Iris Mack, Harvard Derivatives Whiz, Fired For Emailing Larry Summers About "Frightening" Trades?

Iris Mack, Harvard Derivatives Whiz, Fired For Emailing Larry Summers About "Frightening" Trades?

A former quantitative analyst at Harvard Management Company, the university's once-vaunted endowment manager, tells the Harvard Crimson she was fired for voicing concern to then-university president Larry Summers' chief of staff about the money manager's risky use of derivatives the traders didn't understand.

The episode dates back to 2002, when analyst Iris Mack, whose website identifies her as the second African American woman to earn a Harvard PhD. in applied math (and someone who likes primary colors) joined the much-venerated Harvard Management Company, which invests the university's then $18 billion endowment, to find what she termed a "frightening" state of affairs.

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