Behavioral Finance Experts 2025

David Krackhardt is Professor of Organizations at the Carnegie Mellon University's Heinz College of Information Systems and Public Policy, with a joint appointment at the Tepper School of Business. Over the past 15 years, his research has focused on how the theoretical insights and methodological innovations of network analysis can enhance our understanding of how organizations function. He pioneered the concept of "cognitive social structures", wherein individuals provide their perceptions of the entire network in which they are embedded. He empirically has related these perceived structures to turnover, reputations and power in organizations. Another interest of his has been in developing methodologies for better understanding networks and their implications. His contributions in this arena include adapting the quadratic assignment procedure to multiple regression analyses of network data. In addition, he has developed methods drawing from graph theory for studying the shape and structure of organizations as a whole. His published works have appeared in a variety of journals in the fields of psychology, sociology, anthropology and management. His current research agenda includes developing models of diffusion of controversial innovations, exploring and testing visual representations of networks, identifying effective leverage points for organizational change, and exploring the roles of Simmelian (super-strong) ties in organizations. Prior to joining Carnegie Mellon University, Dr. Krackhardt's appointments included faculty positions at Cornell's Graduate School of Management, the University of Chicago's Graduate School of Business, INSEAD (France) and the Harvard Business School. He received a BS degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a PhD from the University of California, Irvine. Prof. Krackhardt was born in 1950 in Massachusetts. He is married with three children. // <![CDATA[ var nodes = [ { id: "mammal", group: 0, label: "Mammals", level: 1 }, { id: "dog" , group: 0, label: "Dogs" , level: 2 }, { id: "cat" , group: 0, label: "Cats" , level: 2 }, { id: "fox" , group: 0, label: "Foxes" , level: 2 }, { id: "elk" , group: 0, label: "Elk" , level: 2 }, { id: "insect", group: 1, label: "Insects", level: 1 }, { id: "ant" , group: 1, label: "Ants" , level: 2 }, { id: "bee" , group: 1, label: "Bees" , level: 2 }, { id: "fish" , group: 2, label: "Fish" , level: 1 }, { id: "carp" , group: 2, label: "Carp" , level: 2 }, { id: "pike" , group: 2, label: "Pikes" , level: 2 } ] var links = [ { target: "mammal", source: "dog" , strength: 0.7 }, { target: "mammal", source: "cat" , strength: 0.7 }, { target: "mammal", source: "fox" , strength: 0.7 }, { target: "mammal", source: "elk" , strength: 0.7 }, { target: "insect", source: "ant" , strength: 0.7 }, { target: "insect", source: "bee" , strength: 0.7 }, { target: "fish" , source: "carp", strength: 0.7 }, { target: "fish" , source: "pike", strength: 0.7 }, { target: "cat" , source: "elk" , strength: 0.1 }, { target: "carp" , source: "ant" , strength: 0.1 }, { target: "elk" , source: "bee" , strength: 0.1 }, { target: "dog" , source: "cat" , strength: 0.1 }, { target: "fox" , source: "ant" , strength: 0.1 }, { target: "pike" , source: "cat" , strength: 0.1 } ] function getNodeColor(node) { return node.level === 1 ? 'red' : 'gray' } var width = window.innerWidth var height = window.innerHeight var svg = d3.select('svg') svg.attr('width', width).attr('height', height) // simulation setup with all forces var linkForce = d3 .forceLink() .id(function (link) { return link.id }) .strength(function (link) { return link.strength }) var simulation = d3 .forceSimulation() .force('link', linkForce) .force('charge', d3.forceManyBody().strength(-120)) .force('center', d3.forceCenter(width / 2, height / 2)) var linkElements = svg.append("g") .attr("class", "links") .selectAll("line") .data(links) .enter().append("line") .attr("stroke-width", 1) .attr("stroke", "rgba(50, 50, 50, 0.2)") var nodeElements = svg.append("g") .attr("class", "nodes") .selectAll("circle") .data(nodes) .enter().append("circle") .attr("r", 10) .attr("fill", getNodeColor) var textElements = svg.append("g") .attr("class", "texts") .selectAll("text") .data(nodes) .enter().append("text") .text(function (node) { return node.label }) .attr("font-size", 15) .attr("dx", 15) .attr("dy", 4) simulation.nodes(nodes).on('tick', () => { nodeElements .attr('cx', function (node) { return node.x }) .attr('cy', function (node) { return node.y }) textElements .attr('x', function (node) { return node.x }) .attr('y', function (node) { return node.y }) linkElements .attr('x1', function (link) { return link.source.x }) .attr('y1', function (link) { return link.source.y }) .attr('x2', function (link) { return link.target.x }) .attr('y2', function (link) { return link.target.y }) }) simulation.force("link").links(links) // ]]>

I am the co-founder and Senior Portfolio Manager of Divita Capital and the Divita Value-Growth Fund, where I manage a concentrated portfolio of long-term compounding businesses. My focus is on value investing, business valuation, and capital allocation — particularly on how reinvestment decisions and management’s choices drive shareholder returns over time. I am also the author of Wall Street’s Blind Spots: A Unique Perspective on Value Investing, Valuation and Capital Allocation (2025). In the book, I challenge conventional valuation frameworks and highlight the blind spots even sophisticated investors often miss. My goal is to give readers a practical, common-sense approach to understanding whether a company is truly compounding value, drawing on my day-to-day experience as a fund manager. Over the course of my career, I have worked across investment banking, corporate finance, and asset management, analyzing global equities across various sectors. I hold the Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) designation and combine rigorous financial analysis with a contrarian mindset. I enjoy making complex investing concepts accessible to a wide audience. I regularly speak and write about valuation, capital allocation strategies, and the behavioral biases that influence markets — always with the goal of helping investors and entrepreneurs think differently about long-term value creation. Living and working in Guatemala gives me a distinctive international perspective. I frequently engage with audiences in both Latin America and the U.S., and I aim to help investors, entrepreneurs, and executives think differently. Whether I am explaining why traditional DCF models often mislead, discussing how to assess a company’s reinvestment profile, or sharing lessons from managing my own fund, I bring clarity, practical frameworks, and a passion for long-term investing to every conversation.

Laurie R. Weingart is the Richard M. and Margaret S. Cyert Professor of Organizational Behavior and Theory at Carnegie Mellon University’s Tepper School of Business and co-leads the Collaboration and Conflict Research Lab. She has served as Chair of CMU’s Faculty Senate and as CMU’s Provost/Chief Academic Officer (Interim) where she was responsible for the academic mission of the university. She has also served as Senior Associate Dean of Education, as Interim Associate Dean - Masters Programs, and as Director of the Accelerate Leadership Center within the Tepper School. Coauthor of The No Club: Putting a Stop to Women’s Dead-End Work, her research and teaching examines collaboration, conflict, and negotiation, with a focus on how differences across people both help and hinder effective problem solving and innovation. A recipient of the Joseph E. McGrath Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Study of Groups, Professor Weingart has published over 70 articles and book chapters in the fields of management, psychology, and economics. She is an elected Fellow of the Academy of Management, the Society of Organizational Behavior, and the Society for Experimental and Social Psychology. Her award-winning research has been covered by major news outlets in the US and around the world. Professor Weingart’s influence extends to her profession having served as president of the International Association for Conflict Management, founding president of the Interdisciplinary Network for Group Research, and as editor of the highly influential Academy of Management Annals. Dr. Weingart earned her Ph.D. in Organizational Behavior from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University and lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

I have over 20 years of experience helping successful families navigate the ever changing field of financial planning. New laws, new fads, and new "rules of thumb" are always coming out. My goal is always to help my clients sift through the noise and focus on the things they can control. I have always believed there are two E's of investing, economics and emotion. Handling both in a proactive, deliberate manner helps my clients to keep perspective of what is important on their financial journey

Burton Hollifield is the PNC Professor of Financial Economics at the Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon University. Hollifield has taught courses in Investments, Corporation Finance, Portfolio Management, and Fixed Income at the Graduate and Undergraduate programs at Carnegie Mellon University and the University of British Columbia. He has won the George Leland Bach teaching award in the MBA program and the Undergraduate Teaching Award at Carnegie Mellon University. Professor Hollifield has served on the editorial boards of several academic journals including the Journal of Finance, Review of Economic Studies, Review of Finance, Journal of Financial Intermediation, Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, and Management Science, and is a board member for the Carnegie Rochester NYU Conference on Public Policy, and is  the opast President Elect at Western Financial Association. Professor Hollifield's research interests include portfolio theory, market microstructure, bond microstructure, and dynamic asset pricing theory.

Anita Williams Woolley is a Professor of Organizational Behavior at Carnegie Mellon University’s Tepper School of Business. Dr. Woolley received her doctorate in organizational behavior from Harvard University, and her research includes seminal work on collective intelligence in teams, first published in Science in 2010. Her current work focuses on collective intelligence in human-computer collaboration, with projects funded by DARPA and the NSF focused on how AI enhances synchronous and asynchronous collaboration in distributed teams. Professor Woolley is a Senior Editor at Organization Science and a founding Associate Editor of Collective Intelligence.

I am passionate about bringing behavioral economics and technology together to improve education and financial wellbeing.In my research, I explore how social stigmas and trust challenge mobile money usage in Kenya and Uganda and how low-cost technologies can help students catch up after COVID-19 school closures in Pakistan.In my applied work, I help organizations apply academic insights on human behavior to improve product design and user outcomes.

I write content and create strategies in the financial services industry. Please feel free to connect if we share any interests

I am the Founder of Bountisphere, a personal money management platform designed to help Americans regain control of their money. My background is unique in Fintech: I hold a PhD in Classical Studies and have years of experience in AI and Behavioral Science. I realized that traditional budgeting apps fail because they ignore human psychology. That is why I built Bountisphere to turn the tangle of everyday money management into a simple Money Calendar. We combine behavioral insights with AI-powered coaching to help users stop looking backward at their expenses and start forecasting their future daily balances. Prior to Bountisphere: I was the inaugural COO at Memre.ai, bringing advanced learning algorithms to market. I served as Founding Editor of Westbrae Literary Group. I am available to comment on: The psychological shift from "Tracking" to "Forecasting." Why "Financial Peace of Mind" requires visualizing the future, not just budgeting the present. How AI is changing personal finance for Americans.

Founder of Rikdom Labs. I build tools that help self-directed investors stop losing money to tax inefficiency — the kind of optimization that used to require a $500/hr advisor.

Rohit Shah is the creator of Modern Mint, a strategy board game that simulates the real dynamics of startups, venture capital, and modern capitalism. An IIT Kharagpur alumnus and venture investor, Rohit has spent years observing how founders, investors, and markets behave when real stakes are involved. Those experiences led him to study a question that fascinated him: why smart people often make poor decisions when pressure, uncertainty, and incentives collide. To explore this, he created Modern Mint, a high-interaction economic strategy game that turns startup building, fundraising, negotiation, and market shocks into a playable system. Often described as “Shark Tank meets Catan,” the game allows players to experience the psychological and strategic realities of entrepreneurship. Modern Mint has been played and discussed in academic and innovation communities including MIT, NYU, and York University, where it has been used to spark conversations around decision-making, incentives, and entrepreneurial strategy. Rohit’s work focuses on decision-making under pressure, entrepreneurial psychology, negotiation dynamics, and how complex systems like markets can be better understood through simulation and play. Through Modern Mint, he aims to make the hidden mechanics of entrepreneurship visible, engaging, and widely accessible.

Investment industry veteran that cofounded a tech startup to help seniors avoid elder fraud. 30 years experience in the investment and insurance business. Experience over a range of asset classes with deep experience in derivatives and risk management. Early adapter of derivatives in insurance portfolios and mutual funds. Built out independent risk organization at two firms. Experienced Chief Risk Officer(CRO) for US and UCITs funds. Demonstrated commercial instinct. Experience with: Investments Product and Strategy Risk Market Risk and Investment Risk Risk Management of UCITS Derivatives, Futures, Options, Swap Silver tech