Bio
After receiving his BS in engineering with honors from Stanford, Professor McDonald began his career as an engineer at Hewlett-Packard Company. He received his MBA at Stanford in 1962, and served as Lieutenant, platoon leader, in the U.S. Army 25th Infantry Division, 1962-1964. After working as an analyst for a year, he returned to Stanford in 1965 and completed his PhD in 1967. He started his teaching career as Fulbright scholar and assistant professor of finance at the French business school, Ecole des Hautes Etudes Commerciales (Ecole HEC) in Paris, 1967-1968.
In 1968 he joined the faculty of the Stanford Business School as assistant professor of finance. In 1974-75 he was promoted to full professor with tenure. In 1978 Professor McDonald was awarded his first endowed chair by Dean Arjay Miller, and in 1987 he was awarded his second endowed chair by Dean Bob Jaedicke-the IBJ Professorship, a chair which he held until 2004 when he was awarded this third and final chair, the Stanford Investors Professorship, by Dean Bob Joss. Upon Professor McDonald’s retirement, for which there are no plans, the Stanford Investors Chair, made possible by the generous gifts of Jack’s former students and friends, will be renamed the John G. McDonald Professorship.
Professor McDonald has been a visiting professor at the University of Paris, at Columbia University in New York City, and at Harvard Business School. From 1969-1983, he was director of the Investment Management Program held each summer at Stanford for 60 investment professionals, corporate pension plans sponsors, and other institutional investors. He has also taught for many years in the Stanford Executive Program, the Stanford Financial Management Program, the Stanford-INSEAD Executive Program near Paris, the Stanford-Singapore Executive Program in Singapore, and the Credit and Financial Management Program held at London Business School. He served for six years on the Harvard Overseers’ Visiting Committee of the Harvard Business School, two terms of three years each, 1994-2000.
2012 marks Professor McDonald’s 45th year at Stanford GSB teaching Investment Management and Entrepreneurial Finance, a course on fundamental investing in public and private equity markets, for second-year MBA students at Stanford. He also teaches Private Equity Investing and Venture Capital as well as an Investment Seminar which he first introduced in the late 1960s at Stanford.
From 1987 to 1990, Professor McDonald represented the public interest on the Board of Governors of the National Association of Securities Dealers in Washington, D.C., he was the first professor to serve as vice chairman of the NASD/NASDAQ stock market from 1989 to 1990, and he was chairman of the International Advisory Committee from 1990 to 1991, in the period when Rule 144a was developed in cooperation with the SEC, enabling companies and qualified investors to issue and trade certain equity and debt securities without SEC registration.