Donna Hitscherich serves as director of the Private Equity Program and is a Bernstein Faculty Leader at the Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. Center for Leadership and Ethics. She teaches Corporate Finance, Business Law, Mergers and Acquisitions, and Advanced Corporate Finance. Prior to her academic career, she was an investment banker and mergers and acquisition specialist, working with CS First Boston, JP Morgan &Co Inc., and Banc of America Securities. Prior to those roles, she was a corporate lawyer, specializing in mergers and acquisitions. She holds a BS and JD from St. John’s University and an MBA from Columbia Business School. Hitscherich is also a certified paramedic in the State of New York.

Ellen Carr has over two decades of experience as a high yield bond portfolio manager, most recently at Weaver C. Barksdale (WCB), a majority-women-owned, institutional fixed income investment management firm based in Nashville, TN. She specializes in the construction and management of high yield and core plus bond portfolios. Prior to joining WCB, she served as senior vice president and a high yield portfolio manager for institutional separate accounts and mutual funds for The Capital Group Companies/American Funds in Los Angeles, CA. Along with her high yield responsibilities, Ellen also managed investment-grade corporate and long-duration credit portfolios. Ellen began her career as an investment analyst for the Fixed Income Group at Capital in 1999.

Ellen has been an adjunct professor of finance at Columbia Business School since 2012, where she teaches courses on the credit markets and cash flow modeling.

Ellen is also a writer. She is an occasional contributor to the Financial Times and Institutional Investor. She has co-authored a book on women in investment management to be published in spring 2021 by Columbia University Press.

Ellen is a trustee of the National Public Radio (NPR) Foundation, as well as a board member of her local NPR affiliate and the Community Foundation of Western North Carolina. She serves as treasurer of the Wilma Dykeman Legacy and vice-chair of the Department of Management and Accountancy Advisory Board at the University of North Carolina Asheville. She is a member of the Kellogg Financial Network Advisory Board. Ms. Carr also manages a family foundation (carrfamilyfoundation.org) which awards college scholarships in rural communities.

Ellen has an MBA from the Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University and received her B.A. from Harvard in 1994, where she graduated magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa.

Ellen splits her time between Asheville, North Carolina, rural Tennessee, and New York. She has one son, two cats, and a pandemic puppy.