Gordon Phillips is the Laurence F. Whittemore Professor of Business Administration and a professor of finance. He teaches the 2nd year course Venture Capital and Private Equity and specializes in private equity, mergers, and the impact of financial decisions on firms’ strategic decisions. He is a faculty advisor at the Center for Private Equity and Venture Capital, where he was the faculty director for 5 years, reorganizing and helping to expand the previously named Center for Private Equity. He is also a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) and a visiting research professor at Tsinghua University in Beijing. He previously taught at the University of Southern California and the University of Maryland. He has been a visiting professor at Harvard Business School, Duke University, HEC Paris, Insead, MIT, and Southern Mediterranean University. He received his MA and Ph.D. from Harvard University and his undergraduate degree from Northwestern University. His areas of research include corporate finance and how financial decisions impact firms’ strategic decisions, and contracting in financial markets. His work in corporate finance includes studies of private equity issuance, capital structure, Chapter 11 bankruptcy, how leverage buyouts and other forms of high debt influence a firms’ and rivals’ investment decisions.