Heather E. Tookes

Heather Tookes has been on the faculty of Yale School of Management since 2004. She works on a diverse range of topics in the areas of capital markets and corporate finance (especially security issuance, M&A, and product market spillovers). She has a particular interest in credit default swap and convertible bond markets. Her work has contributed to our understanding of the ways in which frictions in these markets interact with corporations’ financing decisions. She has also studied trader borrowing and has linked margin trading to the sharp declines in stock market liquidity that occur during crises. More recently, she has written papers investigating questions related to student loan forbearance, the effectiveness of Covid-19 business restrictions, and gender in finance. She teaches Corporate Finance to MBA and EMBA students and has won awards for her teaching. In addition to her academic research, Professor Tookes has served as Deputy Dean for Faculty at Yale SOM, overseeing faculty recruitment, development, promotion, and retention.

Professor Tookes has previously served as Chair of the Academic Female Advisory Committee (AFFECT) of the American Finance Association (AFA) and as a member of the AFA’s Committee on Racial Diversity. She is a former Associate Editor at the Review of Financial Studies and Management Science, member of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s Financial Advisory Round Table, and member of the FINRA Economic Advisory Committee. She also has current and past experience serving on a variety of non-profit and corporate boards.