ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Ann Woo

MICHAEL EDESESS is an accomplished mathematician and economist with experience in the investment, energy, and sustainable development fields. He is a visiting fellow in the Centre for Systems Informatics Engineering at City University of Hong Kong, partner and chief investment officer of Denver-based Fair Advisors, research associate of the EDHEC-Risk Institute, and senior fellow and project consultant at two Hong Kong-based think tanks. He is also affiliated with Franklnsight.com. He writes regularly for the online journal Advisor Perspectives and authored The Big Investment Lie (Berrett-Koehler, 2007). He was a founding partner and chief economist of the Lockwood Financial Group until its 2002 sale to The Bank of New York. Previously a consultant and provider of mathematical computer systems to institutional investors, Dr. Edesess worked with several of the largest banking and consulting firms. He has taught international finance, environmental economics, mathematics, and statistics at four universities. He has been interviewed on radio and TV and published in the Wall Street Journal, the Journal of Portfolio Management, and Technology Review, among other publications.

In addition to his work in investments, Dr. Edesess has been active in nonprofit organizations. He chaired the board of International Development Enterprises USA, which focuses on rural smallholders in developing countries, and also chaired the board of Rocky Mountain Institute, a prominent energy efficiency think tank, and the Rocky Mountain Advisory Board of Environmental Defense. Dr. Edesess holds a bachelor’s degree from MIT and a Ph.D. in pure mathematics from Northwestern University.

KWOK L. TSUI is a distinguished statistician whose work focuses on the statistics of quality, informatics, and data mining, and he is an expert on the problem of spurious patterns in big data. He has spent 24 years as a professor and department head at several major universities as well as a practical applied researcher. Prior to his university positions, he was for 4 years a member of Technical Staff at AT&T Bell Laboratories’ Quality Assurance Center. Dr. Tsui is currently head and chair professor in the Department of Systems Engineering and Engineering Management at City University of Hong Kong, before which he was a professor in the School of Industrial and Systems Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology. A recipient of the National Science Foundation Young Investigator Award, he has served in numerous positions in professional statistical societies, including fellow of the American Statistical Association and the American Society for Quality; elected member of the International Statistical Institute; U.S. representative in the ISO Technical Committee on Statistical Methods; department editor of IIE Transactions; chair of the INFORMS Section in Quality, Statistics, and Reliability; and founding chair of the INFORMS Section in Data Mining. In addition to his work on statistical quality and reliability, Dr. Tsui’s current research includes health informatics, data mining, and surveillance in health care and public health, prognostics and health management, calibration and validation of computer models, bioinformatics, process control and monitoring, and robust design and Taguchi methods in industrial engineering. Dr. Tsui holds a Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin.

CAROL FABBRI, an experienced financial advisor, certified financial planner, and certified advisor in philanthropy, cofounded Fair Advisors in 2008. As the managing partner of Fair Advisors LLC, an independent financial advisory firm, she works with individuals and nonprofit organizations. Prior to that role, she worked as an advisor at Merrill Lynch and formerly spent a decade as an international business consultant after receiving an MBA at MIT’s Sloan School of Management. She leverages her consulting experience to educate her audiences and simplify the seemingly complex financial environment. She also works with individuals to achieve their goals using financial, estate planning, and philanthropic tools. Ms. Fabbri’s unique and clear perspective on personal finance issues is often quoted in the national press, including Forbes, Smart Money, and the Wall Street Journal. She is the coauthor of Personal Investing: The Missing Manual (O’Reilly, 2010). To address the broad need for financial literacy courses, she founded Fair Advisors Institute (FAI), a nonprofit dedicated to improving financial literacy through education and research. In 2012, FAI received the “Right on the Money” award for its work providing financial education to foster youth. Her efforts toward educating individuals about personal finance have been recognized locally and nationally. Ms. Fabbri received the TIAW World of Difference Award for her work economically empowering women and has been recognized as a Colorado Top Wealth Advisor. She recently received her black belt in taekwondo and lives in the mountains of Colorado with her husband and son.

Phil Humnicky/Georgetown Univ.

A 27-year investment industry veteran, GEORGE PEACOCK is a principal at Compendium Financial Investment Advisory, the founder and manager of the Purchasing Power Portfolio, the author of the Yoga of Investing blog, and the managing editor, investments for the online financial site FrankInsight.com. He entered the financial advisory business as an associate at American Express Financial Services (now Ameriprise). He also worked at the Wallace Financial Group, a regional insurance, investment, retirement, and financial planning firm, and Mullin Consulting, advising Fortune 1000 companies on niche compensation benefits for their senior executives. He returned to advising high-net-worth individuals and families when he joined the D.C. office of US Trust, which was later purchased by Bank of America. Mr. Peacock left Bank of America when the firm, like the rest of the investment industry, began relying increasingly on mathematical models whose output depended on a myriad of unknowable assumptions. At Euclid, he immediately established the Purchasing Power Portfolio, a precursor to the Simplify Wall Street approach described in this book. Mr. Peacock is the president of the Georgetown University Alumni Association and is an ex-officio member of the University’s board of directors. He is also a member of the External Advisory Board of the Georgetown University Alumni and Student Federal Credit Union, the largest student-run credit union in the country, and The Georgetown Chimes, an all-male a capella singing group. A part-time stand-up comic, he lives in Bethesda, Maryland, with his four children, Duncan, June, Hayley, and Mackenzie.