Laura Starks
For more information visit Laura Starks’s website.
Laura T. Starks is a professor of finance in the McCombs School of Business at The University of Texas at Austin. Starks teaches undergraduate and graduate courses on sustainable finance, global financial strategies, and other finance topics. She team-teaches a global Ph.D. class on the financial economics of climate and sustainability, and she has served the school as interim dean, associate dean for research, chair of the Department of Finance, and graduate adviser.
Starks’ current research focuses on sustainable finance issues including climate finance, as well as investor expectations, retirement investment, institutional investors, and shareholder activism. She is a research associate of the National Bureau of Economics Research; a senior fellow of the Asian Bureau of Finance and Economic Research; and a fellow of the American Finance Association, the Financial Management Association, the European Corporate Governance Institute, and the Centre for Economic Policy Research. Starks has received several teaching and research awards. Most recently, she received the 2022 Swedish Skandia Research Award on Long-Term Savings for contributions to the field of banking, insurance, and financial services, and the 2021 Moskowitz Prize for Outstanding Research in Sustainable Finance.
Starks has served as president of four major academic finance associations: the American Finance Association, the Society for Financial Studies, the Western Finance Association, and the Financial Management Association. She has also been an editor of The Review of Financial Studies and an associate editor of many journals.
She has previously served on boards and committees for mutual funds, pension funds, and the Norwegian sovereign wealth fund. Currently, she serves on advisory committees for AIF Global, FTSE Russell, the Investment Company Institute, Kroner Center for Financial Research, Netspar, Principles for Responsible Investing, and Texas Wall Street Women.
Starks earned a B.A. in sociology from UT Austin, an MBA from The University of Texas at San Antonio, and a Ph.D. in finance from Texas McCombs. She is a recipient of the 2024 University of Texas Distinguished Alumni Award.
The Salata Institute
The Salata Institute supports interdisciplinary research that leads to real-world action, including high-risk/high-reward projects by researchers already working in the climate area and new endeavors that make it easier for Harvard scholars, who have not worked on climate problems, to do so. Faculty interested in the Climate Research Clusters program should note an upcoming deadline for concepts on April 1, 2024.