YFS Program Faculty

Jack Farmer is currently the Academic Director at NYIF. Jack also acts as an outside adviser for portfolio managers at significant global investment funds. These funds included emerging markets equity funds and global macro hedge funds. Prior to his current consulting work, Jack worked as a senior consultant in Accenture's Financial Services Industry group. He then joined a proprietary trading group at Bank of America as a trader, eventually becoming the head trader and chief strategist for its FX and Eurodollar Statistical Arbitrage group. Jack Farmer has the BS in Engineering from Tulane University, MBA in Finance and Accounting from Tulane University, and PhD in Finance from the University of Texas at Austin.

Jeff is the International Investment Banking and M&A specialist at NYIF, FOCUS Senior Advisor, and CEO of the Hooke Associates, LLC. Mr. Hooke was a private investment executive at the International Finance Corporation, the $20 billion World Bank affiliate. His areas of expertise include international mergers and acquisitions, IPOs, corporate finance, international new low-cost loans and corporate valuation ,with more than 30 years of corporate valuation, investment banking and M&A experience. Author of "M&A, A Practical Guide to Doing the Deal" (Wiley, 2015)and "Security Analysis and Business Valuation on Wall Street: A Comprehensive Guide to Today's Valuation Methods" (Wiley,, 2010). Jeff received his MBA from Wharton Business School.

Mayra Rodríguez Valladares is a banking and capital markets risk consultant and trainer. Her consulting projects have included banks, financial regulators, central banks, securities firms, and insurance companies. She has written business plans and created financial models for a wide-range of companies and has analyzed financial firms’ financial models and stress tests. Ms. Rodríguez Valladares has been an Adjunct Professor at New York University where she has taught courses on globalization and energy. She was also an Adjunct Professor at the Fashion Institute of Technology where she taught global marketing, corporate finance and Latin American Politics.

Tracy Williams is the senior advisor in Investment Banking and Risk Management at NYIF. Tracy was a Managing Director in the Financial Institutions Group at JPMorgan Investment Bank. He headed risk management, loan structuring, loan operations and credit approvals for the broker/dealer and securities-industry client base (more than 250 institutions). Tracy has BA in economics and mathematics at Yale University, and MBA in finance and business economics at Columbia University.

John Palicka is the Visiting Professor at Columbia University School of Business. He was the Managing Director at the Prudential Insurance Company and in charge of Bulgaria's largest private equity investment fund. With over 30 years of investment experience focusing on secondary market investments, real estate investments and new market equity investments and U.S. small-cap equity investments, John advocates combining technical analysis with fundamental analysis to provide advice to the world's top 500 companies and many large asset managers overseas. He has the MBA in Finance at Columbia University. He also holds the license of Chartered Financial Analyst and Chartered Market Technician, and is the author of the finance book, Fusion Analysis. 

Douglas is an expert in stock and bond portfolios management. While at Citicorp Investment Services, he worked on the bond trading desk executing trades in treasury and municipal securities. The bulk of his work relates to analysis and valuation of derivatives and fixed income securities. Doug develops and delivers investment training programs. Audiences and topics run the gamut from Introduction to the Securities Markets for industry neophytes to Advanced Derivatives for portfolio managers and trading desk personnel. Douglas has the master degree in Economics at Northern Illinois and an MBA in Finance at University of Chicago.

Chris is Managing Director at Massey Quick, a Multifamily Office based in Morristown, NJ, and New York City. He was a Senior Vice President and head of U.S. alternative investment product distribution for Lehman Brothers; a Director at Bank of America; and a Regional Sales Manager at Merrill Lynch. Chris specializes in how hedge funds work and behave in an investment portfolio, having spent more than 15 years on Wall Street working in alternative investments. As a Senior Managing Director at Forefront Capital, Chris headed client development and was involved in product development and deal origination. Chris has an master degree in International Affairs, International Banking and Finance at Columbia University, and BA in Political Science at New York University.

Valisha is an Executive Director on the Strategic Client Onboarding Product Development team at Morgan Stanley. She leads the One Client initiative and the use of client centric data to help drive the Advisory, Digital, Investment Solutions Wealth Management businesses. She was formerly a senior analyst with Rate Financials, a private, independent equity research firm that ranked and rated the financial reporting, earnings quality and corporate governance of S&P 500 companies. She was a Vice President in Financial Planning & Analysis (FP&A) at Lehman Brothers where she managed a team responsible for daily revenue reporting, financial modeling and budgeting. She has an MBA from Columbia University.

Chuck Garcia is the founder of Climb Leadership International and coaches executives on leadership development, public speaking, and emotional intelligence. He is a professional speaker, Amazon best-selling author, and radio host on New York’s 77WABC. He is also on faculty Columbia University where he teaches Leadership Communication in the Graduate School of Engineering. A 25-year veteran of Wall Street, he spent 14 years at Bloomberg in a variety of leadership positions. He was Director of Business Development at BlackRock and Managing Director at Citadel Investment Management. Chuck is also a mountaineer and has climbed mountains on four continents. Professor Garcia received his Bachelor degree in finance from Syracuse University and his Master in organizational leadership from Mercy College.

Mr. Tian is currently Executive Director and Chief Executive Officer of NYIF International Holdings LLC, Executive Director of the New York Institute of Finance (NYIF), and Director of The Windsor School in New York. He is also the Independent Director of China Industrial International Trust (CIIT) and the Independent Director of China Industrial Securities International Financial Group Limited (Hong Kong). Lee has mainly focused on investment banking area in financial sector for many years. His prior work experience includes: ABN AMRO Bank (Group Executive Director, Head of FIG, Hong Kong), Bank of China International (Executive Director, Head of IBD FIG, Hong Kong) and J. P. Morgan (IBD FIG , New York). Lee holds MBA from Duke University, US.

Jimmy is a visiting professor at NYU where he teaches courses in Portfolio Management and Applied Equity Research. Currently, he is also serving as Managing Director at Grey Fin Capital Management and Partner. He has previously worked at Alliance Bernstein as a Global Fund Manager in London, Hong Kong, and New York for 13 years and with over $10 Billion in AUM. He served on the Global, European, and Asia Large Cap Growth portfolio management teams. Most recently, Mr. Pang was Chief Investment Officer for BOCOM International Asset Management in Hong Kong. Jimmy has a bachelor's degree in economics and computer studies at Northwestern University.

Brian is the Adjunct Professor at NYU Stern School of Business and Columbia University. Brian was the Co-Head of Structured Transactions, Analytics, Risk and Strategy at Royal Bank of Scotland. He was also the Chief Investment Officer and Head of Structured Products Research at United Bank, where he was responsible for global business, capital allocation strategy, credit and market research at United Bank, and his responsibilities included analysis and forecasting of commercial and residential real estate finance and debt markets. Brian has decades of teaching experience the financial field, especially in real estate finance, real estate capital markets, debt markets, asset securitization The experience of working the world's major banks enabled him to apply practical cases to classroom teaching. Brian received his Bachelor degree in economics from MIT and his MBA from the Stern Business School of NYU.

Nabil Zaki is the Managing Director of Global Finance & Derivatives Associates in U.S.A.; offering a wide gamut of corporate finance activities for American as well as overseas banking and financial institutions. Nabil has been in the investment and banking industry for more than 44 years. During that period, he assumed senior positions in both Corporate Finance and Treasury with major Wall Street firms and international financial institutions in New York, Canada and the Middle East. He has held high profile management positions with Chase Manhattan Bank, Merrill Lynch, Prudential Securities and Tradition. Nabil is a regular commentator on CNN, CNBC and Al-Jazeera. He holds a Masters degree in Economics and Finance from Syracuse University.

Chris is the managing director at Bardi Co. LLC, a boutique investment bank based in Los Angeles that is specialized in private placements and M&A; both buy side and sell side. His experience includes serving as a financial advisor and strategic consultant to both domestic and international corporations as related to M&A; divestiture, joint venture, corporate restructuring, and financing transactions. Chris is also faculty at the Graziadio School of Business, Pepperdine University, where he teaches finance at the graduate level. Chris holds MBA in Finance from Drucker School of Management, and PhD in Economics from Claremont Graduate University.

Sudeep is Program Director of YFS and Director of Asian Strategy at NYIF. He has more than a decade of global experience in sustainable investment and green finance. He is responsible for strategic consulting, investment research, financial product development and public policy consulting. Previously Sudeep was head of Finance Sector Practice at French Strategic consulting firm, ENEA. He has also worked as a Finance specialist at United Nations Environment Programme Finance Initiative (UNEP FI) and led the United Nations Sustainable Stock Exchange (UN SSE) initiative in Asia and Africa. Sudeep holds the Bachelor of Engineering, MBA, and Ph.D. in Finance from Indian Institute of Foreign Trade.

Richard M. Levine, CFA has over 30 years of financial markets, products and client management experience. He has developed and conducted programs in asset management, capital markets, corporate finance and derivatives in 40 countries for clients. Richard is currently an Adjunct Professor at NYU’s Stern School of Business where he teaches MBA Equity Valuation.  He recently served on the CFA Institute (CFAI) Council of Examiners, where he was responsible for developing and reviewing CFA Level II and III questions. Richard is a Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA).  He received an M.B.A. with a concentration in Finance from NYU’s Stern School.

Anton is currently the Executive Director, Math Finance at Boston University’s Questrom School of Business. He has twelve years of financial services experience and more than 10 years of academic experience, teaching finance, economics and mathematics. Anton's professional experience includes positions at Swiss Re (Managing Director, Head of Market Risk), Chubb Financial Solutions (Executive Vice President, Head of Financial Products), American International Group (Vice President, Risk Finance) and Wells Fargo Bank (Manager, Management Sciences Group). Anton holds the B.Com in Economic from  University of Cape Town, and PhD in Economics at Simon Fraser University.

Rajat is the founder and CEO of Neural Capital, which develops quantitative trading strategies for the global financial markets and helps start ups and early-stage companies to raise venture capital. A veteran of the investment banking and financial markets industry, Rajat has over 30 years experience in several areas of Investment Banking, Corporate Finance, Derivative Products, Proprietary Trading and Hedge Funds. During his professional banking career, Rajat worked with Citibank Global Asset Management, London, Lehman Brothers, London, Merrill Lynch Capital Markets, Hong Kong, Booz.Allen & Hamilton, Sydney, Andersen Consulting, London, Williams Energy, USA  and Citibank, India. Rajat has a Masters degree in International Affairs from Columbia University, an MBA from the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, and a Bachelors degree in Economics from St Stephen’s College, Delhi

Al Eng works with global banks, asset management and emerging technology companies in corporate strategy, portfolio analytics and investments. He was formerly the Chief Investment Officer for Citi Wealth Management Services, Global Markets & Banking. Al served as a member of the Citigroup corporate task force on capital, treasury and risk management. As member of Citi strategy committee, he initiated firm wide restructuring, global payments and internet/mobile strategies. Al was a member of the Salomon, Smith Barney and Citigroup merger team, developed the institutional asset management business strategy, global funds and led the institutional liquidity business. Al is a graduate of Columbia Business School- MBA Finance and the School of Engineering and Applied Science- MS Electrical Engineering.

Based in California, Mr. Cho is a Strategic Advisor at i-SENS, a medical diagnostics company headquartered in Korea and has served the company in several executive roles including as CEO of its U.S. subsidiary.  Prior to joining i-SENS, Mr. Cho was Senior Director of Structured Finance Ratings at Standard & Poor’s.  Mr. Cho began his career as a corporate lawyer at the global law firm of Clifford Chance LLP in New York, advising clients on capital markets, structured finance and cross-border transactions.  Mr. Cho earned a J.D. from Columbia Law School and a B.S. from Seoul National University.