The joint recipients of the 2026 Denis Gromb Award for Outstanding Citizenship in Financial Economics are Professor Renée Adams of the University of Oxford and Professor Michelle Lowry of Drexel University.
Around 2014, Michelle and Renée initiated and led the effort to found the Academic Female Finance Committee (AFFECT), which became a committee of the AFA in 2015. Since then, AFFECT has grown into a major institutional force for change in the academic finance profession. Its initiatives include pioneering research on the barriers facing women in the profession, the AFA culture survey, a Junior Faculty Mentoring Program, a searchable directory of women in finance, and a grants program funding conferences, speaker series and networking events. Collectively, these contributions have materially raised awareness, generated rigorous evidence, and created lasting institutional infrastructure that supports women at every stage of their academic career.
Three aspects of Professors Adams and Lowry’s nomination resonated particularly strongly with the Award Committee. First, testimonies revealed that AFFECT was set up with much preparation work preceding 2015. Michelle and Renée not only conceived the original idea but also led the extensive foundational work required to turn AFFECT into a lasting institution. Second, AFFECT has had spillovers or positive externalities that extend far beyond addressing the challenges faced by female scholars in the Financial Economics profession. In particular, the best practices AFFECT developed for supporting women in their careers have led to sweeping changes to better address bias and discrimination across the board in the profession at large. Third, AFFECT has been successful in its mission and has had positive spillovers because right from the beginning, its work was planned and designed based on a data-based and analytical approach to identifying and implementing best practices in the profession.
Testimonies
Convincing arguments that Michelle and Renée fully deserve to be the joint recipients of the 2026 Award came both from the nominating letter and a long list of testimonies gathered by the Committee members. Here is a sample of these testimonies which, taken together, highlight many of the eligibility criteria for the Award and indeed demonstrate that the Award winners encapsulate the same kind of academic citizenship that Denis Gromb exemplified throughout his career.
“Michelle and Renée are exceptionally deserving of the Denis Gromb Award. Their initiative in founding AFFECT fostered “a research and work environment that is collaborative [and] unifying,” through “their willingness to engage in and stand for initiatives that have important and significant welfare implications for the profession at large” and by founding an entity that focuses on “mentorship of students and faculty in the field of financial economics.””
“AFFECT is an unusually successful example of institution building in academic finance. It addresses a clear coordination and public goods problem in mentoring, information sharing, and professional support. Before AFFECT, access to good mentoring and informal knowledge about how the profession works depended heavily on local networks and chance encounters. AFFECT created durable structures that reduced these frictions and made mentoring, networking, and information flows more systematic and equitable. AFFECT has also played a meaningful role in educating the broader profession about the challenges faced by female faculty, helping raise awareness, clarify mechanisms, and shift norms in ways that extend well beyond its direct participants… Michelle Lowry and Renée Adams deserve particular recognition for these contributions. Together, Michelle and Renée exemplify the academic citizenship the Denis Gromb Award honors. AFFECT is not a one-off initiative but a durable institution that has improved the professional environment in finance through mentoring, education, norm setting, and infrastructure support, with meaningful positive externalities for the field.”
“In founding AFFECT, Michelle and Renée have contributed greatly to the professional development and advancement of women in finance through the mentoring and networking opportunities provided by AFFECT.”
“ I participated in many AFFECT activities, all of which were so beneficial not only for women but also all junior faculty in finance. One of them really stood out for me: … I believe this mentorship activity that they initiated at AFFECT has had a spillover effect on others like me—i.e., creating more mentors in our profession, beyond one day or one activity, not only for female junior faculty but for every junior faculty and PhD student in finance—which is awesome.”
“AFFECT events have provided wonderful opportunities for women in the academic finance profession to meet, network, and discuss research projects and ideas.”
“AFFECT has helped women feel more comfortable in the profession and drawn some more awareness to the fact that the way our tenure system is designed, the period of life when many women would have to give birth and be a primary caregiver directly conflicts with the period of intense work & travel that are necessary to succeed.”
“Michelle and Renée are perfect nominees for the Denis Gromb Award. Creating AFFECT was an incredible service to the profession. Not only was it a game changer for women in finance, but it also laid the groundwork for the AFA’s broader mentoring initiative, launched this year (the Junior Faculty Mentoring Program). … While AFFECT’s mission centers on promoting the career success of women, I also experienced firsthand how it paved the way for a broader initiative that will ultimately benefit all finance scholars. AFFECT helped raise awareness that mentoring initiatives in academic finance are critical to the long-term strength, inclusiveness, and intellectual vitality of the field. Our discipline has a steep early-career learning curve. Structured mentoring helps junior faculty navigate research expectations, publishing strategies, and professional networks more effectively. Equally important, mentoring at the mid-career stage addresses a frequently neglected transition. These initiatives generate positive externalities that compound over time. Mentoring represents a high-impact form of professional service and provides a durable public good to the field.”
“ … Renée insisted from the start that we ground our efforts in data and evidence. She and Michelle undertook the enormous task of creating and conducting the profession’s first climate survey, then writing the inaugural report. The scope of that effort—building the survey instrument, achieving response rates, analyzing results, and presenting findings credibly—cannot be overstated. The survey led to debates and real changes in many organizations across the profession. … Renée and Michelle didn’t just identify problems. They created evidence-based solutions, made them actionable, and transformed institutional practices in ways that continue to benefit the profession.”
“More broadly, AFFECT (and other female-centric groups like the Early Career Women in Finance Conference, which is part of WFA) are really important, as they provide a resource to women in the field and generate a sense of community.“
Award Presentation
The second Denis Gromb Award for Outstanding Citizenship in Financial Economics was announced during the Business Meeting luncheon on May 30 at the 2026 FIRS Conference held in Miami, Florida. The Award was presented by Dimitri Vayanos, Denis Gromb’s friend and coauthor, as well as FIRS Vice President Elect and a member of the 2026 Denis Gromb Award committee.
A Lasting Legacy of Academic Citizenship
Through their vision, leadership, and sustained commitment, Michelle Lowry and Renée Adams have fundamentally strengthened the institutions that support the academic finance profession. Their work has improved mentoring, broadened participation, fostered a more inclusive and evidence-based professional culture, and created lasting public goods that will benefit generations of financial economists. These are precisely the qualities of outstanding academic citizenship that the Denis Gromb Award seeks to recognize.