John M. Longo, BA, MBA, PhD, CFA

John is a Clinical Associate Professor of Finance at Rutgers Business School, a Principle in a $100 million hedge fund and Chairman of the seven-person Investment Committee for The MDE Group, a registered investment advisor with $1.7 billion under management. Barron's in its August 2007 issue, ranked The MDE Group as the fourth best independent registered investment advisor in America.

Dr. Longo is a Senior Training Consultant with DealMaven, a leading developer of commercial financial software. Not only a highly experienced and acclaimed instructor, Dr. Longo is also an active investor across a number of conventional and alternative investments. He has been cited in numerous periodicals on financial related topics and has initiated and headed a delegation of business students in a private meeting with Warren Buffett. John was previously a Vice President of Merrill Lynch & Co., Inc. He is currently writing a book on hedge funds entitled Hedge Fund Alpha, A Guide to Generating and Understanding Investment Performance.

Ben Sopranzetti, PhD, CFA

Professor Ben J. Sopranzetti is an internationally renowned expert in the area of Business Valuation, Investment Banking, Private Equity, and Financial Strategy.  His most recent research interests lie primarily in the areas of Investment Banking and Private Equity in Emerging Financial Markets, especially China.  He has also written several papers in the area of Banking and Real Estate.  Professor Sopranzetti has deep ties to industry and places over thirty students a year on Wall Street.  He serves on several corporate boards and is a highly-regarded consultant and trainer at several bulge-bracket Wall Street investment banks.  He has published in the Journal of Business, Journal of Finance, and the Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis among others.  Professor Sopranzetti is widely recognized as a master teacher, and is the recipient of twelve awards for excellence in teaching.  He was recently honored by BusinessWeek as one of the twenty “Favorite Professors” for 2007-2008  He has trained at  Bank of America, Morgan Stanley, Rothschild, UBS, Lehman Brothers, Bear Sterns, HSBC, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan/Chase, CFA Society, New York Society of Security Analysts, Sanofi-Aventis, Johnson & Johnson, General Electric, Microsoft.