Fellows

Lakshmi Balasubramanyan was an Assistant Professor of Finance at Indiana State University. She received her Ph.D.in Agricultural, Environmental and Regional Economics with her major fields being Finance and Production Economics from The Pennsylvania State University. Her research interests include bank risk management, credit allocation, banking efficiency and industrial organization of banking. Currently, she is a Research Economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland.

Jiang Cheng. In addition to serving as a Scott College of Business visiting scholar during Spring 2011, Jiang Cheng has taught actuarial science, corporate governance, international corporate finance and economics for several years in the United States and in China. He currently teaches in the Department of Accounting, Antai College of Management, Shanghai Jiao Tong University in Shanghai, China.  He received a B. S. in Economics & Applied Mathematical Statistics from the Shanghai University of Finance and Economics and an MBA from Fudan University, China. He earned his Ph.D. degree in Risk Management and Insurance from Temple University at Philadelphia. Cheng's research has been published by leading insurance journals in the United States, such as Journal of Risk and Insurance. He specializes in insurance regulation, corporate governance, financial market and institution, and accounting manipulation. 

M. Kabir Hassan is a financial economist with consulting, research and teaching experiences in development finance, money and capital markets, corporate finance, investments, monetary economics, macroeconomics, Islamic banking,  international trade and finance. He has published five books and over 70 articles in refereed academic journals and has presented over 100 research papers at professional conferences globally and has provided consultant services to several national and international organizations and governments.  Dr. Hassan is an associate professor of finance at the University of New Orleans, where he has been recognized for for his research and has seven times won an Outstanding Teacher Award.  Dr. Hassan holds an M.A. in economics and a Ph.D. in finance from University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Dr. Hassan is involved with several professional, civic and cultural organizations. He is on the Board of Directors of the Academy of Financial Services, the Asian Pacific American Society, the New Orleans Museum of Arts, and the Association for Economic and Development Studies on Bangladesh, USA. Dr. Hassan has been elected as the President of the Academy of International Business-SW, the Association for Economic and Development Studies on Bangladesh (AEDSB), and the Southwestern Society of Economists (SSE). A frequent traveler, Dr. Hassan gives lectures and consulting advice in the US and abroad.

W. Jean Kwon holds an MBA in risk management and insurance from The College of Insurance in New York (now known as the School of Risk Management of St. John’s University) and a Ph.D. in the same field from Georgia State University. He is a Chartered Property Casualty Underwriter (CPCU).  He taught insurance at Georgia State University and Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. In Singapore, he also provided consulting services to insurance companies and organizations in the region and worked as Director of Special Projects, Insurance Department, Monetary Authority of Singapore. In the United States, he worked as curriculum director at the American Institute for CPCU. He has authored several books, including Risk Management and Insurance: Perspectives in a Global Economy and Risk Management and Insurance in Singapore. He currently teaches the School of Risk Management, continues to publish papers in academic and professional journals, presents research findings at various conferences, serves editorial boards of several journals, and advices multiple insurance institutions in the United States and abroad. He helped to establish Asia-Pacific Risk and Insurance Association and organize World Risk and Insurance Economics Congress.

Angela Lyons is a professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.  She received her Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Texas at Austin.  Her research focuses on issues related to household economics, family finance, and financial education and program evaluation.  Her current research examines issues related to household liquidity and credit access, health and financial strain, delinquency and bankruptcy, gender and marital differences in household financial decisions, and the credit usage and financial education needs of young adults.  Dr. Lyons has been identified by the U.S. Government Accountability Office as one of twenty-three national leaders in financial education and was invited to participate in the U.S. Comptroller General’s forum in 2004 on “Improving Financial Literacy: The Role of the Federal Government.”  In 2003, she presented testimony on the importance of financial literacy for young adults before the Subcommittee on Education and the Workforce for the U.S. House of Representatives.  In 2002, she was a delegate to the National Summit on Retirement Savings in Washington, D.C.   Recently, she served as a consultant to the Executive Office of the U.S. Trustees providing expertise on the debtor education component of the bankruptcy reform law.

Una Okonkwo Osili is an associate professor of economics at Indiana University-Purdue University at Indianapolis.  Dr. Osili’s main areas of research include savings and private transfers in developing and developed countries.  Her current research focuses on issues related to financial market participation of immigrants and other low-income households in the U.S.  She has also examined the remittances, and savings decisions in developing countries.  In 2003, Dr. Osili served as a visiting scholar at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago undertaking a project on the financial assimilation of U.S. immigrants.  She has received research grants from the National Science Foundation, the Social Science Research Council, the Russell Sage Foundation, and the Ford Foundation.  In 2006, she was awarded the Stevenson Fellowship from the Nonprofit Academic Centers Council.  She received her bachelor’s degree in economics with honors from Harvard University and her M.A and Ph.D. in economics from Northwestern University.  She has served as a consultant to the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago and the United Nations Economic Commission

Art Sherwood is an Associate Professor of Management in the College of Business at Indiana State University.  He works closely with the Networks Scholars program to develop theoretically sound and pedagogically exciting seminars and workshops for the scholars.  He has taught university courses in the US, Poland and Hungary, including strategic management, leadership, management principles, organizational behavior, entrepreneurship and international business.  His research interests focus upon the strategic implications of leadership, trust and learning in inter- and intraorganizational relationships, including domestic and international strategic alliances.  He has published his work in professional journals including Journal of Financial Service Professionals, Leadership and Organizational Studies and Journal of Management Education.  His current research focuses on small bank strategies and their performance and economic development implications, leadership/managerial development and on strategic issues in organizational relationships.  He has worked extensively with industry as an employee, consultant and executive educator.  He received his Ph.D., M.A. and M.B.A from Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business and his B.B.A from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Sharon Tennyson is Associate Professor in the Department of Policy Analysis and Management at Cornell University.  Dr. Tennyson is a noted expert on economic and policy issues related to insurance and has published extensively on topics related to government regulation of insurance markets, insurance fraud, insurance distribution and consumer attitudes and knowledge of insurance.  Her research has received funding from a variety of sources including the National Science Foundation, and has been published in high quality economics, insurance and finance journals and in prestigious edited collections.  Dr. Tennyson is a member of several national organizations and editorial boards and is a past president of the Risk Theory Society.  She holds a Ph.D. in economics from Northwestern University, and was previously on the faculty of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. 

William Walstad is John T. and Mable M. Hay Professor of Economics at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. He is the editor of the Journal of Economic Education and served a six-year term as Chair of the American Economic Association’s standing Committee on Economic Education. His research focuses on the teaching and learning of economics and personal finance, testing of economic and financial literacy, and entrepreneurship. He revised or developed the Test of Understanding of College Economics, the Test of Economic Literacy (high school), the Test of Economic Knowledge (middle school), the Basic Economics Test (elementary), and three tests for the Financial Fitness for Life curriculum. He serves on the test development committee for the National Assessment of Educational Progress in economics that is conducted by the U.S. Department of Education. For many years he has worked with the Office of Financial Education at the U.S. Treasury Department on the development and administration of the National Financial Capability Challenge. Among the books he has written or edited are: Teaching Innovation in Economics: Strategies and Applications for Interactive Instruction; Entrepreneurship in Nebraska; The Entrepreneur in Youth; Reforming Economics and Economics Teaching in the Transition Economies; and Econometric Modeling in Economic Education Research.

Christopher Whalen is Senior Managing Director of Tangent Capital Partners in New York, where he works as an investment banker providing advisory services focused on companies in the financial services sector. Whalen is co-founder and Vice Chairman of the board of Lord, Whalen LLC, parent of Institutional Risk Analytics, the Los Angeles based provider of bank ratings, risk management tools and consulting services for auditors, regulators and financial professionals.  Whalen authored Inflated: How Money and Debt Built the American Dream (2010), now in a second printing from John Wiley & Sons, and he currently edits The Institutional Risk Analyst, a weekly news report and commentary on significant developments in and around the global financial markets. He also contributes articles to Zero Hedge, Housing Wire and The Big Picture. Whalen has appeared before Congress, the Securities and Exchange Commission and Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation on a range of financial, economic and political issues. He is a member of Professional Risk Managers International Association and was regional director of PRMIA’s Washington D.C. chapter from 2006 through January 2010. He is a member of the Economic Advisory Committee of the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority and the Global Interdependence Center in Philadelphia.  For further information, please visit www.rcwhalen.com.

Dr. Jing Jian Xiao is Professor of Consumer Economics at the University of Rhode Island. He teaches courses in consumer economics and finance and conducts research on consumer financial behaviors. Currently he is involved in a NEFE-funded research project to study the relationship between financial behaviors and well-beings of college students. He has published extensively in areas of consumer finance and economics including several books such as Mathematics of Personal Financial Planning, Chinese Youth in Transition, and Handbook of Consumer Finance Research. His research papers have been published in Eastern Economic Journal, Family and Consumer Science Research Journal, Financial Counseling and Planning, International Journal of Consumer Studies, Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, Journal of Business Research, Journal of Consumer Affairs, Journal of Consumer Education, Journal of Family and Economic Issues, Journal of Personal Finance, Social Indicators Research, etc. He is active and playing a leadership role in national organizations in the field of consumer economics and finance, served as the President and co-Program Chair of American Council on Consumer Interests (ACCI), the President of Asian Consumer and Family Economics Association (ACFEA), the Program Chair and Proceedings Editor of Association for Financial Counseling and Planning Education (AFCPE), among others. He is currently serving on the board of National Consumer League. He is the Editor-in-Chief of Journal of Family and Economic Issues and also serves on editorial boards of several other academic journals in consumer economics and finance. He is the editor-in-chief of a new book series entitled International Series of Consumer Science. He presented his research to diverse audiences in the U. S., Switzerland, China, Malaysia, South Korea, and Taiwan. He is the visiting professor at several universities in China. In summer 2009, he will be a visiting professor at the Yamaguchi University, Japan. He received his B. S. and M. S. in economics from the Zhongnan University of Economics and Law in China, and Ph.D. in consumer economics from the Oregon State University. In 2005-07, he was the Take Charge America Professor and Director of the Take Charge America Institute for Consumer Financial Education and Research at the University of Arizona.