Raj Aggarwal is an author and contributor to the fields of finance and international business studies. Aggarwal was the dean of the University of Akron College of Business Administration from 2006 until 2009. He was elected as a fellow of the Academy of International Business. He has worked as an engineer, financial analyst, strategic planner, department chair, university budget planner and corporate board member. He has authored or co-authored over a dozen books or monographs and over a hundred scholarly articles that have cited over 5,000 times according to his profile in Google Scholar.
Biography
Education
Aggarwal received his bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering from the Indian Institutes of Technology in 1968. He then earned his MBA in operations management from Kent State University in 1970, then studied international economics with Professor Harry Johnson at the University of Chicago from 1972 to 1973. He earned his doctorate in corporate finance and international business at Kent State in 1975. In 2000, he became a Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) charterholder.
Scholarly career
Aggarwal is the editor of the Journal of Teaching International Business, was the finance area editor for the Journal of International Business Studies and was an editor of Financial Education and Practice, a journal published by the Financial Management Association. He has served on editorial boards of scholarly journals in international business and many journals in finance and economics. In a 2005 issue of the Journal of International Business Studies, Aggarwal was ranked as the most influential scholar in international business literature. He has over 6700 citations with an H-Index of over 40 in Google Scholars.
He has held many elected and appointed leadership positions in academia and in business, including; president of the Eastern Finance Association and the Northeast Ohio Financial Executives International. He has been a consultant to the UN, the World Bank, the US SEC and Fortune 100 companies. He serves on business and non-profit boards including Manco Inc (Duck, LePage, and Loctite brands), Ancora Mutual Funds, Financial Management Association, the Cleveland Council on World Affairs, and the Financial Executive Research Foundation. He is or was on the Board of Directors of Goodwill Industries of Akron, Ohio and the Kent State University Foundation, Kent, Ohio. The Eastern Finance Association elected Raj Aggarwal as their president, and he has been a trustee since 1999. In 2002, Aggarwal co-founded the CIO Forum, which is an invitation only best practices group of large company CIOs in Northeast Ohio with meetings limited to CIOs with no direct reports. Aggarwal has spoken numerous times on WCPN and NPR, including several interviews on NPR affiliate, WCPN concerning the financial crisis of 2007–2010. Additionally, he has been considered an authority on Northeast Ohio's business and financial markets. Finally, Raj Aggarwal's academic leadership is reflected in Hoshino, M., "An Interview with Professor Raj Aggarwal, Department Editor for JIBS", and his business leadership was reflected in, "The Super CFO: Changing Roles of the CFO".
Academic career
Aggarwal was the Frank C. Sullivan Professor of International Business and Finance of the University of Akron College of Business Administration from 2006 to 2013 and was dean for three years. While Aggarwal was serving as dean, the College of Business Administration (CBA) received its first ever ranking of their business program in BusinessWeek, in 2009. Additionally, the CBA received a 'Best Graduate Business School' ranking from The Princeton Review.
