Mahdi Rastad is an Associate Professor of Finance in the Orfalea College of Business at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo, California. His research spans several areas of Finance and Economics, including corporate finance (capital structure and private equity), corporate governance (shareholder activism and board diversity), fixed income investment (public pension funds and treasury management), and energy economics (OPEC and oil economies). His research has been published in Journal of Corporate Finance, Journal of Industrial Economics, The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Journal of Pension Economics and Finance, and Energy Economics. He holds a Ph.D. in Economics and M.S. in Finance from University of Illinois.