Authors

Claudia Zeisberger

Senior Affiliate Professor of Decision Sciences and Entrepreneurship & Family Enterprise
Academic Director, Global Private Equity Initiative (GPEI)
INSEAD

Claudia Zeisberger is a Senior Affiliate Professor of Decision Sciences and Entrepreneurship & Family Enterprise at INSEAD, and the Founder and Academic Director of the school’s private equity centre (GPEI). Before joining INSEAD in 2005, she spent 16 years in investment banking in New York, London, Frankfurt, Tokyo and Singapore.

Professor Zeisberger is a founding investor of ‘INSEAD Alum Ventures’ (IAV), the business school’s first dedicated seed fund and she actively mentors early stage companies and first-time entrepreneurs. At INSEAD, she launched ‘Managing Corporate Turnarounds’ a popular MBA elective known for its intensive computer-based simulation involving an iconic car brand and its struggle with bankruptcy. As a natural extension, she teaches INSEAD’s Risk management elective. She has frequently been nominated for the MBA ‘Best Teaching Award’ in her PE elective and has been awarded the “Dean’s Commendation for Excellence in MBA Teaching” annually since 2008.

Professor Zeisberger is known for her extensive research on PE in emerging markets, and her output is a function of her close working relationships with private equity firms and their investee companies, institutional investors, Family Offices and Sovereign Wealth Funds.

Michael Prahl

Partner, Asia-IO Advisors
Adjunct Professor of Entrepreneurship & Family Enterprise
Distinguished Fellow, Global Private Equity Initiative (GPEI)
INSEAD

Michael Prahl is the co-founder of Asia-IO Advisors, a private equity firm focused on implementing Asia and cross-border private equity investment programs for large institutional and corporate investor. Michael has spent almost 20 years in private equity, starting in venture capital during the dotcom boom. He worked for many years at a global PE firm, in Europe, the US and Asia, completing deals including regular buyouts, public to privates, PIPE’s, minority investments and privatisations.

An INSEAD alumnus, Michael served as the first Executive Director of the school’s PE Centre, with research interests in the areas of co-investment, family offices and market entry strategies & portfolio allocation for limited partners. Michael remains an INSEAD Distinguished Fellow attached to GPEI with a focus on LBOs and Asian private equity and an Adjunct Professor teaching the MBA Leveraged Buyout elective.

Bowen White

Centre Director, Global Private Equity Initiative (GPEI)
INSEAD

Bowen White currently serves as the Centre Director of INSEAD’s GPEI, the business school’s Centre in private equity. As Centre Director, he leads its research and outreach activities and has published on topics including operational value creation, responsible investment, LP portfolio construction and minority investment in family businesses.

Bowen has spent his career working in and conducting research on the global alternative asset management industry. In the New York hedge fund industry, he researched topics from statistical arbitrage investment strategies in commodities markets to macroeconomic trends and global hedge fund performance. Having worked for both a proprietary trading firm and a fund of funds, he has seen first-hand the challenges faced by investors and allocators of capital to the hedge fund industry. An INSEAD alumnus, Bowen has also advised on a range of VC and growth equity fundraising opportunities across Southeast Asia.