Janet Tavakoli is the president of Tavakoli Structured Finance, a derivatives risk consulting firm for financial institutions. She has worked as a chemical engineer, earned her MBA from the University of Chicago, taught derivatives as an adjunct associate professor of finance at the University of Chicago's Booth Business School (Graduate School of Business), and worked for Wall Street firms in New York, Tokyo, and London. She was born and raised in Chicago, Illinois, lived in Iran during the Islamic revolution, lived in New York for a decade, lived in London for several years, and has traveled extensively for business and pleasure in Europe and Japan.