Patryk Perkowski graduated as valedictorian from Queens College in 2014. A student of the Macaulay Honors College, he doubled majored in math and economics. While at Queens College, he conducted international health policy research under the Urban Studies department, conducted educational policy research abroad in Ghana, and wrote a senior thesis that examined the effectiveness of policy provisions in reducing drunk driving. Upon graduation, Patryk joined the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco as a research associate, where he supported staff economists with producing academic research and high-level briefings on monetary policy. He now works at Columbia University, assisting Professor Chris Blattman with projects related to poverty and violence in fragile states. His current projects include evaluating a hotspots policing intervention in Colombia, an anti-vote buying campaign in Uganda, and a group cognitive behavioral therapy program for ex-combatants in Liberia. He plans to pursue a PhD in economics in the future to focus on labor economics and the economics of race.

Jonathan Taryan is an analyst in the Long Island and Manhattan market for J.P. Morgan Private Bank. In his role, Jonathan provides strategic and customized investment, credit, and wealth advisory solutions for JPMorgan’s high net worth clients.

After holding three internships with J.P. Morgan Private Bank during the spring, summer and fall of 2014, Jonathan was offered a full-time position on the same team. He began his career in July 2015.

Prior to joining J.P. Morgan, he held a market strategy internship at National Securities Corporation where he supported the firm’s Chief Market Strategist publishing economic commentary and analysis across equities, fixed income, currencies, and commodities.

     Jonathan graduated magna cum laude from Queens College of the City University of New York with a dual degree in Economics and Corporate Finance.

Jonathan holds his Series 7 and 63 licenses. He resides in Manhattan.

Youssouf Diallo works as a junior financial analyst specifically for The Eastern District of New York at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. In his current position, Youssouf provides an objective evaluation of financial soundness, determine compliance with applicable laws and regulations, and appraises the performance and abilities of management and directorate. This position requires him to travel 40 to 60 per cent of his working time, on average, from large banks to community banks within his district. Before graduating from Queens College, Youssouf interned for two renowned financial firms and believes both internships were made possible largely from the connections he made with faculty and others in the Department of Economics at Queens College. Youssouf interned at Barrington Capital as a Mergers and Acquisitions analyst and at Schutzman Associates as an Investment Banking intern.

While at Queens College, Youssouf was involved in many leadership activities, as well as, a number of volunteering opportunities. His mentorship at Project Excel, a Queens College program that helps minority students excel in stem programs, was particularly beneficial. Youssouf was also a Student Ambassador for the Center of Ethnic, Race and Religious understanding.

Youssouf holds a Bachelor of Arts with Honors in Pure Mathematics and a Bachelor of Arts in Economics, both from Queens College. Youssouf also has a Business Administration Associate of Science degree from Queensborough Community College. Youssouf plans to pursue a master degree in Financial Engineering at New York University beginning in the Fall 2017 semester.

He is a native of Mali and has lived in New York City since moving to the United States in 2008.

ER: Joan, the Department of Economics is thrilled that you have recently won the 2013 President’s Award for Excellence in Teaching. It goes without saying (but I will say it) that it is more than well-deserved. We are doubly proud of you-as a colleague and also as a graduate of the QC economics department. So let’s go back to the beginning of your QC career. What led you here as an undergraduate?

JN: First of all, I grew up in Queens, in Elmhurst, and I attended Newtown High School. My decision was really based on my mother’s recommendation. She always spoke about Queens as the “college on a hill.” She said many times that it was a place to get a great education.

ER: What are your fondest memories about being an undergraduate?

JN: I did indeed receive an excellent education. I benefited from taking classes with professors who were engaged with the material, as well as with the students. Many classes had only 20 or 25 students. I received a very broad-based education.

ER: Do you still have any close friends from your undergraduate years?

JN: My husband, Bruce. We have now been married for 30 years. He also majored in economics.

ER: What were your favorite courses?

JN: Ray Franklin’s course on the economics of race, class, and gender. A political science seminar with Andrew Hacker. I was actually a double major-econ and poli sci-and I had a minor in philosophy. Professor Hacker sent letters to students who did well in his intro class and invited them into his seminar. I still remember some of our discussions.

ER: At what point did you decide to major in economics?

JN: First, I declared a political science major; then, in my junior year, I added the econ major, and I continued to take philosophy classes through all four years. We were told poli sci was a good major if you were interested in becoming a lawyer. But economics looked good for providing more career opportunities. And Professor Hacker told his political science students that economics was a must, so I took my first econ class in the spring of my sophomore year. I have to admit that I didn’t love the first year, but when I took Ray’s class, I saw how interesting economics could be and that it really complemented philosophy and political science. Ray also hired me as a research assistant to work on a project that examined how CUNY’s student body changed over time. (Ray won an Excellence in Teaching award in 1993, and it is gratifying to follow in his footsteps.)

ER: In addition to Ray Franklin, which other economics faculty members played an important role in your undergraduate education?

JN: Michael Edelstein’s intermediate macro class was great; he brings in a lot of different material. He is really an excellent teacher. He should be getting one of these teaching awards! Also, Peter Eilbott hired me as a research assistant and encouraged me to attend graduate school.

ER: When did you develop your interest in finance? It is not exactly what one would have predicted given what you have said about your undergraduate interests.

JN: In grad school at NYU, Linda Allen, who was then also an NYU grad student (also a QC undergrad a few years before me), recommended a finance course taught in the business school. (I was in the econ department in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, and at that time it did not offer a finance course.) The business school course was taught by a number of different outstanding professors over two semesters. That’s what got me started in finance.

ER: In what way do you see your interest in finance related to your interests in philosophy and political science?

JN: As the recent financial crisis illustrates very painfully, human decision-making is not something that is easily modeled with accuracy and precision. The desire to move up the ladder makes the human factor all too real in understanding why it is hard to stand away from the crowd and state that something your superior believes does not make sense. Anyone who studied either political science or philosophy would understand that math only takes us so far in capturing the underlying reality of decision-making.

ER: Tell me about your doctoral thesis.

JN: It was entitled “Fair Competition in the Market for Corporate Control.” My thesis advisor was on the law school faculty-Lewis Kornhauser. He also had a PhD in economics. I used game theory to investigate how different types of tender offers shape battles for corporate control. My results identified conditions when specific types of tender offers, such as a two-tier front-loaded tender offer, effectively coerce shareholders into tendering even though shareholder wealth is not maximized.

ER: How was the grad school experience?

JN: Very different from my undergraduate experience. Undergrad changed my thinking about a whole range of issues, while my graduate school experience was very narrowly focused. Game theory appealed to me because there is definitely a philosophical aspect to it, in particular, with respect to the idea of rationality.

ER: Can you give me an example of how your thinking changed during your undergraduate years?

JN: My father was an old-fashioned liberal, and I grew up thinking only one political party had it right. But college taught me that getting things right was far easier to talk about than accomplish.

ER: How did you decide to return to QC as a faculty member?

JN: I started teaching at Queens as an adjunct while I was finishing my dissertation. When I received my PhD and it was time to look for a full-time job, I limited my search to the New York area because Bruce, by then my husband, was working at AT&T in New Jersey. A position in finance had opened up when Linda Allen, then a QC faculty member, moved from Queens to Hofstra. (She is now at Baruch.) So in 1988 I became an assistant professor.

ER: What was it like coming back and being on the faculty with people who had been your professors?

JN: I guess, because I taught as an adjunct, the transition from student to faculty member was ongoing. I felt very comfortable, and the faculty was welcoming. So it was an easy transition.

ER: As I noted at the start, you recently received the Queens College 2013 President’s Award for Excellence in Teaching. So what is the secret to being an excellent teacher?

JN: I don’t know if there is a secret in the sense that there is one right way to teach effectively. I think it is the social environment in the classroom-developing a community of learners. There are lots of ways to do this. The object is to make students comfortable enough to share their ideas and thoughts with you and the class, and to come to see you during office hours. Then you will have a successful classroom environment.

ER: The citation announcing your President’s Award for Excellence in Teaching notes, among the many ways in which you have inspired your students, “your use of ‘cutting edge technology’ to ensure ‘maximum engagement with the class.'” Tell me about some of these initiatives.

JN: I started breaking the class up into teams over 20 years ago, way before this was popular.
Students would get to know each other, and I would get to know them. More recently I turned to technology, introducing a virtual platform called “Second Life.” Through a grant from the president to promote the use of innovative teaching techniques, I hired a computer science major to put the QC campus into a virtual platform called Powdermaker Island. The students would choose an avatar, a virtual representation of themselves. Students would sign on with their avatars and engage in activities that, for example, helped them understand the benefits of a diversified portfolio. (I also discovered that some of the teams chose to play paintball on the island in the middle of the night!) One of the things the students particularly enjoyed was sort of a treasure hunt. I created some very challenging multiple choice questions, but my computer science assistant and I buried hints somewhere on the virtual campus. Students could then hunt for the hints to help them determine the correct answer.
I also use clickers: During class, I put up multiple choice questions. Each student uses a clicker to register what he or she believes to be the correct answer. If too many students miss a question, I break the class up into teams, let them talk about it, and then answer the question as a team. The percentage of correct answers goes up significantly.

ER: Students also comment on the way you bring the real world into the classroom. Can you elaborate on this?

JN: It’s really related to what I said earlier about the limitations of considering only mathematics when trying to understand financial market behavior. When I teach finance, I don’t just assume that the answer from an equation is the answer in an organization. For instance, within an organization, there are pressures to meet the expectations of the boss. Strategies of employees may involve silence or holding back information-or simply going along with what your boss or client expects. I may talk about SAC next semester. In the past I have talked about Long-Term Capital Management, where bets on Russia created havoc with portfolio returns. A highly leveraged bet went wrong, and they faced a loss of $1.9 billion in one month. The interesting issue is how much confidence was placed on trading according to models that seemed to offer good reasons why the trades would continue to produce outsized returns. Just because the models used advanced quantitative techniques did not imply that there was a firewall around losses. As the most recent financial crisis illustrates, models are far from foolproof.
Another way I bring in the real world: I also pose the following in class: “Suppose you were asked question x in a job market interview. How would you answer?” This helps students learn from one another.

ER: Tell me what’s going on with your own research.

JN: I’m working on a number of different things.
First, I am exploring the debate between the efficacy of the virtual (online) classroom and the physical classroom. Why do we need a physical classroom? I’m using a dual-self model and setting up a simple game of prisoners’ dilemma between what I call the classroom self and the homework self. I use the classroom as a coordinating mechanism and discover precise conditions when it matters. For example, when the relatedness parameter that reflects the connection between the two selves is low, the classroom as a focal point of attention matters more than when the two selves are highly connected.
I am also doing research with Bruce. When you don’t have an investment time horizon, how do you capture the relevant risk of an investment? Based on wavelet analysis, we find that there are precisely identified circumstances when the plain vanilla beta that measures the correlation between a stock’s return and the returns on the broader market does not perform adequately as a measure of risk. We present evidence as to why investors should be concerned that the CAPM (capital asset pricing model) beta ignores significant differences in correlation that occur in shorter time intervals than the average time period of sixty months generally used to calculate beta.
In addition to these research projects, I’m also working on an app with a team that includes QC students (both former and present) that we hope will help the unbanked and under-banked find ways to save. Our goal is to pitch the idea and gain funding that will enable us to hire people who will help us with the design and marketing of the app.

ER: That new app sounds terrific!
I was going to ask you what you and Bruce do with your spare time now that your twin daughters are off to college. So now I know. Are there any more budding economists in the family?

JN: Well, first of all, what spare time? As for budding economists, one of the twins plans to major in economics; the other is pre-law.

ER: As for our undergraduates, do you have any advice about how they should shape their econ or BBA majors?

JN: Take advantage of the liberal arts; do not be afraid go outside business-oriented topics. Learn to write well, to communicate effectively, and to think critically. I remember in Andrew Hacker’s classes, every time you thought you knew the answer, he would throw something new at you, and you would have to rethink it. I hope I do this in my own classroom.

ER: And any advice about going on to grad school?

JN: Top grad programs are crowded. If that is your goal, you must be good in math. Take graduate level courses in economics and math to signal your ability; and be sure to do undergraduate research.

ER: Any advice about going for an MBA?

JN: First of all, most business schools require three to five years of work experience before you will be admitted. While I wish I didn’t have to say this, it is important to attend a brand-name school. While there are some very good business schools at public universities, do not rule out a private university education. True, they are more expensive, but it is likely to be a good investment-and they actually do offer some funding.

ER: Thanks for this interview, Joan. We have been colleagues for many years, but I learned more about you today!

ER: Do you have any particularly fond memories of your QC days?
IG: Yes, I formed close relationships and was mentored by many faculty members: Ray Franklin, Carl Riskin, and Bill Tabb in Economics; Matt and Kim Edel in Urban Studies. I was deeply saddened by Matt’s death quite a while ago and by Kim’s more recent death. During my time at QC I particularly enjoyed participating in a study group on Central America organized by Matt Edel and in the Monday lunches with presentations on important topics, especially involving social justice. The attendees included a diverse group of students and faculty from many disciplines concerned with issues of equity, power and alternative economic and social models.

ER: What induced you to become an economics major?
IG: From high school on I was interested in economics, social justice, and political economy. An economics major was a natural for me. I didn’t consider any other major. In my first year I took courses with Ray Franklin (macroeconomics) and Kim Edel (on the urban economy). After that, I really knew that economics was the right major for me.

ER: When did you decide you wanted to pursue a Ph.D. in economics?
IG: I became interested in my junior year. I admired my professors. They were all helpful in researching graduate schools. I visited various schools and met with faculty. I had a number of choices, but decided on UMass – Amherst because of its broad focus and because I wanted to study heterodox (non-mainstream) political economy. Fellowships made it financially possible.

ER: What did your parents think about your going for a Ph.D.?
IG: They were concerned that I was going to be far away from home. It was rather a puzzle to them what it all meant. They’d never known anyone who became a professor, so I think they were a bit unclear as to why I was going to be in school for so long. Over time, of course, they came to understand, and I believe were and are proud of what I have done with my career.

ER: What was the topic of your dissertation?
IG: It was on financial liberalization (i.e., financial deregulation) in the developing world. Specifically I focused on trying to explain why so many developing countries that liberalized their financial systems in the 1970s and 1980s experienced severe financial crises shortly thereafter. In addition, I tried to explain why financial liberalization also failed to produce other expected outcomes (e.g., an increase in savings and investment, a reduction in capital flight and corruption).

ER: Had you been interested in finance as an undergraduate?
IG: I really didn’t focus on finance as an undergrad. I was interested in Latin American political economy, poverty, economic development, labor markets, and political economy theory. I was in grad school just as financial markets were beginning to explode. At UMass, Jim Crotty and Gerald Epstein were focusing on financial issues and the political economy of financial markets, and this really galvanized my interest.

ER: How was the academic job market when you finished your Ph.D.?
IG: It was really good. I had quite a few interviews and good job options. I finished my PhD in the summer of 1992, and there was great interest at the time in financial crises and international issues (perhaps much as is the case at the present time). I had taken a one-year teaching appointment at Smith College while I was finishing my dissertation. I decided I wanted to be at a research university rather than a liberal arts college, and here at the University of Denver (DU) I am at the Josef Korbel School of International Studies, a place particularly well-suited to pursuing my interests in international finance and economic development in a way that crosses academic disciplines. I am also lucky to have a group of colleagues from many disciplines, such as economics, political science, anthropology and history, who share my interests. Right now there are about 25 full-time faculty and about an equal number of part-time and/or clinical faculty. The school was recently named in memory of Josef Korbel, the founding dean of the school. It is interesting to note that he was Madeleine Albright’s father.

ER: What do you like about being an academic?
IG: I love working with students–teaching and mentoring students, as I was mentored. I teach international monetary relations at both the graduate and undergraduate levels. And because the world is always changing, there is always something new to cover. At the graduate level, I teach a seminar in finance and economic development, and I also teach political economy of finance. I find teaching both undergraduates and graduate students equally rewarding. It is particularly gratifying helping undergraduates who are trying to “find themselves.” And graduate students, too, are often trying to figure out their careers. Both groups of students, I find, are keenly interested in understanding and improving the world in really concrete ways, which I enjoy. And, of course, I find research very engaging. Right now I’m working on how the global financial crisis has affected global financial governance. I’ve just completed a background paper for the UNDP (the United Nations Development Programme) on how the crisis has helped to give life to regional and bilateral financial initiatives among developing countries, such as creating institutions and mechanisms for pooling official reserves, providing lender-of-last-resort support for one another rather than relying on the IMF, and even providing sources of long-term, low-cost development finance to countries in the global South. I am looking into the possibility of developing a global financial architecture that is more development-friendly.

ER: Can you elaborate briefly on what you mean by “more development-friendly”?
IG: I am particularly interested in thinking about ways to enhance the ability of global, regional, bi-lateral and national financial institutions to promote financial stability, reduce inequality, enhance the development of productive capacities, and increase the ability of policymakers in developing countries to pursue policies of their own design. In the UNDP work that I reference above I examine the ways in which the current financial crisis has promoted institutional innovations in the global South (i.e., developing countries) that help Southern financial institutions to achieve these aims by, for example, providing long-term, low-cost capital to entrepreneurs in the developing world.

ER: You have mentioned your work with the UNDP. Can you tell us about your other work outside of academia?
IG: I’ve long enjoyed the opportunity to work with non-governmental organizations (such as ActionAid and “New Rules for Global Finance”) and multilateral organizations such as the United Nations G-24, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Economic Development (UNCTAD), and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). What I find most rewarding about this work is that it gives me the chance to test my ideas in very practical contexts, forces me to communicate clearly, and certainly affords me the opportunity to learn from those engaged in the real world of policy advocacy and policy debate. Above all, it allows me to be useful, which is very important to me.

ER: When I searched for you on the DU website last semester, I was delighted to see you right there on the homepage with an announcement that you had been selected as DU’s University Lecturer for 2011-2012. (See photo below.) What does this entail?
IG: It is an honor given each year in recognition of scholarly achievement. The University Lecturer is announced at the University Convocation in the fall. I gave my lecture on May 3, 2012.