Organisers

Dr Maria Boutchkova earned her doctorate in finance from the University of Oklahoma in 2003. Before joining the University of Edinburgh in May 2012, she spent six years at Concordia University, Montreal, and two years at the University of Leicester.

Maria’s research focuses on: corporate ownership structures; pyramidal business groups; politics and stock volatility; corporate governance; gender diversity; sustainable investing; statistical power of within-firm estimators; executive compensation.

Her work has been published in top academic journals, such as the Review of Financial Studies and Financial Management. Maria has been a member of the editorial board of the Journal of International Business Studies 2007–2015 and 2022–present. She has spearheaded a recent initiative on Confidence Building for Women in Academia.

Angelica Gonzalez is a Professor in Finance at The University of Edinburgh.

Angelica holds a PhD in Economics from The University of York. She previously worked as an advisor to the Mexican Budget Commission.

Angelica's research focuses on corporate governance with a strong emphasis on the gender diversity on boards. Angelica also has an interest on corporate social responsibility and the implications of sleep deprivation on financial decisions. She has published in internationally recognised peer reviewed journals and she is a regular speaker at international conferences. Her work on CEO risk-taking incentives earned her the Best-Paper Award at the 2019 FMA Conference in Jerusalem, Israel.

Maria (Mary) Marchica is Professor of Finance at Alliance Manchester Business School. She gained her PhD in Economics from the University of York. Mary's research contributions are mainly in empirical corporate finance and governance. Her research explores how investment and financial decisions are affected by shareholders' and managerial incentives and how the two types of decisions interact in the presence of financial constraints. Her work also extends into financial contracting and gender inequalities.

Her papers have been published in top academic journals, such as the Journal of Finance, and the Review of Financial Studies. Together with her co-authors, she has been the recipient of the BlackRock/Brennan Best Paper--Runner Up Award, the EFM2017 Readers' Choice Best Paper Award, and, more recently, the World Finance Conference Best Paper Award in Corporate Finance. She has also received multiple Teaching Excellence awards.