Our People

Stern Value Management is nothing without its people. Our executives, consultants and administrative staff are our core asset, and we place great emphasis on hiring, nurturing, and retaining the best people. Here are short presentations of our key leaders.

Joel Stern, Founder Joel Stern, Founder Joel Stern, Founder

Joel Stern

Chairman Emeritus

JOEL M. STERN was the Founder, Chairman and CEO of Stern Value Management (SVM) and Stern Solutions Capital Partners (SSCP) until his untimely passing in May 2019.   

For 17 years, Joel Stern was a rotating panelist on the television program “Wall Street with Louis Rukeyser” and more recently he was a regular guest on both Bloomberg Television and Radio where he expressed his opinion on both economic and political issues.  He was the author of two books and the co-author of six others.  From 1973-1976 he was a regular financial policy columnist for the Financial Times of London.  From 1979-1983 he made frequent contributions to the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal.  More recently he was a regular columnist for FinWeek

Joel Stern taught at more than 20 graduate schools of business during his career.  For 38 years he taught at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Business, which ended in 2014.

For 22 years he taught at the Carnegie Mellon Tepper School in Pittsburgh where Joel carried the title of“Distinguished Professor” until 2017.  In addition, for 12 years he taught at The University of Chicago Booth School.  Furthermore, he has served on the faculty at UCLA’s Anderson School, the Simon School at the University of Rochester, the University of Michigan, the Australian Graduate School of Management in Sydney, the Indian School of Business in Hyderabad, and the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya, Israel.  More recently he taught at the Robert H. Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland; at the University of Cape Town in South Africa; and at Universidad Francisco Marroquín in Guatemala, Panama and Madrid.  

Following his graduation from The University of Chicago he joined the Chase Manhattan Bank where he ultimately ran their global consulting operations, called Chase Financial Policy. In 1982 he founded Stern Stewart & Co. (known as Stern Value Management as of November 2013).

Joel advised more than 2,500 firms in his career. 

Martin Schwarz, Executive Director - Operations & FInance Martin Schwarz, Executive Director - Operations & FInance Martin Schwarz, Executive Director - Operations & FInance

Martin Schwarz

Chief Executive Officer 

Since joining the firm in 2007, Martin has assisted companies across multiple industries and continents maximize shareholder value.

He has advised private and publicly listed firms as well as government institutions including the sovereign wealth funds of Malaysia and Singapore and State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (SASAC) in China.

Martin has advised clients on corporate finance, strategy, performance measurement, executive compensation, and governance.

In addition to his work at SVM, Martin was a lecturer at the University of Chicago’s Latin American CFO program from 2016 to 2018 and is currently an international business lecturer at  Old Dominion University.

Martin has guest lectured at various graduate programs including ESSEC University (France) and Singapore Management University.

Martin has been featured on CNBC, written for Forbes magazine and has contributed to the Wall Street Journal. In addition, he has written and developed research reports published in various publications including The Business Times from Singapore.

Martin has an MBA from Old Dominion University with a concentration in Finance.

Pedro Tavares, Executive Director - Operations Pedro Tavares, Executive Director - Operations Pedro Tavares, Executive Director - Operations

Pedro Tavares

Executive Director — Operations

Since joining the firm in 2000, Pedro worked in several industries, including conglomerates, telecommunications, contact center, retail, real estate development and management, shopping centers, toll road concessions, railroad, logistics, food, oil & gas, fuel and LPG distribution, power, metal and mining, logistics, education, ethanol and car rental in Brazil, USA and the Caribbean.

He has worked in several projects such as performance implementation, target setting, incentive plans design, financial strategy, portfolio analysis, capital allocation, cost of capital estimation and value gap analysis. Pedro was also involved in regulatory issues, supporting tariff demands and productivity factors to be used on price cap regulatory methodology.

 

Pedro is also author or co-author of several articles regarding corporate finance subjects such as corporate governance, corporate portfolio management, strategic planning, compensation plans, and mergers and acquisitions, published in Capital Aberto magazine.

Pedro holds a BA in Administration from Fundação Getulio Vargas and a master’s in economics from Insper – Instituto de Ensino e Pesquisa.

Erik Stern, Lead Executive Director Erik Stern, Lead Executive Director Erik Stern, Lead Executive Director

Erik Stern

Senior Advisor

ERIK STERN joined Stern Value Management in 1997. Erik went on to become MD of Nordic Europe in 1999, MD Europe in 2000, President International, covering Europe, Africa, Middle East, and Asis in 2006, President of Global Operations in 2012 and Lead Executive Director in 2019. He has advised companies in numerous industries.

In addition, Erik is Vice Chairman of Singapore-based Stern Solutions Partners Pte Ltd. 

He has written for many publications, including the Financial Times. He has appeared on TV, including Sky Business News and Bloomberg. The Value Mindset, Wiley, was published in March 2004. The Economist (2001) included a global ranking based on this pioneering metric, the Wealth Added Index™.

Erik has an MBA from the University of Chicago and a BA Hons from Brown University.

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