Jeffrey Garten


Jeffrey E. Garten is Dean Emeritus at the Yale School of Management, where he teaches a variety of courses on the global economy. He also serves on several corporate and philanthropic boards. He is married to author and Food Network personality Ina Garten.
From 1996–2005 he was the dean of the school, and from 2005 to 2015 he was the Juan Trippe Professor in international trade, finance, and business. Before that, he was Undersecretary of Commerce for International Trade in the Clinton administration from 1993 to 1995. Previously he worked on Wall Street as managing director at the Blackstone Group and Lehman Brothers. He is the author of five books on the global political economy and numerous articles in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, Newsweek, Foreign Affairs, and Harvard Business Review. From 1997–2005 he wrote a monthly column in Business Week.

Early life and career

Garten was born to a Jewish family, the son of Ruth and Melvin Garten. His father fought in World War II, the Korean War, and Vietnam; and was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross in 1953 for his heroism in Korea's Battle of Pork Chop Hill. His brother, Allan Garten, is a retired federal prosecutor in Portland, Oregon. He married Ina Rosenberg in 1968. Garten earned his A.B. from Dartmouth College in 1968 and an M.A. and Ph.D. from the Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies. He also served in the United States Army from 1968 to 1972, holding the rank of Lieutenant in the 82nd Airborne Division and Captain and aide-de camp to the commanding general of the US Special Forces. In 1971 he was an advisor to the Royal Thai Army.
After Johns Hopkins, Garten worked in the Nixon, Ford and Carter administrations in a variety of foreign policy and economic positions. He then went on to Wall Street, becoming a managing director of Lehman Brothers and the Blackstone Group. At Lehman, he specialized in sovereign debt restructuring in Latin America. He also lived in Tokyo and directed and expanded the Asian investment banking business for that firm, including overseeing some of the largest international corporate restructurings of the era. At Blackstone he worked in the financial advisory and mergers and acquisitions arena. He then became the Undersecretary of Commerce for International Trade in the Clinton administration where he focused his efforts on trade and investment deals in "Big Emerging Markets" such as China, India, Indonesia, Brazil, Mexico, and Turkey. From 1996 to 2005, Garten was dean of the Yale School of Management after which he stayed on to teach full-time. His courses have included "Leading A Global Company", "Wall Street and Washington", "Managing Global Catastrophes", and "The Future of Global Finance", and he has led study trips for students to China, Singapore, Dubai, and London.
In 2006, Garten and a colleague, David Rothkopf, set up Garten Rothkopf in Washington to provide strategic advice for global companies, international organizations and governments. In 2016 the firm was sold to The Slate Group, a subsidiary of Graham Holdings, Inc.
Garten sits on the board of directors for Credit Suisse Asset Management, and he is a trustee of The International Rescue Committee. Previously, he was a director of Aetna, CarMax, Inc., Standard & Poor's, Calpine Energy Corporation, Alcan Inc., and The Conference Board, and he served on the international advisory boards of Toyota and the Chicago Climate Exchange.

Personal life

Garten is married to Ina Garten, who hosts Food Network's Barefoot Contessa, for which she has won three Emmy Awards, and has written ten best-selling cookbooks, including Cooking for Jeffrey in 2016. Garten and his wife live in Southport, Connecticut, and East Hampton, New York.

Activities at Yale

Garten has been teaching a number of courses at the Yale School of Management:
He has led the following International Study Trips with Yale students: