Keynote speakers
Dr Kai Li
Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada
Canada Research Chair in Corporate Governance
W.Maurice Young Chair in Finance
Dr. Li holds the Canada Research Chair in Corporate Governance and W. Maurice Young Endowed Chair in Finance at the UBC Sauder School of Business, University of British Columbia. She is also a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, a Senior Fellow of the Asian Bureau of Finance and Economic Research, a Research Member of the European Corporate Governance Institute, and a Research Fellow of the FinTech at Cornell Initiative. Dr. Li was Senior Associate Dean, Equity and Diversity between 2015-2021.
Dr. Li’s research focuses on the economic consequences of corporate governance mechanisms. Her current research projects explore: (1) gender and finance, (2) machine learning in finance, and (3) bond ownership and creditor governance. Her research has appeared in Journal of Finance, Journal of Financial Economics, Review of Financial Studies, Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Management Science, Journal of International Business Studies, and many other leading journals in Finance and Economics.
She is the recipient of the UBC Killam Research Award, the Sauder School of Business Research Excellence Award (both junior and senior categories), and the Barclays Global Investors Canada Research Award. She is a Managing Editor of Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis.
She is on the Editorial Board of Journal of International Business Studies, Journal of Financial Intermediation, Journal of Financial Stability, and Pacific-Basin Finance Journal. She has also served on the Editorial Board of Review of Financial Studies, Review of Finance, Management Science, Journal of Corporate Finance, Journal of Banking and Finance, and Financial Management. Her research has been featured in Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Washington Post, Financial Times, The Time Magazine, Reuters, CNBC, Bloomberg, Dow Jones Newswire, New Yorker, BBC, BNN, CBC National, CTV National News, National Post, Globe and Mail, U.S. News & World Report, Harvard Business Review, and Yahoo! Finance.
Professor Jarrad Harford
Professor of Finance and Business Economics
Chair of the Department of Finance and Business Economics
Paul Pigott-PACCAR Professor in Business Administration
Jarrad Harford is the Paul Pigott - PACCAR Professor of Finance and Chair of the Finance and Business Economics Department at the University of Washington’s Foster School of Business. He earned his PhD in Finance with a minor in Organizations and Markets at the University of Rochester. His teaching focuses on core finance and acquisition analysis.
Professor Harford currently serves as a Managing Editor of the Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis and recently completed a 20-year term as an Associate Editor for the Journal of Financial Economics. In the past, he has served as an Associate Editor for the Review of Financial Studies and the Journal of Corporate Finance. His primary research areas are mergers and acquisitions, corporate governance and payout policy, and he has published more than 35 papers on these topics in top finance journals. In 2023, Pearson-Prentice Hall published the sixth edition of a Fundamentals of Corporate Finance, co-authored by Prof. Harford.