Professor Lemma W. Senbet, PhD '76

Lemma W. Senbet is the William E. Mayer Chair Professor of Finance at the University of Maryland, College Park, and a founding Director of the Center for Financial Policy. He is an immediate past Executive Director/CEO of the African Economic Research Consortium (AERC), the oldest and largest economic research and training network in Africa (Pan African; HQ-Nairobi). He also served as a distinguished professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and held the Charles Albright Endowed Chair.

Professor Senbet has achieved global recognition for his extensive and widely cited contributions to corporate finance, international finance, financial sector reforms and social inclusion, banking regulation, corporate governance, tax effects of finance, and finance in a public domain and externalities to society. His publications have appeared in such premier journals as Journal of Finance, Review of Financial Studies and Journal of International Business Studies.

As a recipient of numerous recognitions for his impact on the profession, Professor Senbet has been elected twice as Director of the American Finance Association and is a past President of the Western Finance Association (WFA). In 2000, he was inducted into the Financial Economists Roundtable, a distinguished group of world-wide financial economists who have made significant contributions to finance and apply research to current policy debates. In 2006, he was inducted Fellow of the Financial Management Association International for his career-long distinguished scholarship. In 2005, Professor Senbet was awarded an honorary doctorate by Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia’s flagship university. In 2022, he was elected Fellow of the Academy of International Business for his career long distinguished scholarship.

Having advised the World Bank, the IMF, the UN, AfDB, and various agencies in USA, Canada, and Africa on such issues as financial sector reforms, Professor Senbet is a member of the Brookings AGI Distinguished Advisory Group, the Advisory Panel of the G20 Compact with Africa, and the Independent Council of Economic Advisors (appointed by the Prime Minister of Ethiopia). Regarding his role in the US financial industry, Professor Senbet was a Director of Fortis Funds and has been an independent Director for the Hartford Funds.