a founding Partner in the Pavonis Group, LLC and Director of Research and board member with RealNex. He is also President of the Homer Hoyt Institute, a Professor Emeritus of Real Estate at the Indiana University Kelley School of Business, Visiting Professor at Johns Hopkins University and a Research and Educational Consultant to the National Council of Real Estate Investment Fiduciaries (NCREIF), and serves on the advisory board of Sterling Valuation.
Dr. Fisher has served on the board of directors of the Pension Real Estate Association, the National Council of Real Estate Investment Fiduciaries (NCREIF) and the Real Estate Research Institute (RERI). He served as President of the American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association (AREUEA) in 1990 and the 1986-87 Chairman of the Real Estate Center Directors and Chairholders' Association.
Professor Fisher has a doctorate in Real Estate from Ohio State University
Job Titles:
- Director of Public & Private Partnerships at the Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise
- Director of Public & Private Partnerships, Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise
Melissa Waller is Director of Public & Private Partnerships at the Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise. In this role, she works to develop partnerships with government entities, industry leaders and academic institutions aligned with the Institute's mission and those of its affiliated research centers.
Previously Waller served as the former Deputy Treasurer and Chief of Staff for the North Carolina Department of State Treasury, where she successfully oversaw Department strategic planning, operations, and public-policy implementation, along with a staff of more than 400 employees. The North Carolina Retirement Systems, the pension fund for the state, is the tenth largest public pension fund in the United States, with assets in excess of $100 billion.
Waller's background includes over 20 years of private and public-sector financial industry experience, including 15 years in the banking sector with Wachovia/Wells Fargo. She currently also serves as Executive Program Director for the National Institute of Public Finance within the NAST Foundation and is the President of the AIF Institute.
Waller graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with a B.A. in journalism and mass communication and a concentration in instructional design.
Job Titles:
- Member of StepStone
- Partner, StepStone
Michael Elio is a member of StepStone's private equity team, leading the middle- and large-market buyouts and secondary funds sector teams. He is the Portfolio Manager for StepStone Private Markets and oversees the portfolio construction for many of the firm's largest advisory and SMA clients. Prior to joining StepStone in 2014, Mike was a managing director at ILPA, where he led programs around research, standards, and industry strategic priorities.
Nancy Wallace is the Lisle and Roslyn Payne Chair in Real Estate Capital Markets; Professor and Chair of the Real Estate Group and Co-Chair, Fisher Center for Real Estate and Urban Economics at the University of California at Berkeley. Since 1986, Nancy has held numerous positions at the University in addition to serving on the Model Validation Council of the Federal Reserve System, the Financial Research Advisory Committee of the Office of Financial Research, and the Board of Director of the American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association. Her research focuses on housing price indices and models to monitor residential real estate price movements, mortgage prepayment and pricing models, mortgage contract design, option pricing models for pricing commercial and retail real estate leases and executive stock option valuation. Nancy received both a BA and PhD from the University of Michigan.
Job Titles:
- IPC Research Initiatives
- Research Director, IPC Weatherspoon Distinguished Professor of Finance, UNC Kenan - Flagler Business School
Job Titles:
- Student in Finance, UNC Kenan - Flagler Business School
Job Titles:
- Chairman in Real Estate Capital Markets
Roslyn Payne Chair in Real Estate Capital Markets; Professor and Chair of the Real Estate Group; Co-Chair, Fisher Center for Real Estate and Urban Economics, University of California at Berkeley
Job Titles:
- Chairman Professor
- Zable Endowed Chair
Rossen Valkanov is the Zable Endowed Chair in Management and Professor of Finance at the Rady School of Management, and inaugural Co-Director of the new Master's in Finance program. He received his Ph.D. in economics from Princeton University (1999) and graduated summa cum laude from the University of California, Irvine with a BA in economics (1995). His main research interests are in the areas of empirical finance, financial econometrics, financial forecasting, risk management, portfolio allocation, and real estate. Professor Valkanov has authored numerous articles and book chapters. His research has been published in some of the most prestigious peer-reviewed journals such as the Journal of Finance, Journal of Financial Economics, and Review of Financial Studies. Empirical methods and big data applications based on his research-such as Mixed Data Sampling Regressions (MIDAS), parametric portfolio approaches, and forecasting procedures-have received significant interest from the finance industry practitioners. He is currently Editor of the Journal of Empirical Finance.
Professor Valkanov has taught at UCLA, UC Berkeley, Princeton, and various other institutions in the US and abroad. He is an award winning educator and teaches regularly in the Masters of Finance, Full-Time MBA, Flex MBA, Evening MBA, and Executive MBA programs at UCSD. He is a member of many professional organizations, including the American Finance Association, the American Economic Association, the Econometric Society, and the American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association.
Job Titles:
- Executive Director
- Executive Director, IPC
Sarah Franks is Executive Director at the Institute for Private Capital, responsible for managing and developing relationships with current and prospective IPC members and partners.
Sarah has an extensive background in business development and finance, joining IPC from Absolute Strategy Research, a global independent macro research provider. She began her career as a research analyst with the Global Investment Strategy group at Merrill Lynch, working in London and in New York.
Sarah graduated from the University of Virginia's McIntire School of Commerce.
Job Titles:
- Chairman
- Chairman and Founding Partner, IPC
- President and CEO of UAI Technology, Inc
Dr. Maier is president and CEO of UAI Technology, Inc., whose divisions include Phoenix-Hecht and University Conference Services. Phoenix-Hecht, founded in 1969, is a financial services market research firm. Phoenix-Hecht learned much of its craft through a long-term relationship with The Gallup Organization, where it was responsible for all syndicated market research done for the financial services industry under the Gallup name. University Conference Services is an executive education company. It coordinates the UNC programs for Health Care and Pension Management directed at mid-sized plan sponsors. Dr. Steven Maier is also the Chairman of the Board of Cutting Edge Information, LLC, a market research firm directed at the Pharmaceutical industry.
Dr. Maier serves as Chairman of the Institute for Private Capital (IPC) at the Kenan-Flagler Business School. Dr. Maier has been involved (either as a principal investor, officer or member of the Board) with some 30 separate startups or acquisitions, including companies in the software, education, market research, and consulting sectors. For 13 years Dr. Maier was a member of the tenured faculty of the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University, including being Area Coordinator (Department Chairman) for Finance and Economics. He is a graduate of Cornell University and holds an M.S. and Ph.D. from Stanford University.
Job Titles:
- Director of the Center for Real Estate Finance
Stijn Van Nieuwerburgh is the Director of the Center for Real Estate Finance Research and David S. Loeb Professor of Finance at New York University Leonard N. Stern School of Business, which he joined in 2003. His research lies in the intersection of housing, asset pricing, and macroeconomics. One strand of his work studies how financial market liberalization in the mortgage market relaxed households' down payment constraints, and how that affected the macro-economy, and the prices of stocks and bonds. In this area, he has also worked on regional housing prices and on household's mortgage choice. He currently studies real estate price formation, the impact of foreign buyers on the market, and mortgage market design. He has served as an advisor to the Norwegian Minister of Finance, and has been a visiting scholar at to the Central Bank of Belgium, the New York and Minneapolis Federal Reserve Banks, the Swedish House of Finance, and the International Center for Housing Risk.
Stijn has a BA from the University of Gent (Belgium), and an MA, MSC and PhD from Stanford University.
Job Titles:
- Chief Investment Officer for the Missouri State Employees' Retirement System
- Chief Investment Officer, Missouri State Employees' Retirement System
Prior to beginning his career in the public sector, Mr. Carlson served as an infantry sergeant and squad leader in the United States Marine Corps and Reserves.
He holds an MBA from Drake University and a B.A. in mass communications from Grand View College. He is also a Chartered Alternative Investment Analyst and Certified Treasury Professional.
Job Titles:
- Research Associate
- Research Associate, IPC
Vedant is a research associate at the Institute for Private Capital. He majored in mathematics, statistics and economics from Jadavpur University and earned his master's degree in economics from Columbia University.
Wendy Hu is responsible for PERC-governed academic research using Burgiss data in the area of Private Capital. She joined PERC and Burgiss in 2013. Prior to this, she was a senior quantitative researcher at Permal Asset Management, where she carried out research of fund of funds performance and risk management. Prior to Permal, she was a co-portfolio manager at Zebra Capital Management. She received her Ph.D. in finance from the University of Florida in 2007 and her MA in finance from Beijing University.
Job Titles:
- Research Associate
- Research Associate, IPC
William is a research associate at the Institute for Private Capital. He majored in mathematics and economics from the University of Wisconsin - Madison and earned his master's degree in economics from the University of California - Davis. He has published both theoretical and empirical economics research.