CHAPEL HILL – Professor Paige Ouimet has been named executive director of the Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise at UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School effective Aug. 21.

She succeeds Professor Greg Brown, who led the Kenan Institute’s growth for eight years.

Ouimet is the Kenan Institute’s director of research and associate dean of UNC Kenan-Flagler’s Ph.D. program.

Ouimet has served on UNC Kenan-Flagler’s faculty since 2008. Her research focuses on finance and labor economics. She has been deeply involved in the institute’s efforts, and her work has been featured in many of its pieces on issues affecting employee stakeholders.

Profile: Paige Ouimet

Paige Ouimet has several research projects looking at income inequality and the role of firms. She also has researched ESOP (employee share ownership plans) and employee stock options and their impact on labor productivity, wages and turnover.

Her research agenda is concentrated at the juncture of finance and labor economics. She is interested in how decisions studied in finance impact employee stakeholders – specifically how those effects are reflected in firm performance and, hence, corporate finance decisions.

Her work has been published in the American Economic Review, Journal of Finance, Review of Financial Studies and Journal of Financial Economics.

Dr. Ouimet worked at The Center for Clean Air Policy, an independent, nonprofit think tank working on climate and air quality policy at the local, U.S. national and international levels.

She received her PhD and MBA from the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan and her BA from Dartmouth College.

Source: Kenan Institute

She became the institute’s director of research in July 2022 and has played a major role in its first two grand challenges, which are concerted, yearlong efforts to examine – and drive solutions to – the most complex and timely issues facing business and the economy today: Stakeholder Capitalism and ESG Investing in 2022 and this year’s Workforce Disrupted: Seeking the Labor Market’s Next Equilibrium.

Her work across areas – and with peers across the university – has prepared her to effectively communicate the institute’s role in promoting the research of UNC Kenan-Flagler’s faculty for the betterment of business and society.

Brown will continue his teaching and research at UNC Kenan-Flagler as a Distinguished Professor of Finance; continue as research director of the Institute for Private Capital, which he helped found in 2015; and remain involved with the institute, including as a faculty adviser for the Luther Hodges Scholars program.

During his tenure as executive director, Brown has significantly increased engagement with faculty members whose research has strengthened the institute as a source of data-driven solutions to economic problems for the public and private sectors. The institute filled a vital role during the pandemic, creating a COVID-19 dashboard displaying real-time data for North Carolina business leaders and policymakers, enabling better-informed decisions about the state’s reopening. And last year, Brown helped launch the American Growth Project, an initiative that supports government officials, business leaders and other decision-makers by providing real-time economic analysis and forecasts.

Ouimet’s first day in her new job will be Aug. 21. The transition has been underway since earlier this year, and the planned move was announced internally in April.

(C) Kenan Institute