Abstract

Professor Christoffersen will share her journey as a finance professor and now Dean of the Rotman School. She will reflect on some of her key academic findings and their relevance for policy as well as her academic journey and learnings over her career.

New initiatives at U of T's Rotman School of Management highlight the importance of interdisciplinary work.  Professor Christoffersen will speak to ways in which AI, machine learning, and blockchain are being applied to business problems. 

Speaker Biography

Prof. Christoffersen joined the Rotman School as a finance professor in 2010 after spending more than a decade as a faculty member at Desautels Faculty of Management at McGill University. In her role as Vice-Dean, Undergraduate & Specialized Programs at the Rotman School from 2015 to 2020, she provided the leadership and energy to both re-invent undergraduate education and build three new pre-experience specialized programs. The Master of Financial Risk Management (MFRM), Graduate Diploma in Professional Accounting (GDipPA) and Master of Management Analytics (MMA), were launched in quick succession as a key part of the Rotman School’s growth. She was also a driving force behind the redesign of the Master of Finance program (MFin) as well as the fundamental transformation of the Rotman Commerce program including a curriculum restructuring and the more than doubling of resources including space and staff dedicated to the program, in partnership with the University’s Faculty of Arts and Science. 

In addition to her work as Vice-Dean, she also founded and contributed to the growth of the TD Management Data Analytics Lab, an important hub of activity for advancing the School’s research and teaching in the field of data analytics. She also served as co-academic director of the Lab. 

Her research focuses on mutual funds and the role of financial institutions in capital markets. She has published in top finance journals and been cited in The New York Times, Bloomberg News, and The Wall Street Journal. She has received numerous honours for her work, including research grants from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council and research awards from the Bank of Canada, Swiss Finance Institute, and Q-Group among others. 

She holds a bachelor’s degree in economics from Queen’s University and a master’s degree from the University of British Columbia and earned her PhD in finance at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.