Ian D'Souza

Biography

Ian D'Souza is a Clinical Professor of Finance teaching behavioral finance, blockchain, DeFi & cryptocurrencies and new venture financing. Previously, he was an Adjunct Professor of Finance at NYU Stern since 2006. He is an Associate Editor for the Journal of ESG and Impact Investing. He is also a founding member of the NYU Stern Family Office Council with over 200 members.

Professor D'Souza is currently an investment committee member to several family offices, managed funds and endowments advising on traditional asset classes and increasingly on emerging areas in climate finance, data networks & labor automation trends, cryptocurrencies and infrastructure projects.

Previously, he was a CIO at two TMT funds actively selecting public equity, credit and private (pre-IPO) deals at the family office of Luminus Management LLC and Tri-Ring Capital LLC and prior to that was a M&A and bankruptcy expert in infrastructure at Rothschild Inc. He began his career at PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP where he was Head of Corporate Finance & Regulatory Research in Australia. He has led teams in Australia, Hong Kong, Western Europe and North America and was a company board director covering those regions plus Africa.

His current research extends his prior professional experiences focusing on experimental finance topics around the use of alternative datasets such as satellite imagery, weather patterns, sentiment data and distributed ledger forensics, tail distributions and the interaction of human cognition and artificial intelligence. He holds a number of US patents.

He has won a number of teaching awards including Stern MBA Professor of the Year and was recognized as a Favorite MBA professor across America (by Poets & Quants magazine).

Professor D'Souza has presented before the White House OMB, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), numerous corporate boards and his work has been cited as a subject matter expert in these above areas by the District Court of New York and various media outlets.

Research Interests

• Market Psychology: Human & Algorithmic Interaction
• Network Effects & Obsolescence
• Liquidity Shocks & Frictions
• Non-Normal Return Distributions & Tail Events

Courses Taught

• Behavioral and Experimental Finance
• Blockchain, Digital Currencies & Cryptocurrency Investing
• Introduction to Decentralized Finance (DeFi)
• New Venture Financing (VC, CVC, crowdfunding, bootstrapping)

Academic Background

M.A., Applied Finance, 1997
Melbourne University

B.A., Information Systems, 1991
Monash University