Center Leadership

LEADERS IN BUSINESS & ACADEMIA

Lemma W. Senbet, Director
William E. Mayer Chair Professor of Finance
PhD, University at Buffalo, SUNY
MBA, UCLA
Senbet serves as academic head of the center; responsible for providing vision and strategy 

Dr. Senbet is the William E. Mayer Chair Professor of Finance and was chair of the Smith School’s finance department, 1998-2006, and his tenure saw rapid transformation of the department into world class. His widely cited publications have appeared in the Journal of Finance, Review of Financial Studies, Journal of Business, and other leading academic journals. He has received numerous honors and professional recognitions. He has been a director of the American Finance Association and served as President of the Western Finance Association. He is an inducted Fellow of the Financial Management Association International and a member of the Financial Economists Roundtable. He was awarded an honorary doctor of letters Honoris Causa by Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia’s flagship institution of higher learning. Senbet has advised the World Bank, the IMF, the UN, and other institutions on issues of financial sector reforms and capital market development. He has served as an independent director for The Fortis Funds and currently is an independent director for The Hartford Funds. Senbet has also served on over a dozen editorial boards, including the Journal of Finance (12 years), Financial Management (20 years), Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis (7 years), and served as executive editor of Financial Management (6 years). He is currently finance area editor for Journal of International Business Studies. Senbet has produced a string of doctoral students and placed them in major universities, including 

Clifford Rossi, Managing Director
Tyser Teaching Fellow
PhD, Cornell University
Rossi serves as administrative head of the center 

Dr. Rossi is a Tyser Teaching Fellow of Finance and serves as managing director of the Center for Financial Policy. Rossi has nearly 25 years experience in banking and government, having held senior executive roles in risk management at several of the largest financial services companies. His most recent position was Chief Risk Officer for Consumer Lending at Citigroup where he was intimately involved in TARP funding and stress tests performed on Citi. He also helped start a statistical arbitrage unit at Citi and helped integrate market and credit risk analytics across Citi’s mortgage portfolios. While there he was responsible for overseeing a $200B global mortgage portfolio with 700 employees under his direction. He also served as Chief Credit Officer at Washington Mutual (WaMu) and as Chief Risk Officer at Countrywide Bank. Previous to these assignments, he held senior positions at Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae and worked for a number of years at the Treasury Department and Office of Thrift Supervision working on key policy issues affecting depositories. Before permanently joining Smith, he served as an adjunct professor for 8 years and has a number of publications on banking industry topics. 

William Longbrake, Executive-in-Residence
PhD, University of Maryland
Longbrake serves as senior policy advisor to the center 

Dr. Longbrake has extensive experience in finance, macroeconomics and monetary policy, risk management, housing, public policy and academia, government, serving both the public and private sectors. As an executive-in-residence at the Smith School, Longbrake works on a variety of business, policy, and governance issues with faculty, students, business leaders, government policymakers, and executives of not-for-profit organizations. He also serves on the boards of directors of First Financial Northwest, a community bank located in Renton, Washington; the Federal Home Loan Bank of Seattle; and the Washington Financial League. Longbrake is a member of several committees of the American Bankers Association, including those for government relations, governance and mortgage markets. He serves on the boards of trustees of Auburn Theological Seminary; the College of Wooster; and is president of the Intiman Theatre Foundation. He is president and chairman of the board of trustees of Lift Up Africa, a charitable organization that finances humanitarian and economic development initiatives on the continent of Africa, and is president and chairman of the board of trustees of the Longbrake Family Foundation. In the academic sector, Longbrake has published extensively and has taught courses in business administration and finance. In 2007, he received the Distinguished Alumnus of the Year award from the Smith School. Longbrake is active in numerous academic, business, and community service organizations, particularly those involving issues surrounding affordable housing and education. He chairs the Washington State Citizens Commission for Review of Tax Preferences. He is a member of the Governor’s Council of Economic Advisors for Washington State, a member of the University of Washington Business School Advisory Board and a member of the Smith School’s Board of Visitors. He is chairman emeritus of the Financial Services Roundtable’s Housing Policy Council and former vice chair of Washington Mutual, Inc. 

Steve Wallenstein
Director, Directors’ Institute
Senior Fellow of Finance
MA, Harvard University & JD, Yale Law School
Wallenstein heads the newly established Directors’ Institute, which is linked with the center 

Mr. Wallenstein is director of the Directors’ Institute at the Smith School, an ongoing series to address the corporate governance failures of diligence, ethics and controls in corporate America. Wallenstein is a recognized expert in corporate governance and best practices for publicly traded companies in the US and abroad. From 1998 to 2009 he was a faculty member at the Fuqua School of Business and Duke Law School, founded the Duke Directors’ Education Institute (DEI) in 2002, and established the Duke Global Capital Markets Center (GCMC) in 1998, a collaborative venture between Fuqua and Duke Law. Wallenstein is an expert on emerging markets, having spent 15 years as Senior Counsel and Senior Investment Officer at the International Finance Corporation in Washington, D.C. He was responsible for structuring and negotiating international project finance, privatizations and capital markets transactions in Eastern Europe, Latin America, and Asia. Wallenstein, who speaks fluent Portuguese, maintains close ties with Brazil where he taught law and development at the Catholic University in Rio de Janeiro, as well as a course on the Global Financial Crisis at Fundacao Getulio Vargas. He was a member of the Board of Directors of CVRD – INCO (Canada) and a member of the Audit Committee from 2006-2007, and a corporate governance advisor to the Management Committee of Companhia Vale do Rio Doce (VALE) from 2007-2009. Wallenstein’s 15 year teaching career at Duke, American University and the University of Denver College of Law includes interdisciplinary courses on corporate governance, venture capital and private equity, and international finance.  

Alexander J. Triantis
Finance Professor and Department Chair
PhD, Stanford University
Triantis provides oversight on all activities related to finance 

Dr. Triantis is a professor of finance and the chairman of the finance department at the Robert H. Smith School of Business. Prior to coming to Smith, he was a faculty member at the MIT Sloan School of Management (as a visiting scholar) and the University of Wisconsin. He has published numerous articles related to corporate finance and valuation in leading academic journals including Journal of Accounting and Economics, Journal of Finance, Journal of International Economics, Journal of Law and Economics, Management Science, and the Review of Financial Studies, and in practitioner journals such as RISK, Journal of Applied Corporate Finance and Mergers and Acquisitions. He is currently on the Editorial Advisory Board of the Journal of Applied Corporate Finance, a senior editor of Production and Operations Management. He has also served as editor of Financial Management and associate editor of Management Science. Triantis has consulted and provided executive training in the areas of real options analysis, risk management, derivatives pricing, capital budgeting, and project finance to multinational corporations and organizations such as Airbus Industry, BHP Billiton, DuPont, Ernst & Young, Hyatt, Jefferies and Company, Lockheed Martin, Marriott International, Northrop Grumman, PricewaterhouseCoopers, U.S. Dept. of Energy, and the World Bank. His research has been featured in BusinessWeek, CFO magazine, Financial Times, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and numerous other periodicals. He frequently lectures on topics related to real options analysis at domestic and international conferences and executive forums. He has received awards and citations for teaching excellence and was named by BusinessWeek as an Outstanding Professor at the University of Wisconsin and the University of Maryland.