Francesca Cornelli

Francesca Cornelli is the dean of Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management. She is also a professor of finance and holds the Donald P. Jacobs Chair of Finance.

Previously, she was a professor of finance and deputy dean at London Business School. She directed and advanced the highly regarded Private Equity Institute of London Business School, building a bridge between academia and practice by partnering with private equity leaders in London, alumni, and top academics in the field.

Cornelli is widely respected as an accomplished scholar and a leader in business education. Her research interests include corporate governance, private equity, privatization, bankruptcy, IPOs, and innovation policy. She has published several papers in major finance and economics journals and gives regular talks at major conferences and universities. She has been an editor of the Review of Financial Studies, one of the top three finance journals, and previously served on the board of editors of the Review of Economic Studies and as an associate editor at the Journal of Finance. She is a research fellow at the Center for Economic and Policy Research and previously served as a director of the American Finance Association.

Cornelli has vast international experience and has taught at some of the top schools in the world, including the Wharton School, the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University, The London School of Economics, the Indian School of Business in Hyderabad and the New Economic School in Moscow. In January 2016, she helped create and became a board member of AFFECT, a committee of the American Finance Association designed to promote the advancement of women academics in the field of finance. She serves on several boards, including Edizione, GSM Grosvenor Inc., Civic Consulting Alliance, and Lyric Opera of Chicago.