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OwenNews

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26 Jun 2020, 08:01

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FROM Owen Press Releases: Top 10 MBAs for Human Resources Management 2020

The post Top 10 MBAs for Human Resources Management 2020 appeared first on Vanderbilt Business School.

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OwenNews

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FROM Owen Press Releases: Path to the Promotion: Manager of Enterprise Financial Systems, FedEx

Jared Johnson

Jared Johnson obtained his undergraduate degree in industrial engineering in 2000. He had a resume built for an international career and was about to return from a year working in London when two planes hit the twin towers in New York.

“I came back right after September 11, and a lot of the jobs I was looking at, at that point disappeared,” Johnson says. “I don’t know that I built my resume the right way, but it also seemed hard to figure out how to get back into the corporate world at that point.”

Johnson ended up spending a decade working in retail with several entrepreneurial side ventures. But he still had his sights set on corporate America and eventually decided to take a step back in his earnings to take a step forward in his business career.

“I just made the decision that I was going to get a job that used my education, and I was going to get my MBA,” Johnson says. “I started finding ways to tell my unique story and marry my education with the online customer service skills I honed for a decade.”

Johnson started making his dreams a reality by taking an entry level position at FedEx corporate. Five years later, he is living his vision of being a manager at a Fortune 500 company through years of dedication and hard work — obtaining an MBA from Vanderbilt was a key part of his strategy.

Click through the timeline below to see how Johnson made a complete career change and quickly climbed the corporate ladder with the help of a globally recognized Vanderbilt EMBA.

The post Path to the Promotion: Manager of Enterprise Financial Systems, FedEx appeared first on Vanderbilt Business School.

OwenNews

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30 Jun 2020, 14:01

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FROM Owen Press Releases: Summer Reading for Faculty, Staff, and Students at Vanderbilt Business

The following is taken from messages sent to the faculty, staff, and students of Vanderbilt Owen Graduate School of Management from Dean Johnson earlier this summer.

Dear Community Members,

Racism has no place at Owen. Equity, diversity, and inclusion lie at the heart of our school’s mission; I acknowledge that our work to foster these principles has been insufficient in driving equality and combating racism across our community. We are urgently working as a school to correct our course and accelerate progress.

Right now, a lot of that work is being accomplished through existing organizations like our Diversity & Inclusion Advisory Board, a diverse body representing faculty, staff, and students. On the recommendation of the board, Ibram X. Kendi’s book How to be an Antiracist will be required reading for our entire community as we enter the new school year. It will be discussed at orientation, community panels, and other group events.

Owen is purchasing digital copies of the book for all community members.

If we hope to be an antiracist community and propagate antiracist behavior in the business world, it stands to reason that we need to learn what it is. This marks just one of many steps we will be taking in the coming year and beyond to pursue our mission. I look forward to telling you about them in the weeks and months ahead.

Warmest Regards,

[img]https://cdn.vanderbilt.edu/vu-business/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/01161851/Eric-Johnson-Black-300x54.jpg[/img]

M. Eric Johnson,

Ralph Owen Dean

Bruce D. Henderson Professor of Strategy

The post [url=https://business.vanderbilt.edu/news/2020/06/30/summer-reading-for-faculty-staff-and-students-at-vanderbilt-business/]Summer Reading for Faculty, Staff, and Students at Vanderbilt Business[/url] appeared first on [url=https://business.vanderbilt.edu]Vanderbilt Business School[/url].

OwenNews

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07 Jul 2020, 08:01

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FROM Owen Press Releases: 7 Steps to Fight Racism Personally and Professionally

María Triana

María del Carmen Triana, Professor of Management at Vanderbilt Business, has spent more than 12 years extensively researching diversity and discrimination in organizations. Her research is more relevant than ever, as the United States grapples with racism and protests continue around the nation. To that end, she shared her expertise with the Vanderbilt Business community last week via video conference, covering the history and impact of racial discrimination in the U.S. as well as explaining ways to combat it.

“A lot of the things I presented (about the history and current state of racism) are extremely frustrating because of discrimination and fundamental unfairness,” she said. “But the research does show us that there are things that can in fact help, and it’s important to keep those in mind.”

At the end of her talk, she discussed seven steps to mitigate racial discrimination and create positive change. The first three steps were to promote diversity and inclusion in the workplace:

1. Give people instructions to focus on job-related qualifications.

In one of her studies, Triana found that people who desired to maintain social hierarchy tended to exemplify racial bias when picking someone to employ or promote. However, those people discriminated less when given explicit instructions to focus on job-related qualifications. As a result, she recommends that companies give constant reminders to selection committees to focus on job-related qualifications when evaluating people for promotions or recruiting.

2. Be a good role model if you’re a leader.

Triana also cited a study that showed that leaders who exemplified inclusion were associated with more inclusive and diverse workplaces. This is because leadership has a trickle-down effect on the entire company culture, and because employees look to leadership to model the kinds of behaviors that are valued in their workplace. Triana said that leaders must be inclusive role models, because the actions and words of a leader can impact the work environment for all their employees.

3. Establish responsibility for diversity.

The same study showed that leaders must also establish responsibility for diversity in their organization. “The most effective way of doing that was to hold managers accountable for diversity efforts in their daily decision making,” Triana said. Therefore, managers must consider diversity and inclusion when making important decisions concerning their employees — such as performance evaluations — and must be held accountable for those decisions.

The next four steps were tips to combat racial discrimination in your personal life:

4. Employ social pressure to bring about change.

Peaceful protests and voting are powerful methods for change. “When there is a critical mass of people who support something, it works,” Triana said. The example she gave was how peaceful protests led by Martin Luther King Jr. led to the passing of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which prohibits racial discrimination in voting.

5. Seek out meaningful contact.

Triana explained the contact hypothesis, which suggests that if people in a group who don’t usually interact have a chance for meaningful contact — where they can get to know and learn about each other — those people will become less prejudiced. The theory is that meaningful contact can create understanding that emphasizes similarities over differences. “You see a lot of the conflicts and the tensions that come from normal social categorization processes, which we do all the time… start to subside (during meaningful contact),” Triana said.

6. Share counter-stereotypical examples.

An implicit bias study found that over half of the 2.5 million people in the sample associated pictures of white people with good things such as harmless objects and pictures of black people with negative things such as weapons faster. Triana explained that one of the most effective ways to reduce this type of implicit bias is reprogramming the brain by seeing counter-stereotypical examples. The examples she gave were Barack Obama, the former President of the United States, and Ursula Burns, the former CEO of Xerox.

7. Expand mentoring and professional networks.

The PhD Project is an organization that aims to increase the number of underrepresented minority faculty in business schools by providing a network of peer support for African-Americans, Hispanic-Americans, and Native Americans who want to become business professors. While the number of minority faculty members has increased tenfold since 1994 (the year the organization was formed), there is still a severe underrepresentation in business schools. However, this increase shows that mentoring and professional networks for minorities may be effective.

“These are things from research and experience that do help, given the current situation that we see in organizations,” Triana said. To watch her entire talk, visit this link.

The post 7 Steps to Fight Racism Personally and Professionally appeared first on Vanderbilt Business School.

OwenNews

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08 Jul 2020, 10:01

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FROM Owen Press Releases: Vanderbilt Executive MBA Nonprofit Scholarship Awarded to Strategist at St. Louis Integrated Health Network

The Principal Strategist – Alignment, Innovation, and Growth at the St. Louis Integrated Health Network (IHN) has been awarded a full-tuition scholarship to Vanderbilt Business’ Executive MBA program.

Jessica Holmes was selected by the Vanderbilt Owen Graduate School of Management to receive the two-year scholarship, awarded each academic year and valued at over $100,000.

“Vanderbilt’s reputation for excellence extends far beyond Nashville — but it was the warmth and team atmosphere that also won me over,” said Holmes. “I am filled with gratitude for the opportunity to join this community of high caliber performers.”

Jessica Holmes

Holmes’ role at IHN is to design and grow innovative care delivery approaches that integrate the mental, social, and spiritual wellbeing of patients alongside their physical health. The IHN’s network is comprised of three major hospital systems, five community health centers, two medical schools, and two public health departments that collectively serve 90% of the healthcare safety network market (Medicaid and uninsured populations) in the greater St. Louis region.

Reflecting on Holmes’ selection for the scholarship, Executive Director Juli Bennett said, “We are delighted to have Jess become part of the Vanderbilt EMBA class of 2022. Her focus on serving underrepresented at-risk communities is well-aligned with the purpose of the full tuition nonprofit scholarship. Our hope is that the Executive MBA education and experience will accelerate and broaden the impact of the innovative work Jess is already doing.”

“My goal is to leverage my EMBA training to deepen the intersection between the nonprofit sector and the business of healthcare,” said Holmes.

Before pivoting towards healthcare, Holmes’ career started on the frontlines as a Social Worker, coaching families coping with serious mental illness and complex trauma. She received her Masters in Social Work in 2014 from Washington University in St. Louis. Holmes co-chairs the HEAL Partnership and the Missouri CHW Sustainability Collaborative, which both focus on scaling and sustaining the Community Health Worker workforce in St. Louis and across Missouri. She also serves as a member of the Visionary Leadership Team for United Way of Greater St. Louis’ Community Information Exchange to create an integrated data sharing platform to connect information between health and social service organizations.

“Nonprofit leadership is not just about good intentions and charity — it should also be savvy, strategic, and incentivizing because that is what families deserve,” said Holmes.

Vanderbilt Business launched the sponsorship program in 2006 to give career assistance to one deserving nonprofit executive each year. Applications are open to executives and senior staff members of any 501(c)(3) organization who have demonstrated a strong commitment to serving in the nonprofit sector. The scholarship is offered in partnership with the Center for Nonprofit Management. Holmes was chosen from a pool of admitted applicants coming into the highly ranked Executive MBA program.

To learn more about Vanderbilt’s Executive MBA program, click here.

To learn more about available scholarship opportunities for Executive MBA students, click here.

The post Vanderbilt Executive MBA Nonprofit Scholarship Awarded to Strategist at St. Louis Integrated Health Network appeared first on Vanderbilt Business School.

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09 Jul 2020, 11:01

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FROM Owen Press Releases: Accelerator 2020 Pivots to Virtual Learning

Accelerator® Summer Business Immersion at Vanderbilt is a program for college students and recent graduates from around the country that merges classroom learning and real-world consulting experience. While the course normally takes place on the Vanderbilt campus over the course of 4 weeks, due to the coronavirus pandemic, this year’s summer program was held online and shortened from one month to one week in June. The new program is called Accelerator® Virtual Business Immersion.

“During Accelerator, students learn key business concepts and apply that knowledge to a real-world project,” said Greg Harvey, the Director of Accelerator. “Students build their resumes, explore possible career paths, and expand their network. We were able to deliver a unique and rewarding experience in a virtual format that was still fun and engaging.”

The virtual experience: The fact that the program was virtual did have some drawbacks, such as a lack of in-person human connection, but students say there were definite benefits to the virtual environment as well. For example, there was no need to travel, and groups could easily meet up on Zoom. “The upside is that you’re able to meet whenever. So with my group, even though it wasn’t a set time, you’ll just be like, ‘Hey, can you guys hop on now,’ and we can all hop on, and we don’t have to drive places. So I think that is a benefit of doing virtual communication,” said Shannon Lytle (Davidson College, 2022), a participant in this year’s Virtual Business Immersion. Students also had the opportunity to get to know their classmates, professors, coaches and mentors through a series of ice-breakers and virtual social events.

The project: At the beginning of the week, teams were tasked with designing strategies to increase walk-in revenues for UBREAKIFIX by Asurion, a company that repairs and supports electronic devices. Most teams brainstormed solutions to appeal to the “young and wireless” group, citing that this market held a lot of potential. The students also conducted extensive research and even created their own surveys to support their recommendations.

A variety of ideas emerged from the presentations. Many teams recommended UBREAKIFIX to strategically position their stores near colleges. They also suggested expanding UBREAKIFIX’s van repair service to promote their brand and serve students at college campuses. Another popular idea was to improve the company’s social media presence through strategies such as brand partnerships with well-known college student YouTubers. The teams came up with creative ideas to present their solutions, such as developing a story around an individual in their target population to make their recommendations more persuasive.

The judges from UBREAKIFIX were impressed with the students’ solutions. “The caliber of students was impressive; they demonstrated creativity, unique insights on the repair market, and problem solving, which combined to deliver solutions with real potential. On top of that, the students confidently shared their ideas with polished presentations,” said Emily O’Grady, Vice President of UBREAKIFIX.

The student feedback: The students said that the Virtual Business Immersion was a meaningful experience. Over the course of 7 days, they were able to broaden their business knowledge and develop valuable skills, such as presenting to clients.

“It’s real-world applicable… you’re going to do a real project and you’ll learn how to work with people. I really would recommend this to any undergraduate student, even people like me who recently graduated. I really do think it’d be a great opportunity to learn and grow,” said Accelerator student Malcolm Allen (Stanford University, 2017).

“(Accelerator) is open to everybody, not just business majors. And (for) someone like me — I go to a liberal arts school where you don’t get that business background — I think it is super beneficial because you can learn so much that isn’t offered at your school,” added Lytle. “In the virtual (program), I learned a lot in a short amount of time and professors were really awesome.”

Accelerator Virtual Business Immersion will be offered again this December. Program dates will be announced soon.

The post Accelerator 2020 Pivots to Virtual Learning appeared first on Vanderbilt Business School.

OwenNews

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10 Jul 2020, 11:01

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FROM Owen Press Releases: Research Assistants at the Insights Lab

Current Research Associates

Elizabeth Gersch (BA’21)

Abrar Haroon (BA’21)

Daniel Kang (BA’22)

Alan Koo (BA’21)

Emery Little (BA’22)

Linh Nguyen (BA’21)

Jack Rousseau (BA’22)

Qingyang Zhou (BA’21)

Past Research Associates

Scott Blain (BA’16)

Emily Faget (MBA’17)

Mallory Hall (MBA’20)

Tanvi Jain (MBA’20)

Elizabeth Montenyohl (MBA’16)

James Northcutt (MBA’18)

Chloe O’Dell (BA’19)

Emily Redfield (MBA’19)

The post Research Assistants at the Insights Lab appeared first on Vanderbilt Business School.

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13 Jul 2020, 09:01

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FROM Owen Press Releases: Path to Promotion: Chief Medical Officer, Maury Regional Medical Center

Chris Turner

Chris Turner (MMHC’16) had always been interested in the business aspect of medicine, but his years of medical school, residency, and training prevented him from pursuing a graduate degree in business earlier in his career. While he was a physician at the Maury Regional Medical Center (formerly Family Health Group), he was introduced to the Master of Management in Health Care by a colleague, and he decided to enroll at Vanderbilt Business.

The program helped him fulfill his goal of gaining business knowledge in the healthcare field. “I really enjoyed it. I think that one of the great things of the program was that it forced me to just think differently. So (in) my day-to-day care and interaction with patients, I think I had a different mindset. It challenged me to learn and think about things,” Turner said.

After he got his degree, he worked as an assistant professor at the Vanderbilt Medical Center before returning to Maury Regional Medical Center as a hospitalist in 2018 to advance his career in healthcare management. A year later, Turner was promoted to Chief Medical Officer of the center. “I firmly believe that in addition to the outstanding education I received from Owen, the structure of the MMHC program also provided for significant personal growth,” he said. “This, along with leadership experience obtained at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, provided me with the skills needed to lead a group of over 100 physicians and advanced practice providers in my current role as CMO.”

Click through Turner’s timeline below to find out how he got his promotion.

The post Path to Promotion: Chief Medical Officer, Maury Regional Medical Center appeared first on Vanderbilt Business School.

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FROM Owen Press Releases: Protected: Guiding Principles for Physical Space

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The post Protected: Guiding Principles for Physical Space appeared first on Vanderbilt Business School.

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FROM Owen Press Releases: Protected: Building Ventilation

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FROM Owen Press Releases: Protected: Building Use Policies

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16 Jul 2020, 10:01

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FROM Owen Press Releases: Four MD/MBA Students Publish Article in the Journal of Medical Systems

Last month, four Vanderbilt MD/MBA students from the class of 2021 had an article published in the Journal of Medical Systems, titled “Lessons from Operations Management to Combat the COVID-19 Pandemic.” The students co-wrote the article with two Vanderbilt faculty members, Mumin Kurtulus of Vanderbilt Owen Graduate School of Management and Brian C. Drolet of the Vanderbilt Medical School.

The four students — James Randall Patrinley Jr, Sean T. Berkowitz, Danny Zakria, and Douglas J. Totten — conceived of the article during the early days of the coronavirus pandemic. As both the business and medical school went fully remote, they found themselves with a bit of extra time and decided to put it to good use. “We had some extra time to think of important topics to write about related to COVID from our personal experiences, which really combines the business and healthcare worlds,” said Patrinley.

The students drew on their Professor Kurtulus’ operations management course to examine how the coronavirus pandemic has impacted the medical supply change, causing shortages of masks and other necessary equipment. When they finalized the draft, they sent it to Professor Kurtulus and Dr. Drolet for feedback. “I really appreciate the entrepreneurial spirit of our MD/MBA students,” Professor Kurtulus said of their collaboration. “The paper was driven by the students, and they invited me to be a co-author, so this paper would have never been written if they did not initiate it.”

The students also received help from another business school professor, Ranga Ramanujan. While Professor Ramanujan does not study operations management, he does research healthcare organizations, and he used his knowledge to help the students further refine the article. “He was happy to give us some feedback and collaborate with us even without… receiving any credit (in the journal). I think that was a testament to how supportive Owen is,” Zakria said.

While all four of the MD/MBAs plan to practice as physicians after graduating next year, they say that the business knowledge gained through their MBA education will help them become better clinicians and advocates. “What really fascinated me is how little we knew about how much basic things cost and how unspoken that is on the clinical side,” Berkowitz said. “The landscape is very complicated right now, so it seemed like a logical next step to try to learn more about the system and its impact on patients on population wide scales.”

“The modern healthcare environment seems to be focused on business elements such as cost efficiency more than ever, and I think that’s only to keep being a focus,” Patrinley added. “All of us do want to practice medicine, and (getting the MBA) will help us be advocates locally in our hospitals and nationally in our respective fields, trying to get better representation for our colleagues and patients.”

Right now, all four students are focused on applying to residencies. They haven’t settled on another paper topic yet, but they have discussed possibilities and are keeping an eye on the pandemic’s affects on the healthcare field. “From an evolution-of-healthcare standpoint, there’s a lot of reason to be excited about what could happen in the future, and there’s also reason to be apprehensive. It’s a time of change,” Totten concluded.

The full text of their article can be read here.

The post Four MD/MBA Students Publish Article in the Journal of Medical Systems appeared first on Vanderbilt Business School.

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20 Jul 2020, 10:01

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FROM Owen Press Releases: Racial Disparities in Lending Markets

Mark Cohen

Awareness of racism has increased more than ever due to the recent resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement. Over the past few weeks, professors at Vanderbilt Business School have used their expertise to explore various issues related to race and diversity via socially distanced video talks. In his talk, Mark Cohen, Justin Potter Professor of American Competitive Enterprise and Professor of Law, shared insights from his 20 years of research on racial disparities in lending markets. Here is a brief summary of his talk:

Behind the Scenes of a Deal

Cohen started off by explaining the process for securing an auto loan. When people want to buy a car, they usually contact a finance and insurance person at a dealership to help them find a good deal on a loan to finance their payment. The dealer then acts as an agent for a lender and connects the customer with the lender. During this process, the dealer can mark up the price of the loan by a certain percentage to earn a profit. In these cases, the customer lacks knowledge of the markup, while the dealer has perfect information about the customer’s credit rating, leading to asymmetric information. In addition, a markup is subjective, because the dealer can choose how high to mark up every deal. “So (dealers) possibly look for ways to discriminate the price depending on who’s walking in,” Cohen said.

The Problem in Lending Markets

Currently, it’s not illegal to charge different customers different prices during deals. However, the Equal Credit Opportunity Act does make it illegal to discriminate in credit transactions on terms of race or color. Despite this law, Cohen’s study on racial disparity in discretionary markups found that African Americans paid almost twice the markup whites did. This shows that there are racial disparities in the auto loan market. Unfortunately, those racial disparities aren’t limited to deals for automobile loans; they occur in other industries as well, such as mortgage lending. “There are similar issues that arise anytime a company uses agents,” Cohen said.

Potential Solutions

So the question is, how could the industry have avoided this problem? One way is to regulate the dealer’s commission. “This policy that lenders have allows their agents to markup loans,” Cohen said. “(Lenders) don’t necessarily have to do that. They could have changed the compensation policy to fixed commission.” However, dealers ignored one lender that tried this tactic in the past, because dealers can profit off of higher markups. Another solution is for dealers or mortgage brokers to change internal compensation and incentives. Currently, finance and insurance people at dealers earn a profit with markups, so the incentive is aligned with a higher markup. In addition, restructuring the industry with vertical integration can reduce conflicts of interest and contribute to mitigating racial disparities.

“Racial disparity is oftentimes very subtle, hard to detect. It can occur without any racial animus, and may require changes in business policies, innovative business models, or government regulation if all else fails to solve,” Cohen said. To watch his entire talk, visit this link.

The post Racial Disparities in Lending Markets appeared first on Vanderbilt Business School.

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FROM Owen Press Releases: Protected: Academic Calendar and Class Schedule: MBA and Specialized Masters (MAcc, MMark, MSF)

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The post Protected: Academic Calendar and Class Schedule: MBA and Specialized Masters (MAcc, MMark, MSF) appeared first on Vanderbilt Business School.

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FROM Owen Press Releases: MMHC Academic Calendar

Aug. 20First Day of Classes

Dec. 17Last Day of Classes

The post MMHC Academic Calendar appeared first on Vanderbilt Business School.

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FROM Owen Press Releases: EMBA Academic Calendar

Aug. 10First Day of Classes (1st-Year Students)

Aug. 13First Day of Classes (2nd-Year Students)

Dec. 12Last Day of Classes (1st and 2nd-Year Students)

The post EMBA Academic Calendar appeared first on Vanderbilt Business School.

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FROM Owen Press Releases: Next COVID relief package should require health price transparency. Everyone would benefit.

The post Next COVID relief package should require health price transparency. Everyone would benefit. appeared first on Vanderbilt Business School.

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21 Jul 2020, 13:00

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FROM Owen Press Releases: COVID-19 Insights: Eric Noll (MBA’90)

Across the world, Vanderbilt Business alumni find themselves on different frontlines of the COVID-19 pandemic. In this installment of COVID-19 Insights, Eric Noll, Chief Executive Officer of Context Capital Partners, discusses market volatility and what it means for larger market conditions.

Editor’s note: This interview was conducted on June 12.

What is market volatility, and what factors drive it?

Market volatility is a result of variance of stock or asset prices. In times of low volatility, they vary little. During times of high volatility, they vary tremendously. What drives market volatility is uncertainty. The value of an asset is essentially the value of its future cash flows, or rather what market participants agree on the value of those future cash flows. When there are market shocks, the uncertainty about what those cash flows look like expands massively, their worth is re-valued, and prices have a wider deviation and spread from where they were.

How does volatility impact market operations (liquidity, investor actions, regulations, etc.)?

Under normal circumstances, a stock like Apple, say, may trade in a bid/offer spread as little as 10 cents or lower — this bid/offer spread is the cost that market participants assess will provide liquidity to Apple. In times of volatility, the bid/offer spread widens dramatically, rewarding market participants for uncertainty and risk. That bid/offer also gets thinner in size, so that market participants can additionally mitigate risk. This compounds volatility and impacts market operations. If I’m in a large institutional investment and I need to move shares, my cost is higher but the size is thinner, so I get less done. Also, volatility begets volatility when everyone wants to go the same way at the same time. For instance, if everyone moves to the sell side, there’s less liquidity on the bid side. This can become a freight train going in one direction, which can trigger circuit breakers in the market. In the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, circuit breakers were triggered often, halting the market and giving everyone time to breathe, reassess, and re-open at what was agreed to be a fairer value. This ultimately worked, in the sense that it allowed the markets to continue to operate and function.

Hedge funds are designed to be long/short, providing an alpha return while balancing upside and downside appropriately. So, they should do better in uncertain times. However, because we have had a long bull market with such little volatility over the last decade, in order to generate returns, a lot of hedge funds moved away from truly being hedge funds. There were and are classes of hedge funds that were managing systematic macro investments — very computer- and algorithm-driven — that did very well. Tail-risk hedge funds with long, big market moves do well. So, there’s a class stratification in hedge fund performance where there are clear winners and losers.

What does volatility forecast for larger economic conditions?

Because volatility is a measure of uncertainty, you see the terms and structure to suggest this will continue for some time. If I’m looking to deploy capital or reinvest, the uncertainty has grown, in some cases exponentially. So, investors may invest less or invest in less risky assets, such as gold and treasuries. Interestingly, because this crisis is unique, you haven’t seen as much investment in real estate. Also, you could argue that bitcoin is similar to gold, in that it is a place where you could invest to store value while the world re-valued itself, but initially bitcoin went down (though it has recovered), so that remains to be seen.

What can be learned in this moment?

Broadly, what we can learn is that when markets develop a sense of complacency during a period of low volatility, a shock to the system causes massive disruption and loss. Therefore, even when it seems counter-intuitive, you should always manage your portfolio with a sense that this, too, cannot last.

When people say, “this is a new paradigm,” it tips me off that something huge is happening. You heard it during the internet boom, then in the late 2000s in real estate, and a few years ago, because there was no inflation and asset prices continued to rise. I’m not saying anyone predicted COVID-19, but rather that you know from history that there are shocks, and you should prepare your portfolio to expect them.

From an institutional investor side, a phenomenon we saw is that allocators of funds — endowments, pensions, etc. — took a hit in March. But interestingly, an outcome of this volatility is that assets are moving around. People are looking at where they did have investments, and where they should have had investments, and are making changes. In 2008-09, people hid under the mattress and hoped it would go away. Now, we recognize that this will end, and we want to be in the right place when it does.

What do the S&P, Nasdaq, and Dow tell us?

Markets are generally a future indicator for the real economy by about 6 months to a year. I think that what the market was saying — until June 11, at least — was that recovery is around the corner. On June 11, it indicated that economic recovery is coming, but it might not be quite as fast. The Dow is relatively unchanged since March; Nasdaq recently set a record. The economy is recovering, and I think relatively expeditiously.

Is this a Fed-driven rally?

I want to be careful in talking about how the Fed is propping up the market. What they’re really saying is, we’re going to take some actions to ensure that markets work. They need markets to function. During 2008-09, the market was broken because the mechanism of how risk was transferred and moved around the system no longer functioned. Now, the Fed is keeping banks primed for funding by keeping interest rates low, so that people who need to sell can sell, people who need to buy can buy, and the market will keep operating.

Ben Bernanke was a scholar of the Great Depression and operated with the understanding that, when the economy starts to collapse, you can’t restrict liquidity, you have to fund markets. Since we did recover, you can argue that he did a good job. Jerome Powell learned that markets can’t freeze, though. The gears have to continue to work.

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FROM Owen Press Releases: Biography: Ashlee Davis

Ashlee Davis is Vice President and Senior Diversity & Inclusion Manager at AllianceBernstein (AB), a global investment management firm in 22 countries.

In this role, she is responsible for expanding and leading AB’s diversity and inclusion strategy in San Antonio and AB’s global headquarters of Nashville, the assessment and cultivation of key community partnerships, and partnering with AB’s senior executives to implement effective and measurable D&I action plans.

Her most recent former role was Global Lead for External Affairs and Strategic Partnerships within the Global Inclusion & Diversity team at Cargill, Inc. Prior to Cargill, Ms. Davis served for more than 6 years in the Obama Administration both within the White House and as a Presidential Political Appointee at the U.S. Department of Agriculture where her roles included White House Liaison and Senior Advisor to the Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights.

During the academic year 2018-19, Ms. Davis was a Corporate Partner at the University of St. Thomas-Minnesota and co-taught the MBA elective Inclusive Leadership in Diverse Organizations with Professor Teresa Rothausen. Her other civic engagement includes serving as a board member of Nashville, Tennessee’s Community Oversight Board, the University of Pittsburgh’s Alumni Association, Colorado State University’s Corporate Diversity Advisory Council.

Ms. Davis holds a B.A. in Politics & Philosophy from the University of Pittsburgh and Juris Doctorate from the Howard University School of Law. She is a native of Nashville, Tennessee.

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