Professor Belen Villalonga

Belén Villalonga joined New York University Stern School of Business as an Associate Professor of Management and Organizations in September 2012. She will teach a course on family business management.

Professor Villalonga’s work focuses on the financial, strategic, governance and valuation issues faced by family businesses. She has written several articles on how family ownership and control influence the management and governance of firms as well as, ultimately, their performance. She has also studied extensively the area of corporate diversification and the mechanisms that families can use to open their equity to outside investors without losing control of their businesses. Her award-winning research has been published in leading academic journals and cited over 750 times in academic publications, and has been featured on CNBC, NPR, Bloomberg Businessweek, The Economist, Expansión, Financial Times, Forbes, International Herald Tribune and many other international business publications. Prior to joining Stern, Professor Villalonga was a faculty member at Harvard Business School from 2001 to 2012. In 2010 she received the Harvard Business School Wyss Award for excellence in mentoring doctoral students. Since 2006, Professor Villalonga has been serving as an independent director on the board of Acciona, a family-controlled Fortune Global 500 company in the infrastructure and renewable energy businesses. Before entering graduate school she worked at McKinsey & Co. in Paris.

Professor Villalonga received a B.A. in Economic and Management Sciences from the Colegio Universitario de Estudios Financieros in Madrid and an M.A. in Economics and a Ph.D. in Management from the University of California at Los Angeles. She also holds a second Ph.D. in Business Economics from the Complutense University of Madrid. She is fluent in English, Spanish and French, and conversant in Portuguese and Italian.