Torrance maintains and updates existing websites, develops web pages and print media layouts, while also offering desktop support for the institute.
Prior to joining the institute, Torrance re-designed UNC-Chapel Hill’s Office of Institutional Research and Assessment’s website. He has extensive graphic design and development experience for solving complex interactive media challenges.
Torrance received a bachelor’s degree in web design and brand development from The Art Institute of Raleigh-Durham.
Carly assists with various administrative tasks, including conference room reservations, catering, staff travel coordination, expense reimbursements and more. She has more than five years of administrative support experience. Most recently, Carly worked for the Colorado Department of Education in Denver.
Carly earned a Bachelor of Arts in Spanish from Westmont College in Santa Barbara, California.
Patrick Hartley is a Fellow at the Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise. For many years, he served as a Professor of the Practice at Kenan-Flagler Business School as the lead instructor of the Alternative Investments course. In addition to his work with the Kenan Institute, Patrick is an investment consultant and financial advisor with one of the world’s leading financial services firms—serving both institutional and private clients.
Patrick is also the former president of the board of directors of the UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School Foundation. He holds a Master of Business Administration from The George Washington University School of Government and Business Administration (now School of Business), and a BSBA degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He has participated in executive management programs at Harvard Business School and the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.
Maryann serves as the Watts Endowed Professor of Public Affairs at Arizona State University School of Public Affairs.
From 2008 to 2022 she taught as the S.K. Heninger Distinguished Professor of Public Policy at UNC-Chapel Hill’s Department of Public Policy and from 2017 to 2022 was an adjunct professor of finance at UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School. In addition, Maryann served as the faculty director of CREATE. Her research and teaching focus on the geography of innovation, the commercialization of academic research and the factors that promote technological change and economic growth.
Among her honors, Maryann was awarded the 2013 Global Award for Entrepreneurship Research. She is the editor of Research Policy, and has written for numerous journals, including the American Economic Review and The Brookings Papers on Economic Policy.
Maryann earned a doctorate in economics and management and a master’s degree in public policy analysis from Carnegie Mellon University. She also holds a bachelor’s degree from Ohio State University.
Kim heads up the institute’s signature scholarship program, which provides a world-class, transformative scholarship experience for undergraduate students of UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School. She comes to the institute from UNC’s Carolina Center for Public Service.
Kim has more than 20 years of leadership experience in education, community engagement and nonprofit management in organizations such as UNC-Chapel Hill, the NAACP and the Martin Luther King, Jr. History & Public Policy Center, where she served as executive director.
She holds a doctorate in cultural anthropology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a Bachelor of Science in Education and Social Policy from Northwestern University.
Ms. Battle brings almost four decades of financial services and investment experience to Lone Peak Partners. Most recently, she was Director of Manager Selection and a member of the Management Committee at Soros Fund Management LLC. Over her eight years there, she not only managed multibillion dollar portfolios of external hedge funds for the Quantum group of funds and George Soros, but also built the manager selection and due diligence processes as well as the multi-manager portfolio construction and monitoring methodologies. Prior to Soros Fund Management, she held positions at Bankers Trust, Citicorp and JP Morgan, primarily as a manager in Global Sales and Trading. She currently serves on the Board of Directors of the University of North Carolina Kenan-Flagler Business School Foundation Board, the Board of Directors of the Breast Cancer Research Foundation, and the President’s Council of the Peconic Land Trust. Ms. Battle received a BA from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1976.
Ms. Battle founded Lone Peak Partners Management LP in July of 2009. The firm registered with the SEC in February 2012. Lone Peak is also registered with the CFTC as a CPO and a CTA and became a member of the NFA in January 2013.
Lone Peak manages two distinct types of alternative investment vehicles:
- Customized Portfolios: targeted toward informed and experienced investors capable of investing significant capital.
- Commingled Fund: a non-customized offering with lower capital thresholds than customized portfolios.
Xinxin Wang’s research interests are in the areas of entrepreneurship, innovation, venture capital, corporate finance and industrial organization.
Professor Wang strives to understand the relationship between financial markets and real economic output in terms of entrepreneurship, innovation and development. In particular, Wang is interested in the changing landscape of alternative finance and the role new paradigms of funding have on entrepreneurial decision making.
She is completing her PhD at the University of California, Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, where she earned her MS in finance. She graduated summa cum laude from the University of Texas at Austin with a BS in applied mathematics and a BA in economics.
Sriram Venkataraman is a big-data scientist with expertise in pricing, social-media analytics, advertising, retailing and branding.
He develops state-of-the-art quantitative methods to maximize return-on-investment from marketing activities. His research has been adopted by Fortune 100 companies in industries that include entertainment, pharmaceuticals, automobiles, technology and consumer packaged goods.
Dr. Venkataraman holds several patents and consults with firms like GE, Sony, Disney, Cox, Coca-Cola and SAS. He also serves as an advisor to prominent full-service analytics start-ups that provide business intelligence solutions in data-intensive industries.
An award winning teacher and researcher, Dr. Venkataraman previously served on the faculty of Emory University’s Goizueta Business School and as a visiting scholar at the University of Chicago’s Booth School.
He received his PhD and MS in management from Cornell University and his BS from the University of Poona, India.
The primary research interests of finance professor Geoffrey Tate are in the areas of empirical corporate finance and behavioral finance. His work explores the effect of managerial biases on corporate investment and financing decisions.
He also researches the composition of boards of directors and how it affects firm policies and performance. His recent work studies the interaction between labor economics and organizational structure, focusing on the implications for individual workers.
Dr. Tate has published papers in leading academic journals including the Quarterly Journal of Economics, Journal of Finance and Journal of Financial Economics.
He served on the faculties of UCLA’s Anderson School of Management and the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School prior to joining UNC Kenan-Flagler.
He received his PhD in economics from Harvard University and his BA in mathematics and economics with highest honors from Rutgers College.
Christina Synn’s research interests include corporate disclosure, financial reporting and social networks. She examines topics such as the connections between corporate accounting disclosures and the macro-economy and the relationship between firm financial reporting and capital structure.
Dr. Synn teaches financial accounting.
She is a CPA, licensed in North Carolina. She worked at Ernst & Young in Boston and Charlotte.
She received her PhD in business administration from the University of Michigan’s Stephen M. Ross School of Business, her master’s in applied economics from the University of Michigan and her BBA with highest honors in accounting and finance from Emory University’s Goizueta Business School.