About the Center

Mahnaz Mahdavi
Faculty Director, Global Finance Concentration
Mahnaz Mahdavi is chair of and a professor in the economics department and the faculty director of the Global Financial Institutions Concentration. She received her doctorate in economics from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and has been teaching courses on topics related to finance and international finance. She was the 2008 Distinguished Professor of the Year and one of the inaugural recipients of the Sherrerd Teaching Award in 2004. She was a teaching fellow at the University of Michigan and a faculty contributor to the Women’s Executive Education program at Smith College. Mahdavi was the founding director of Smith’s Center for Women and Financial Independence in 2001 and served as the Ann F. Kaplan ’67 faculty director of WFI until 2017.

Susannah Howe
Faculty Mentor Coordinator
Susannah Howe coordinates and teaches the capstone engineering design course. Since joining the Smith faculty in 2003, she has coached numerous student design teams across a wide range of engineering disciplines and collaborated with multiple sponsoring organizations from both industry and government. Her favorite part of the job is working with students during their senior year and being part of their transition into life after Smith. She stays in contact with many engineering alumnae and hosts many of them back on campus as guest speakers in the capstone course. Her Smith service both past and present includes the Administrative Board, the Jandon Center for Community Collaboration, the Lewis Global Studies Center, the Sherrerd Center for Teaching and Learning, the Committee on Educational Technology, the College Council on Community Policy, the Committee for Faculty Compensation and Development, the Design Thinking Initiative, the Conway Innovation and Entrepreneurship Center, and the Program for the Study of Women and Gender.

Daniel Schultheis
Personal Finance Instructor
Daniel has been an educator at various institutions and businesses for more than 15 years and a student of personal finance for even longer. He served as a faculty member at Smith College from 2016-2022 in the Department of Mathematical Sciences before transitioning to an education technology startup. Daniel credits his interest in personal finance to a family that talked about the good and the bad of money even from an early age. He believes that the psychology of personal finance is just as important as the numbers, and that honest conversations about money and a willingness to ask questions can make a world of difference for young adults starting out on their own. Daniel has worked with the Conway Center at Smith College since 2022 to facilitate these conversations and share what he has learned.