About Lance Nail, Ph.D., CFA
Before joining USM, Dr. Lance Nail — now USM’s dean of business — chaired the Department of Finance, Economics, & Quantitative Methods at the University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Business.  During his 12-year tenure with UAB’s faculty, he spearheaded development of the School of Business Finance Advisory Board and the award-winning Green & Gold Student Investment Fund.  Dr. Nail received eight teaching excellence awards at UAB and the University of Georgia (UGA) and was recognized by Thomson Publishing (Cengage) as a best-practices teacher for use of technology in teaching finance.  With research interests in mergers and acquisitions, corporate governance, and insider trading, Dean Nail has published more than 20 peer-reviewed articles in journals such as the Journal of Financial Economics, Journal of Applied Corporate Finance, and Journal of Banking & Finance.  He is editor of an international corporate governance book, guest editor for a special journal issue on international mergers and acquisitions, and ad hoc reviewer for more than 60 manuscripts in 15-plus journals.  A frequent presenter at numerous conferences, he serves on the Southern Finance Association and Eastern Finance Association boards of directors and is a past CFA Society of Alabama and Risk Management Association-Birmingham Chapter board member.  He graduated first in his class at the University of Alabama with a B.S. in finance and an economics minor.  He holds a doctorate of finance, with an economics minor, from UGA.  Prior to his doctoral studies, he was a mortgage-backed and asset-backed bond consultant with Ernst & Young LLP.

About Henry N. Dick, III
Biloxi, Mississippi native Henry Dick oversees estate and business planning, estate administration, bond financings, like-kind exchanges, formations, and mergers and acquisitions for one of Mississippi’s oldest and most distinguished law firms.  As an estate planner, he has assisted hundreds of clients in planning the orderly transfer of assets exceeding $1.5 billion.  He is also one of only a few Mississippi Gulf Coast attorneys listed in The Redbook for municipal bond financing expertise, including his involvement as bond, underwriter’s, issuer’s, and lender’s counsel in dozens of municipal, school district, and governmental entity financings.  Mr. Dick holds an accounting degree from the University of Southern Mississippi and graduated cum laude from The University of Mississippi School of Law.  Additionally, he earned an LL.M. in taxation from the University of Florida College of Law. A Leadership Gulf Coast alumnus and a 2007 South Mississippi Top 10 Business Leader under 40, he holds leadership positions with the Mississippi and Harrison County Bar associations and volunteers with numerous Gulf Coast organizations.