Faculty

Alexander Arapoglou teaches risk management and applied investment management to MBA students at UNC Kenan-Flagler.

He is principal of Aland Corporation, a derivatives and risk consulting firm that he founded in Durham, N.C., in 2002.

He has been a derivatives trader and head of risk management worldwide for a major New York bank. Professor Arapoglou served as treasurer and head of risk management worldwide for Mizuho Capital Markets Corporation. As treasurer, he was responsible for firm investments, funding, liquidity risk management as well as all non-trading foreign exchange and interest rate risk. As head of risk management, he managed the market risk department and implemented a variety of metrics and techniques for the analysis of trading, credit and liquidity risk.

Before joining Mizuho, Professor Arapoglou traded yen derivatives for Chemical Bank and for Chase after the two banks merged. He joined Chemical Bank as global head of risk management in 1989, and managed risk incidents in the United States, Europe, Asia and South America.

His career included positions as head of the financial analysis group at Salomon Brothers and head of consumer sector treasury at Chase, where he was on the bank-wide treasury strategy committee. Before he began his financial career, Professor Arapoglou was a management consultant with Accenture, specializing in evaluating and recommending strategic improvements to controls and management information systems for large capital projects worldwide including nuclear power plants refineries and LNG plants.

Professor Arapoglou received his MBA from UNC Kenan-Flagler and his bachelor’s degree in engineering from McGill University.

Art Baker teaches courses on private equity, mergers and acquisitions and entrepreneurship through acquisition.

He brings more than 15 years of professional finance experience to UNC Kenan-Flagler. He worked as an investment banker and finance executive in Fortune 500 and mid-sized companies.

Dr. Baker served as chief strategy officer for Smart Start, a portfolio company of a major private equity firm. He led strategy, business development and M&A activities. He was a member of the senior executive committee reporting to the CEO.

He also was manager of strategic initiatives for AAA; manager of corporate development for General Motors; and vice president of investment banking and M&A for RBC Capital Markets in Toronto.

Dr. Baker previously taught at Cox School of Business at Southern Methodist University and the Investment Banking Institute.

He is a Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) charterholder.

He received his PhD in economics from Moscow State University, his MBA from the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto and his BS in business from Oklahoma City University.

Darpan Biswas is a Partner at Morgan Creek Digital. Darpan joined Morgan Creek in 2010. His primary responsibilities at Morgan Creek relate to the investment and research activities of Morgan Creek Digital. His responsibilities also include investment and research activities in emerging markets, credit markets, and global macro. Prior to joining Morgan Creek, he completed his Master of Business Administration as a Dean Scholar at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. While completing his degree, he served at the North Carolina Department of State Treasurer working on manager due diligence, investment analysis, and organizational projects. Darpan also served as the portfolio manager of a $1.8M fund at UNC where he invested in securities across multiple asset classes. Before business school, Darpan consulted with firms in the financial services and telecommunications industry at Deloitte Consulting. He received his Bachelor of Technology degree in Computer Science from the Indian Institute of Technology at Kanpur in India.

Yasser Boualam’s research interests center around macro-finance, financial institutions, financial fragility and crises and economic theory.

His recent research examines the macroeconomic implications of bank credit relationships and the effects of competition on bank lending dynamics.

Dr. Boualam received the Young Economist Prize at the ECB Forum on Central Banking organized by the European Central Bank.

He teaches courses in credit markets and fixed income.

He received his PhD in financial economics from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, his MS in computational finance from the Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon University and his Diplome d’ Ingenieur in applied mathematics and computer science from Grenoble Institute of Technology in France.

Capital structure, information economics and liquidity are the research interests of Jesse Davis. His recent work focuses on the dynamics of an entrepreneur’s decisions regarding the types of securities issued to finance the firm.

Before he began his academic career, he was vice president of quantitative fixed income research at Neuberger Berman in Chicago, and at Princeton Review in different roles.

He was a development project coordinator for Connections for the Homeless and director of resource development for AmericaCorps/Sacramento Habitat for Humanity.

Dr. Davis received his PhD from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, his MBA with high honors from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, and a BS in mathematics and a BA in chemistry and English literature from Miami University.

The main research interests of Eric Ghysels are time series econometrics and finance. His most recent research focuses on MIDAS – Mi(xed) Da(ta) S(ampling) – regression models and related econometric methods, machine learning, artificial intelligence, big data and FinTech

He teaches empirical finance and time series PhD courses.

Dr. Ghysels has published in the leading economics, finance and statistics journals and has published several books. He serves on the editorial boards of several academic journals and was co-editor of  the Journal of Business and Economic Statistics and editor of the Journal of Financial Econometrics.

He is the founding co-president of the Society for Financial Econometrics (SoFiE). He was a resident scholar at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York during 2008-2009 and a Duisenberg Fellow at the European Central Bank in 2011. He is a fellow of the American Statistical Association and the Society for Financial Econometrics.

Dr. Ghysels, who speaks French, Dutch and German, has been a visiting professor or scholar at several major U.S., European and Asian universities.

He received his PhD and MA from Northwestern University and his BA from the University of Brussels.

Mustafa N. Gültekin’s work focuses on investments, portfolio theory, asset pricing models, financial modeling, valuation, and risk management.

He teaches applied investment management, financial modeling, valuation and corporate restructuring, and financial markets. Other areas of expertise include international finance, mortgage backed securities, and asset-liability management.

Dr. Gültekin has served as a consultant to major corporations in the United States and abroad. He is a limited partner at the Blackethouse Group LLC, partner and senior advisor to Morning Meeting Inc., a financial modeling and consulting group, and a consultant to the Community First Investment Risk Evaluation (CFIRE) team of Community First Financial Group. He served on the boards of Belltower Advisors, LLC, a hedge fund, Clockworks Therapeutics Inc., a biotech company, and Ardic Tech, Inc., an ICT services and outsourcing company.

Dr. Gültekin is the former president of the European Financial Management Association and the former dean of the College of Administrative Sciences and Economics at Koç University in Istanbul. He also served as associate director of the Management Decision Laboratory at New York University and as a research scientist at Boğazici University in Turkey.

He received his PhD in finance from New York University, his MA in operations management from Boğazici University and a BS in physics from Middle East Technical University.

Jim Jones (MBA ’06), is Partner and Portfolio Manager at William Blair. Since earning his MBA from UNC Kenan-Flagler, Jim has worked as an equity analyst with Federated Investors and served nearly 10 years as industrials analyst for William Blair before taking on the role of Director of Research. Since September 2019, he has been portfolio manager for William Blair’s mid-cap growth and small mid-gap growth strategies. As an MBA student, he founded the Alpha Challenge stock pitch competition. He has remained an active alumnus in the Alpha Challenge and also teaches the Fundamental Investing Practicum in the MBA program.

Pramita Saha, Executive Director and Professor of Practice for the Center. She oversees the student experience from recruitment through career development and alumni relations in capital markets & investments for all UNC Kenan-Flagler programs. She was previously Senior Associate Director, Coaching – Career & Leadership. She brings over 15 years of experience in capital markets, sales and trading and investment banking. She was Head of Loan Syndicate & Distribution Americas at Standard Chartered Bank and has held positions at Goldman Sachs, Citi and BBVA. Pramita holds an MBA (with Honors) from The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania and a BA from Smith College.

Gill Segal’s research interests include asset pricing, macroeconomics (macro-finance), uncertainty and information.

His current projects focus on understanding the role that fluctuations in volatility play in explaining asset-prices and economic growth. Dr. Segal’s studies examine the macroeconomic and financial implications of different facets of volatility as well as the sources of changes in volatility.

His research has been published in the Journal of Financial Economics.

Dr. Segal teaches courses in investments and financial markets.

He received his PhD and MA in finance from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, where he received an outstanding paper award from the Jacobs-Levy Equity Management Center for Quantitative Financial Research. He received his MBA and MBA in computer science from The Open University of Israel.

The research of Andreas Stathopoulos focuses on asset pricing and international finance, with an emphasis on exchange rate determination, international risk sharing and portfolio choice.

His research has been published in the Journal of Financial Economics and the Review of Financial Studies.

Dr. Stathopoulos teaches courses in investments, financial markets and macroeconomics.

Before joining UNC Kenan-Flagler, he taught at the University of Southern California and the University of Washington.

He received his PhD in finance and economics from Columbia University, his M.Sc. in economics and finance from the University of Warwick and his undergraduate degree in finance from the University of Piraeus.

Ranjit Thomas has served as a faculty advisor to the Applied Investment Management (AIM) class since 2019. He is a portfolio manager at Spice Capital Advisors, an investment management firm in Raleigh. Prior to this, he was a Partner at Tracer Capital, a long short equities fund in New York. He has also worked at the private equity unit of Swiss Re and at the Boston Consulting Group in New York and Asia.

Ranjit graduated with an MBA from the Indian Institute of Management Calcutta and a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology Madras. He is a CFA charterholder and serves on the Board of the CFA Society of North Carolina.