Rob provides communications and marketing support for the institute, including writing, editing, media relations and strategic planning.
He has spent more than 30 years in journalism, most recently as managing editor of VenuesNow magazine, and has held editing and copy editing positions at Sports Business Journal, The Charlotte Observer, the Lexington (Ky.) Herald-Leader and the Daily Progress in Charlottesville, Va.
Rob graduated from the University of Kansas with a bachelor’s degree in journalism.
David Carroll has over 42 years of institutional experience as a financial services executive with expertise in wealth and asset management as well as retail and commercial banking with Wells Fargo and predecessors Wachovia and First Union. In 2017, after 38 years Mr. Carroll retired from Wells Fargo as Senior Executive Vice President and Head of Wealth and Investment Management. The Wealth and Investment Management Group consisted of Wells Fargo Advisors ( Wells’s retail broker dealer), Wells Fargo Asset Management, Wells Fargo Retirement Services, Wells Fargo Private Bank/Wealth Management, Abbot Downing, the ultra high net worth business, and the Wells Fargo Investment Institute. The group accounted for over $16 BN in annual revenue, $2.5 BN in after tax earnings, over $2TR in assets under management, and approximately 16,000 employees. Since retiring from Wells Fargo Mr. Carroll has been active in managing his family’s private equity and venture capital portfolio, focused on healthcare, and technology.
Mr. Carroll began his career at First Union Bank, where he grew up on the commercial and retail banking side, and ultimately became CEO of the bank’s Georgia and Florida businesses. In addition to being involved in over 30 mergers and acquisitions over his career he had senior leadership roles in Technology, Mortgage Banking, Corporate Real Estate, Enterprise Information Management, Marketing, Card Services, and E Commerce. He co-led merger integration in the merger integration between Wachovia and First Union and in 2001, he became President of Wachovia’s Capital Management Group – the asset management, brokerage, retirement services and reinsurance businesses.
Mr. Carroll holds a bachelor’s degree in business administration from UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School, and currently serves on the Board of Advisors for Kenan Flagler Business School, the UNC-Chapel Hill Foundation Investment Fund and the Board of Directors of Infosel Financiero SA de CV, a Mexico City based information fintech company.
Anita Brown-Graham, Gladys Hall Coates Distinguished Professor of Public Law & Government and
Director of ncIMPACT Initiative, brings together critical stakeholders to help communities create
collaborative change to overcome challenges. She and her team have tackled the need for higher
educational attainment, opioid misuse, economic mobility, and community economic development.
Sought-after speaker and moderator, Brown-Graham serves as host for the ncIMPACT television
program on PBS NC. The public affairs program features innovative community collaborations
across North Carolina.
Anita R. Brown-Graham rejoined the UNC School of Government in September 2016 to lead the
public launch of ncIMPACT—a special initiative that seeks to expand the School’s capacity to work
with public officials on complex policy issues. She and her colleagues bring together critical
stakeholders to help communities create collaborative change to overcome challenges, including
keys to economic recovery after COVID, the need for greater numbers of post-secondary credentials
and degrees, expansion of prekindergarten, and opioid misuse. Sought-after speaker and
moderator, Brown-Graham serves as host for the ncIMPACT television program on PBS NC. The
public affairs program features innovative community collaborations across North Carolina.
Brown-Graham’s first tour as a School faculty member was from 1994 to 2006, during which she
specialized in governmental liability and community economic development aimed at revitalizing
communities. In 2007, Brown-Graham became Director of the Institute for Emerging Issues (IEI) at
NC State University. There, she led IEI’s efforts to build North Carolina’s capacity for economic
development and prosperity, working with leaders from across the state in the areas of business,
government, and higher education to focus on issues important to North Carolina’s future. She
began her career as a law clerk in the Eastern District of California. Brown-Graham is a William C.
Friday Fellow, American Marshall Fellow, and Eisenhower Fellow. Past and current board service
includes Aspen Institute: Thrive Rural, Blue Cross Blue Shield of NC Foundation, Consensus Building
Institute, Made in Durham, NC IOLTA, OnBoardNC, Research Triangle Park, Triangle Community
Foundation, and Z Smith Reynolds Foundation.
In 2013, the White House named her a Champion of Change for her work at IEI, and the Triangle
Business Journal named her a 2014 Woman in Business for her policy leadership in the state and a
2017 CEO of the year. The UNC School of Government named her the Gladys Hall Coates
Distinguished Professor in 2020.
She earned an undergraduate degree from Louisiana State University and a law degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Shawnda provides finance, budget and grant oversight to the Kenan Institute.
She has more than 18 years of higher education accounting experience and joins the institute following an eight-year tenure at the North Carolina State University Engineering Foundation. While at NCSU, she managed a $13M budget consisting of a wide variety of financial transactions, corporate and individual gifts, HR and procurement processes, and more. She previously spent 10 years at North Carolina Central University, serving as Assistant Director of Business Affairs and as Interim Associate Dean for Finance and Administration for the NCCU Law School.
Shawnda graduated from NCSU with a bachelor’s of science in Accounting and has a master’s degree in Public Administration from NC Central University.
Gerald provides strategic vision and leadership of the translational economic research and policy initiatives at the Institute.
He has worked in both the public and private sectors focusing on the intersection between financial markets and economic fundamentals. During the Obama Administration Gerald was Deputy Assistant Secretary for Macroeconomic Analysis at the U.S. Department of Treasury where he helped formulate and evaluate the impact of policy proposals on the U.S. economy. Prior to Treasury, he managed a global macro fund at Ziff Brothers Investments.
Gerald holds a bachelor’s of science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a Ph.D. in Economics from Harvard University and is a contributing author to 30-Second Money as well as a co-author of Political Cycles and the Macroeconomy.
Professor Yimfor’s research is in empirical corporate finance, focusing on entrepreneurial finance, private equity and financial intermediation. He is particularly interested in showing how various frictions affect the ability of start-ups to raise external financing and proposing solutions to these frictions. Professor Yimfor earned his undergraduate degree in marketing from Catholic University of Central Africa, his MBA and master’s in economics from Kent State University and his PhD in finance at Rice University.
Professor Pless’s research interests are in the economics of innovation, energy and environmental economics, and public economics. Her research explores the drivers and consequences of innovation for social progress through an economics lens, with a particular focus on understanding how policy and management can drive clean energy innovation and innovation that protects environmental systems more broadly. Prior to joining MIT, she held positions with the University of Oxford, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, the National Conference of State Legislatures and the World Bank. Professor Pless holds an MS and PhD in mineral and energy economics from the Colorado School of Mines, and a BA in economics and political science from the University of Vermont.
Professor Pastor’s research focuses mostly on financial markets and asset management, and he has written on a broad range of topics such as liquidity risk, political risk, sustainable investing, stock price bubbles, return predictability, portfolio choice, performance evaluation, returns to scale in asset management, indexing, learning, technological revolutions, income inequality, populism, quantitative easing, and IPOs. Beyond the university, Professor Pastor serves as a member of the Bank Board of the National Bank of Slovakia, director of the European Finance Association, research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, and research fellow at the Centre for Economic Policy and Research. He has also served as president of the Western Finance Association, director of the American Finance Association, co-director of the Fama-Miller Center for Research in Finance and associate editor of the Journal of Finance, Journal of Financial Economics, and the Review of Financial Studies.
Professor Edmans’ research interests are in corporate finance, responsible business and behavioral finance, and he has published in the American Economic Review, Journal of Finance, Journal of Financial Economics, Review of Financial Studies and Journal of Economic Literature. He is managing editor of the Review of Finance, associate editor of the Journal of Financial Economics, a research fellow of the Centre for Economic Policy Research, a fellow of the European Corporate Governance Institute, and a fellow and 2021 keynote speaker at the Financial Management Association. Professor Edmans received his undergraduate degree from Oxford University before earning his PhD in finance from MIT Sloan as a Fulbright Scholar.
The research and teaching interests of Franklin Qian are urban and labor economics, real estate finance and corporate finance.
Dr. Qian has studied the microstructure of the U.S. housing market using data from millions of bargaining interactions; management practices and firm productivity using employer-employee matched surveys in China; and the effects of a health shock on household income mobility in China.
His current research examines initial public offerings and expectations in the housing market; consequences of San Francisco’s rent control expansion; and the effects of firm entry on communities, neighborhoods, and their residents.
His paper “The Effects of High-skilled Firm Entry on Incumbent Residents” won an honorable mention for the Best Student Paper at the 2020 Urban Economics Association meeting.
Dr. Qian’s research has been published in the American Economic Review and AEA Papers and Proceedings. He is a referee for the American Economic Review, American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, Journal of the European Economics Association and Journal of Urban Economics.
He received his PhD in economics from Stanford University. He earned his BS in physics and mathematics, summa cum laude, from Duke University