Elizabeth Tashjian

Elizabeth Tashjian, PhD, is an Associate Professor of Finance at the University of Utah. She joined the faculty in 1986. She has been a visiting professor at the Hebrew University in Israel and at INSEAD in France. She received her undergraduate degree in mathematics from Boston College, and earned her PhD in finance from Purdue University. Professor Tashjian's research interests include futures contract pricing and design and corporate financial distress. Her paper with John McConnell documenting the design flaw which contributed to the demise of the first interest rate futures contract, the GNMA CDR, won the "best paper of the year" award in the Review of Financial Studies.

Tashjian serves on the Academic Advisory Council of the Turnaround Management Association. She is committed to issues of diversity on campus, and has chaired the Diversity Committee and the Presidential Commission on the Status of Women. In 1988, she became the first tenure-track faculty member to give birth while on the U's business school faculty. Many years later, she chaired a task force that developed a comprehensive parental leave policy at the U, which was adopted shortly before that child's eighteenth birthday. She received the Linda Amos award for distinguished service to women at the University of Utah in 2006. Professor Tashjian has developed a number of innovative courses and programs, including an honors program in finance, a student-managed equity fund, and a student-run management consulting program. She has won numerous teaching awards. She and her husband have four children.