ROBERT C. HOCKETT
Professor of Law, Cornell Law School
Robert C. Hockett was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University, where he received an M.A. in philosophy (mathematical logic concentration) and economics. He received his LL.M. and J.S.D. from Yale Law School and clerked for Hon. Deanell Reece Tacha, Chief Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit. He also serves as consultant at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, previously worked for the International Monetary Fund, and has just been named Fellow to the Century Foundation to lead its financial reform and economic democracy programs.
With his broad educational and practical background, Hockett has forged collaborations with faculty from many Cornell and peer university departments, as well as with state and federal legislators, think tanks, investment banks, and community groups. These include Cornell’s Johnson School and Economics Department, NYU’s Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy, the New York City Bar Association, and even three working groups of the “Occupy” movement. Recent joint projects include white papers with Cornell’s Robert Frank, NYU’s Nouriel Roubini, and Westwood Capital’s Daniel Alpert, as well as new statutes and supporting white papers co-drafted for NY Congressman Brian Higgins and the Banking Law Committee of the New York City Bar.
LYNN STOUT
Distinguished Professor of Corporate and Business Law, Cornell Law School
Lynn Stout joined the faculty in the Spring of 2012, and was appointed to the first endowed faculty chair in the BLI in March 2012. Lynn holds a B.A., summa cum laude as well as a Masters in Public Affairs from Princeton University and a J.D. from Yale Law School. Lynn has previously taught at UCLA, Harvard, NYU, Georgetown, and George Washington law schools. Among other positions, Professor Stout serves on the Board of Trustees for the Eaton Vance mutual funds; the Board of Advisors for the Aspen Institute’s Business & Society Program; and is Executive Advisor to the Brookings Institution Project on Corporate Purpose. Her new book, The Shareholder Value Myth: How Putting Shareholders First Harms Investors, Corporations, and the Public has just been published.
CHARLES K. WHITEHEAD
Professor of Law, Cornell Law School, Adjunct Professor of Management, S.C. Johnson Graduate School of Management
Charles K. Whitehead received a B.A. magna cum laude from Cornell and a J.D. from Columbia Law School, where he was a James Kent Scholar and Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar. Before entering academia, Whitehead clerked for Hon. Ellsworth A. Van Graafeiland, U.S. Court of Appeals (2nd Circuit). He also worked in the United States, Europe, and Asia as outside counsel, general counsel and a managing director of several multinational financial firms. Among his practice areas, Whitehead represented U.S. and non-U.S. public and private firms in securities and other financings, as well as in M&A and other strategic transactions. In addition, he developed complex and novel derivative and other financial instruments, both in the private and public capital markets. In 2004, Whitehead became a research fellow at Columbia Law School. He then taught at the Boston University School of Law before joining the Cornell faculty in 2009.
Whitehead is also a member of the International Swaps and Derivatives Association (ISDA) Credit Derivatives Determinations Committee and a Vice-Chairman of the ABA International Securities and Capital Markets Committee, as well as a board member of a prominent global hedge fund.
RAYMOND J. MINELLA
Executive Director, BLI, Adjunct Professor, Cornell Law School
After graduating from Cornell Law in 1974 and receiving his M.B.A. from Wharton in 1976, Ray Minella began his career with Merrill Lynch, where he participated in virtually every leveraged transaction in which Merrill Lynch was involved from 1985 through 1991. With total transaction values exceeding $100 billion, he has worked on some of the largest and most complicated trans- actions, including those for RJR Nabisco, Time Warner, Viacom, BorgWarner, GAF, and the IPO of Liz Claiborne. He then created and chaired Berenson Minella and Company, a Wall Street investment-bank- ing firm. In 2002, he joined Jefferies and Company, a full-service investment bank and institutional securities firm, where he became vice chairman of investment banking.