Short-Term Moves, Long-Term Vision

Story by Suzi Morales
Photography by John Madere

Inspired by a Tepper School professor, alumnus Cevdet Aydemir (Ph.D. 2005) navigates the fast-paced world of Wall Street with an eye on the future.

Combining the scholarly perspective of a Ph.D. in finance with the pragmatic view of a career on Wall Street, Cevdet Aydemir (Ph.D. 2005) has a knack for blending short-term decision-making with big-picture thinking.

“Based on my experience, while many individuals with similar backgrounds are adept at strategic, long-term problem solving, few possess the ability to address short-term challenges with both efficiency and precision,” said Aydemir, the global head of portfolio research and enterprise risk for Millennium Management.

An Unlikely Background

Growing up in Istanbul, Turkey, Aydemir earned an undergraduate degree in electrical engineering, which did not seem like the right fit. Turkey deregulated its financial markets in the late 1980s, leading banks to recruit new talent, including engineers, throughout the 1990s.

Amid the instability of the Turkish market, impacted by the Gulf War in 1990 and the Asian financial crisis later that decade, Aydemir decided to pursue a finance degree in the United States, starting the Ph.D. program at the Tepper School of Business in 2000.

A Professor’s Inspiration

Aydemir’s favorite professor was Richard (Rick) Green. He appreciated Green’s approach to both life and work. “He would always sit back and analyze the situation in a very rational way, evaluate the players in the picture, and he would form well-reasoned assessments,” Aydemir said.

Aydemir considered a career in academia, but the financial boom of the early 2000s drew him to Wall Street. He weathered the 2008 financial crisis and the closure of Lehman Brothers, where he worked after graduation.

Since 2012, Aydemir has led portfolio research at Millennium, a global asset firm that manages $75 billion in assets. He is also head of enterprise risk, which holistically assesses the risks over an entire organization. His research background and Professor Green’s lessons in rational problem solving have served Aydemir well. “In the highly dynamic environment of financial markets, precise and established solutions are seldom available at the inception of a new initiative. The ability to deliver rapid, approximate assessments and take decisive early action not only creates immediate value but also paves the way toward a structured and enduring strategic outcome,” he said.

Giving Back

About ten years ago, Aydemir created the Aydemir Family Summer Paper Prize in Memory of Rick Green. Not long after, Green received a cancer diagnosis and later passed away. Aydemir had appreciated the chance to reconnect with Green and honor him in his lifetime.

“I still try to follow his academic and rational thinking process,” he said. “It helps step away from the noise, think about the big picture, and understand the deeper structure of the problem.”

Along with earning a degree at Carnegie Mellon, Aydemir also met his wife, a Ph.D. student in biology at the time. One of Aydemir’s daughters is beginning her college search, and when asked whether she might follow in her parents’ footsteps to Carnegie Mellon, he said, “Both my girls know that their parents are from Carnegie Mellon, and we had a great experience there. My 17-year-old is going to apply next year to colleges, and Carnegie Mellon is definitely on the list.”

No matter where she goes, Aydemir has advice for her and other students based on the big-picture thinking and reasoning he learned from Green. While his life could have followed a different path, he took the information available and made a decision. “You end up at a crossroads at many different points in life, and you have to make a call with very incomplete information and a highly uncertain future,” he said.

Ultimately, “Life is a process with many unknowns, and I learned to appreciate all of those.”