Alumni

Performing arts organizations are contending with aging audiences and shrinking budgets, and looking for new ways to reach audiences. Yale Insights spoke with Jed Bernstein ’79, formerly a theatrical producer, as he prepared to begin his new job as president of Lincoln Center, the country’s biggest stage for classical music, opera, and dance and a pillar of New York City’s economy.

Starting in the late 1990s, a series of television shows with a novelistic sweep, many of them produced by cable channels, have redefined the medium; at the same time, technology has given audience members new ways to engage with each other and their favorite shows. As AMC’s executive vice president of marketing, Linda Schupack '92 has had the job of selling two of the biggest hits of TV’s second golden age: Mad Men and Breaking Bad. She talked to Yale Insights about creating great marketing for great stories.

Asset classes have long been the building blocks of investment portfolios, but when apparently uncorrelated investments moved in sync during the financial crisis, it raised fundamental questions about whether diversified portfolios actually were diversified. Eugene Podkaminer ’01, vice president of capital markets research at Callan Associates, discusses whether there is a better way to understand the deep forces driving these results.

Hedge funds are risky. But getting beyond that bromide and evaluating the prospects of a particular fund means understanding everything from internal operations to investors’ incentives to counterparty and market conditions. David Belmont ’92, chief risk officer of Commonfund, gives a tour of the inner workings of hedge fund risk.

Social enterprises, ventures that seek to address significant societal problems while also achieving financial sustainability, have become a bigger part of the business world. Chuck Slaughter ’90, founder of Living Goods, discusses what it will take for the field to produce a breakout star.

Sky-high valuations of tech companies and the return of the IPO has an old debate raging again. Is a bubble brewing? Or is this time really different? Sasson Darwish ’94, managing partner at DS Advisory Group, talks with Yale Insights about IPOs, innovation, and the business models for today’s tech companies.

Perhaps the strongest argument for environmental sustainability within an organization is that it is critical to the mission. Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Army Richard Kidd ’93 explains why strategic thinking about sustainability is essential for the military.

Regulation is often a contentious issue, but most agree that some is necessary and too much is harmful. How do you find the sweet spot? Yale Insights asked practitioners to talk about regulation that impacts their industries.

The financial crisis of 2008 is a looming figure in current economic thinking. The global economy is still slowly recovering from the shock, and policymakers and academics continue to discuss the structural changes needed to prevent a recurrence. The stress of the last half decade has made two things very clear: A productive and innovative financial system is essential to the broader economy, but financial innovations made irresponsibly—without consideration of systemic risk and other impacts on society—can wreak havoc.

In a talk with Master of Advanced Management students at Yale SOM, Mercy Corps CEO Neal Keny-Guyer ’82 discusses the importance of finding innovative partnerships between the nonprofit and for-profit sectors.