Fintech 2021

David Ehrich is co-founder and Executive Director of the Alliance for Innovative Regulation (AIR), a nonprofit that helps bank regulators embrace and leverage technology. David has worked for 20 years in banking and payments at McKinsey, at American Express where he was a GM in the Prepaid Group, and at JPMorganChase where he was the head of credit card strategy. David is the architect of the Bank On National Account Standards for bank accounts with no overdraft fees, and he is co-founder of Petal, a NYC-based fintech credit card startup pioneering the use of cash-flow underwriting for consumers who lack a history of credit. David earned an MBA from the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth and a B.S. from Cornell University in 1985. 

Pamela Moulton is an Associate Professor of Finance at Cornell’s School of Hotel Administration. Her teaching and research interests include financial markets and market microstructure, with a special interest in the role of investors. Her current research focuses on the impact of high-frequency trading on stock performance, the role of designated and voluntary market makers in stock liquidity, and detecting fraud in financial statements. Professor Moulton’s research has been published in several of the leading finance and accounting journals, including the Journal of Finance, the Journal of Financial Economics, the Journal of Accounting and Economics, and the Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis. Prior to her academic career, Professor Moulton worked in fixed-income research for more than a dozen years at various Wall Street investment banks, including Deutsche Bank, where she was a managing director and global co-head of relative value research. From 2003 to 2006, she was a managing director and senior economist at the New York Stock Exchange, where she focused on equity market microstructure research. A chartered financial analyst (CFA), Professor Moulton earned her B.S. in economics at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and her Ph.D. in finance and MPhil from the Columbia University Graduate School of Business. She was previously on the faculty of the Graduate School of Business Administration at Fordham University.

Peter Balnaves designs and leads case-based MBA and graduate-level courses in fintech, private equity, strategy, and venture capitalism at the Johnson Graduate School of Management in the Cornell SC Johnson College of Business. Professor Balnaves has over 25 years of top-tier executive leadership and broad experience with digital capabilities in P2P lending, robo-advice, payment systems, predictive analytics, blockchain, and cryptocurrencies. His fintech transformation experience includes the application of machine learning, AI, big data, and predictive analytics. Professor Balnaves holds advanced degrees from IE University, Cambridge University’s Judge School of Business, Harvard University, Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business, and Georgetown University.

Lin William Cong is the Rudd Family Professor of Management and Associate Professor of Finance at the Johnson Graduate School of Management, SC Johnson College of Business, Cornell University. Prior to joining Cornell, Professor Cong was an Assistant Professor of Finance at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business and faculty member at the Center for East Asian Studies. He was also a doctoral fellow at the Stanford Institute for Innovation in Developing Economies and a George Shultz Scholar at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research. Professor Cong is currently a Kauffman Junior Faculty Fellow as well as one of Poets & Quants World’s Best 40 Under 40 MBA Professors. He serves as an associate editor for Management Science and the Journal of Banking and Finance, and he is a member of multiple professional organizations. Professor Cong earned a Ph.D. in Finance and an M.S. in Statistics from Stanford University, where he was recognized with the Lieberman Fellowship for outstanding contributions in research, teaching, and university service.