2013 Kellogg School of Management/Aspen Institute Business and Society Conference
Speaker Bios
Russ Feingold represented Wisconsin in the United States Senate from 1993 to 2011. Feingold was ranked 6th in the Senate for bipartisan voting.
He is a recipient of the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award, and he cosponsored the bipartisan McCain-Feingold Campaign Reform Act, a major piece of campaign finance reform legislation. He served on the Judiciary, Foreign Relations, Budget, and Intelligence Committees.
In 2011, Feingold formed Progressives United, a movement intended, among other things, to fight the controversial U.S. Supreme Court decision Citizens United v. FEC. The mission of Progressives United is to empower Americans to stand up against the increasing corporate influence in Washington, especially since the Citizens United decision; hold representatives accountable to every constituent, regardless of economic class or insider access; and support national, state and local candidates who advocate for progressive ideals.
Published in February 2012 following the tenth anniversary of 9/11, Feingold’s book, While America Sleeps, looks back at the past decade, what America has done wrong domestically and abroad since the terrorist attacks. He discusses what steps must be taken to ensure that the next 10 years are focused on the international problems that threaten America and its citizens.
Sen. Feingold is a visiting professor of law at Marquette University. Feingold is an honors law graduate of both Harvard Law School and Oxford University. He earned his BA with honors from the University of Wisconsin-Madison; he is also a former Rhodes Scholar and a member of Phi Beta Kappa.
Sally Blount was named dean of the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University in 2010, where she is also the Michael L. Nemmers Professor of Management and Organizations.
An internationally recognized expert in the fields of negotiation and behavioral decision-making, Dean Blount has more than 20 years of experience in higher education.
During her tenure at Kellogg, Dean Blount has restructured the school’s administrative operations; set fundraising records; launched the dynamic “Think Bravely” advertising campaign; and worked to map a bold, new strategy for the school.
Prior to Kellogg, Dean Blount served New York University’s Stern School of Business as the dean of the undergraduate college and vice dean of the school. In addition, she was appointed by New York University’s president and provost as their special advisor for global academic integration.
She is a director of Abbott Laboratories and a member of the Commercial and Economic Clubs of Chicago and The Chicago Network. She serves on advisory boards for the Aspen Institute’s Business and Society Program, the Chicago Innovation Awards, the Indian School of Business, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology Business School, and Fundação Dom Cabral in Brazil.
Dean Blount received her PhD in management and organizations from Kellogg and earned a joint BA from Princeton University’s engineering and Woodrow Wilson schools.
Bernard S. Black is the Nicholas D. Chabraja Professor at Northwestern University School of Law and Kellogg School of Management and Professor of Finance at Kellogg School of Management.
He is also managing director of the Social Science Research Network and founding chairman of the annual Conference on Empirical Legal Studies. Prof. Black received a BA from Princeton University, an MA in physics from the University of California, Berkeley, and a JD from Stanford Law School. He was Professor of Law at Stanford Law School from 1998 to 2004 and at Columbia Law School from 1988 to 1998. His principal research areas are law and finance, international corporate governance, health care and medical malpractice, and corporate and securities law.
David Langstaff served as chairman of the board of directors of TASC Inc. upon its acquisition by General Atlantic Partners and KKR in 2009, until his appointment as president and CEO in 2011; he remains a member of the board.
TASC, with more than 5,000 employees and 2010 revenue in excess of $1.6 billion, is an independent company offering advanced enterprise engineering, integration and decision-support and other technical services across the intelligence community, Department of Defense and civilian agencies of the federal government. Langstaff was president, CEO and director of Veridian Corporation from its formation in 1997 until its sale to General Dynamics in 2003; its IPO was recognized by the Financial Times as one of the 10 best global IPOs in 2002.
Donna Dabney is executive director of The Conference Boards’ Governance Center, where she leads corporate governance efforts.
She was formerly vice president, corporate secretary and corporate governance counsel of Alcoa Inc.
Nell Minow is founder of GMI Ratings, an independent research firm that rates boards of directors of public companies and compiles research, studies and critical thinking about corporate governance.
Its board effectiveness rating allows investors and analysts to evaluate governance as an element of investment risk. Special reports and studies include reports on CEO employment contracts, related transactions, and CEO compensation. The Corporate Library has an extensive database of over 3000 public companies and over 90,000 directors and provides data and board ratings to search firms, D&O liability insurers, law firms, accounting firms, journalists, academics, investors, and corporations. Ms. Minow was formerly a Principal of LENS, a $100 million investment firm that bought stock in underperforming companies and used shareholder activism to increase their value. Before that, she served as President of Institutional Shareholder Services, Inc., a firm that advises institutional investors on issues of corporate governance, and as an attorney at the Environmental Protection Agency, the Office of Management and Budget, and the Department of Justice. Ms. Minow holds a BA in liberal arts from Sarah Lawrence College and a JD from the University of Chicago Law School.
Daniel Diermeier is the IBM Professor of Regulation and Competitive Practice, Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.
He is also Professor of Political Science at Northwestern’s Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences, co-founder of the Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems and chairman of the Northwestern Global Health Foundation. He currently serves as director of the Ford Motor Company Center for Global Citizenship and academic director of the CEO Perspectives Program (Kellogg’s most senior executive education program), a joint venture between Kellogg and the Corporate Leadership Center. Prof. Diermeier’s work focuses on political institutions, reputation management, political and regulatory risk, crisis management, and integrated strategy. In 2004 he was appointed to the management board of the FBI. He has also served as a senior strategic advisor to PricewaterhouseCoopers and is a member of the Economic Club of Chicago. He received his PhD and master’s degree in political science from the University of Rochester, as well as a master’s degree in political science from the University of Munich and in philosophy from the University of Southern California.
Sarah Murray is a specialist writer on corporate responsibility and sustainable development for The Financial Times.
Ms. Murray is a journalist and feature writer who specializes in the relationship of business to society and the environment, a topic she has covered since the late 1990s; she also writes research reports on business and sustainability for the Economist Group. Born in the UK, Sarah has lived in London, where she was an editor at the Financial Times; Hong Kong, where she was an editor and reporter at the South China Morning Post; Hanoi, where she helped launch the Vietnam Economic Times, an English-language business magazine; and South Africa, where she worked as a freelance writer. She is now based in New York City.
Jesse Eisinger is a senior reporter at ProPublica, covering Wall Street and finance. He writes a regular column for The New York Times’s Dealbook section.
In 2011, Mr. Eisinger was awarded a Pulitzer Prize with Jake Bernstein for their exposure of questionable practices on Wall Street that contributed to the nation’s economic meltdown, using digital tools to help explain the complex subject to lay readers. Jesse Eisinger was The Wall Street editor of Conde Nast Portfolio, where he wrote a November 2007 cover story titled "Wall Street Requiem," in which he predicted the demise of Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers. Before joining Portfolio, he worked at The Wall Street Journal, where he was the founding writer of two market commentary columns, and he played a leading role in exposing accounting fraud at Belgium-based Lernout & Hauspie.
Susan Robinson is director of federal public affairs for Waste Management, Inc. She works with Waste Management’s organic growth and fleet teams,
supporting the company’s transformation to a materials management and renewable energy company. Ms. Robinson is responsible for helping to shape public policy efforts to support this transition. Ms. Robinson has worked in the environmental industry for more than 25 years. She worked for a non-profit environmental organization, the City of Seattle, and has been managing municipal relationships on behalf of the private sector for the past 18 years. She has been instrumental in implementing many forward-thinking recycling programs on the West Coast, as well as Waste Management’s 2009 transition to a natural gas fleet in the Pacific Northwest. Ms. Robinson attended Stanford University and the University of Washington and holds degrees in Applied Earth Sciences. Her master’s work is in environmental studies at Evergreen State College.
Henry Hansmann is the Oscar M. Ruebhausen Professor of Law at Yale Law School. His scholarship has focused principally on the law and economics of organizational ownership and design.
He has written extensively about nonprofit organizations, the relationship between contract law and organizational law, the historical evolution of organizational forms, and the structure of property rights. In addition to his many articles, he is the author of The Ownership of Enterprise and, with others, The Anatomy of Corporate Law: A Functional and Comparative Analysis. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, past recipient of a John Simon Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, and past president of the American Law and Economics Association. He received both a JD and PhD in economics from Yale University, and an AB from Brown University.
Steven Pearlstein, a Pulitzer-prize winning business and economics columnist for the Washington Post, joined the George Mason University faculty as
Robinson Professor of Public and International Affairs in 2011. His career has included roles as a public television reporter in Boston, senior editor at Inc. magazine, and founding editor and publisher of The Boston Observer, a monthly political magazine. He returned to Washington in 1988 as deputy business editor and, over the next 23 years, also served as the Post’s defense industry reporter, economics writer and Canadian correspondent. He became an opinion columnist in 2003, with a wide-ranging interest in business and economic topics of local, national and international interest. Prof. Pearlstein was awarded the Gerald R. Loeb Award for commentary in 2007 and the Pulitzer Prize for commentary in 2008 for columns the previous year anticipating and explaining the recent financial crisis and global economic downturn. He holds a BA in American studies from Trinity College, Conn.
Bart Houlahan is co-founder of B Lab, a nonprofit that certifies and supports B Corporations, a kind of company that uses the power of business to solve social and environmental problems
meeting comprehensive social and environmental performance standards and higher legally accountability standards. Prior to B Lab, Mr. Houlahan was CFO, COO and president of AND 1, a $250 million basketball footwear, apparel and entertainment company. He was formerly an investment banker with Stonebridge Associates, BNY Associates, and Prudential-Bache Securities. He holds a BA from Stanford University.
Martin H. Redish, the Louis and Harriet Ancel Professor of Law and Public Policy at Northwestern University School of Law, teaches and writes on the subjects of federal jurisdiction, civil procedure,
freedom of expression and constitutional law. In addition, he is senior counsel to the law firm of Sidley Austin LLP. Described in a review of his book, The Federal Courts in the Political Order, as “without a doubt the foremost scholar on issues of federal court jurisdiction in this generation,” Professor Redish is the author or co-author of more than 80 articles and 15 books. Prof. Redish was recently listed in a study conducted by William S. Hein & Co. as the sixteenth most cited legal scholar of all time. Prof. Redish received his AB with highest honors in political science from the University of Pennsylvania and his JD magna cum laude from Harvard Law School.
Dwight Hutchins is global managing director for strategy in public service at Accenture.
He holds a BS in chemical engineering from the University of Tennessee-Knoxville, and an MBA in marketing and finance from the Kellogg School of Management.
Paola Sapienza is the Merrill Lynch Capital Markets Research Professor at the Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University, where she also
serves as a faculty fellow for the Zell Center for Risk Research, a research affiliate of the Center for Economic Policy Research and a faculty research fellow in the National Bureau of Economic Research's program on corporate finance.
Sapienza's areas of expertise include banking and financial institutions, behavioral economics, behavioral finance, corporate finance, emerging markets and regulation of financial markets, private equity and venture capital. Sapienza has written articles on banking, social capital, trust and financial development. As a by-product of her research on trust and financial markets, she launched the Chicago Booth/Kellogg School Financial Trust Index, along with Luigi Zingales [link to his bio below]. She received a BA in economics summa cum laude from Bocconi University in Italy, and an MA and PhD in economics from Harvard University.
Michael C. Jensen is the Jesse Isidor Straus Professor of Business Administration, Emeritus, at the Harvard Business School, where he founded what is now the Negotiations, Organizations and Markets Unit in the school.
From 2000 to 2009, Prof. Jensen worked at the Monitor Company as managing director of the organizational strategy practice, becoming senior advisor in 2007. He previously taught on the faculty of the University of Rochester. Prof. Jensen earned his PhD in economics, finance, and accounting and his MBA in finance from the University of Chicago, and an AB degree from Macalester College.
Lynn Stout is the Distinguished Professor of Corporate & Business Law at Cornell University Law School.
An internationally recognized expert in the fields of corporate governance, securities regulation, financial derivatives, law and economics, and moral behavior, she is the author of numerous articles and books on these topics and lectures widely. Her most recent book is The Shareholder Value Myth: How Putting Shareholders First Harms Investors, Corporations and the Public (Berrerr Koehler 2012). Prof. Stout also serves as an independent trustee for the Eaton Vance family of mutual funds; as a member of the Board of Advisors for the Aspen Institute’s Business & Society Program; as executive advisor to the Brookings Institution Project on Corporate Purpose; and as a research fellow for the Gruter Institute for Law and Behavioral Research. She holds a BA summa cum laude and a master’s in public affairs from Princeton University and a JD from the Yale Law School.
Brayden King joined the Kellogg School of Management in 2008, where he is associate professor of management and organizations.
After receiving a PhD in sociology from the University of Arizona, he was an assistant professor of sociology at Brigham Young University from 2005 to 2008. Prof. King's research focuses on how social movement activists influence corporate governance, organizational change and legislative policymaking. He also studies the ways in which the organizational identities of social movement organizations and businesses emerge and transform in response to their institutional environments.
Robert Weinberger is senior fellow with the Aspen Institute Initiative on Financial Security; former VP for Government Relations, H&R Block; and chairman, Center for Responsive Politics.
Specializing in tax and financial services policy, Mr. Weinberger’s responsibilities at H&R Block included liaison with the White House, Treasury Department, IRS, Congress and business, consumer and public policy groups. A graduate of Oberlin College and the University of Illinois College of Law, he has also studied at the University of Illinois Institute of Government and Public Affairs and at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.
Harry M. Kraemer, Jr., is a clinical professor of management and strategy, Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University;
executive partner at Madison Dearborn; former chairman and CEO of Baxter International; and author of From Values to Action: The Four Principles of Values-based Leadership. Mr. Kraemer joined Baxter in 1982 as director of corporate development. His 22-year career at Baxter included senior positions in both domestic and international operations. Mr. Kraemer is active in business, education and civic affairs. He serves on the board of directors of Science Applications International Corporation and Sirona Dental Systems GmbH, and on the board of trustees of Lawrence University, Northwestern University, the Conference Board and Evanston Northwestern Healthcare. Mr. Kraemer graduated summa cum laude from Lawrence University of Wisconsin with a BA in mathematics and economics. He received an MBA degree in finance and accounting from Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management in 1979. He is a certified public accountant.
Luigi Zingales is the Robert C. McCormack Professor of Entrepreneurship and Finance and the David G. Booth Faculty Fellow at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.
He is co-author of Chicago Booth/Kellogg School Financial Trust Index with Prof. Paola Sapienza [link to her bio above]. His research interests span from corporate governance to financial development, from political economy to the economic effects of culture. Born in Italy, a country with high inflation and unemployment which has inspired his professional interests as an economist, Zingales carries with him a political passion and the belief that economists should not just interpret the world, they should change it for the better.
