Over the past several years, AFFECT has matured as an organization with a set of established initiatives that are expected to continue on a recurring basis. These initiatives include (i) mentoring, (ii) grants to support networking and mentoring events, and (iii) a departmental demographic survey. In 2025, much of the committee’s effort focused on refining and expanding the mentoring and networking initiatives, as well as strengthening the processes and networks that support them. To manage costs, the demographic survey is administered at multi-year intervals rather than annually, with the most recent survey conducted in 2023.
In January 2025, AFFECT held our flagship one-day mentoring event at the AFA meetings in San Francisco. Thirty-six mentees and 12 mentors attended the event.
This year, AFFECT has opened our programming to all genders. Our flagship mentoring event, a one-day in-person program offered at the AFA, is now co-organized with the Junior Faculty Mentoring Program (JFMP), a new initiative of the AFA. For the 2026 AFA Mentoring event, we received 135 applications and selected 42 mentees, 13 of whom are women, to attend the program. We have recruited 14 well-regarded researchers to serve as mentors, each serving as a mentor to three mentees.
AFFECT launched two new mentoring programs this year. First, we offered an online panel to provide job market advice for PhD students. This is the first time AFFECT has provided programming for PhD students. Second, we have launched a new mid-career peer-to-peer mentoring program, which is intended to foster community and mutual support specifically for mid-career faculty. This program is in collaboration with the AEA’s Committee on the Status of Women in the Economics Profession (CSWEP), which provided the mentoring materials.
For the second year in a row, AFFECT has sponsored a well-attended, inclusive Networking Breakfast at the WFA. The 2025 breakfast, featuring a panel discussion with Professors Toni Whited, Manju Puri and Veronika K Pool, moderated by Ayako Yasuda, was well-attended by about 80 faculty of all genders.
In the spring of 2025, AFFECT issued its fourth annual call for funding proposals for supplementary funds to support research-oriented events and other activities that align with AFFECT’s mission. We received a total of 23 funding proposals. We funded six proposals this year. We ensured that each funded proposal provided programming for all genders and used inclusive language in its materials.
With generous support from the Journal of Financial Economics, AFFECT has supported three research proposals: “Media coverage of female researchers in Financial Economics”, “The Diversity of Conference Presenters in Virtual and In-Person Conferences,” and “Showing Emotions in Academic: What is the Cost and Who Can Afford It”. The first project has been completed, and the resulting dataset has been made publicly available. The second project has completed data collection and a finalized data description paper. A research paper using the data is currently in development. The data manual will be made available on the AFA AFFECT website. The third project has provided a pre-release draft paper and initial data file, with final data and completed data manual expected to be made public in March 2026 on the AFA AFFECT website.
AFFECT Data and Drinks reception was held on January 3, 2025 in San Francisco. The event was well attended. We showed results from our demographic survey and summarized events and core initiatives that took place in 2024. Plans for 2025 activities were also presented. We thank Cornerstone Research for their generous support. Kristin Feitzinger, Senior Vice President at Cornerstone Research presented.
The next AFFECT Data and Drinks reception is scheduled for January 3, 2026. Cornerstone Research is the generous and supportive sponsor of the event. Julia Reynolds, Senior Economist at Cornerstone, will represent Cornerstone Research at the event. During this event, two of the authors of the research proposals discussed above will briefly present their findings.
In January 2026, the AFFECT committee will welcome two new members: Nadya Malenko (Boston College) and Bernadette Minton (Ohio State) and say goodbye to two members: Anna Pavlova and Kelly Shue, who will both join the Advisory Board.
Anna Pavlova and Kelly Shue will join the Advisory Board in 2026, while Brad Barber, Wei Jiang, and Heather Tookes will finish their terms on the Advisory Board. We are very grateful for their support over the past several years.
Our Director of Mentoring, Veronika K Pool, will finish her two-year tenure in the role. Audra Boone will be the new Director of Mentoring starting in January 2026 for a two-year term.
Over the past year, Ayako Yasuda served on the AFA Climate Survey Committee, Ayako Yasuda and Laura Field served as committee members of CORD, and Kelly Shue served on the AFA Board of Directors.