Faculty
Robert C. Pozen is currently a Senior Lecturer at MIT Sloan School of Management and a non-resident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution.
In 2012, he won acclaim for a popular book entitled Extreme Productivity: Boost Your Results, Reduce Your Hours. In the Spring of 2021, he will be publishing a new book on productivity when working remotely, entitled, Remote Inc.: How to Thrive at Work…Wherever You Are.
In 2004, Bob became the executive chairman of MFS Investment Management, which now manages over $400 billion for mutual funds and pension plans. Between 2004 and 2011, MFS’s assets under management nearly tripled from a base of $130 billion.
During his distinguished career, Bob has been active in business, government and academia. Prior to joining MFS, he was vice chairman of Fidelity Investments and president of Fidelity Management & Research Company. During Bob’s five years as president, Fidelity’s assets increased from $500 billion to $900 billion.
In late 2001 and 2002, Bob served on President Bush’s Commission to Strengthen Social Security, where he developed a progressive plan to make the system solvent. In 2003, Bob served as Secretary of Economic Affairs for Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney. In 2007, he served as chairman of the SEC's Committee to Improve Financial Reporting.
Bob is currently an independent director of AMC (a subsidiary of the World Bank). He previously was an independent director of Nielsen, Medtronic PLC, and BCE (the parent of Bell Canada). He also serves as chairman of the Leadership Council of the Tax Policy Center, chairman of the Advisory Board of Agility (an outsourced CIO), trustee of the IFRS Foundation (international accounting), and member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
Bob frequently writes articles for the Financial Times, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and the Harvard Business Review. He has published a book on the recent financial crisis, Too Big To Save? How to Fix the US Financial System, and a guide for investors entitled The Fund Industry: How Your Money is Managed.
Bob graduated summa cum laude from Harvard College and holds a law degree from Yale Law School, where he also obtained a doctorate for a book on state enterprises in Africa. He lives in Boston with his wife of over 40 years.
Featured Publication
Extreme Productivity: Boost Your Results, Reduce Your Hours.Pozen, Robert C. New York, NY: HarperBusiness, 2012.
Featured Publication
The Fund Industry: How Your Money is Managed.Pozen, Robert C., and Theresa Hamacher. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2015.
Guest, Nicholas, S.P. Kothari, and Robert C. Pozen. The Accounting Review Vol. 97, No. 6 (2022): 297-326. SSRN Preprint.
Pozen, Robert C. CFO.com, February 1, 2022.
Pozen, Robert C. The Hill, August 6, 2021.
Pozen, Robert C. MarketWatch, July 12, 2021.
AI really can pay off. But leaders must take a systematic approach, understand how the technology works, and let their team leaders determine how it’s used.
The MIT Golub Center for Finance and Policy (GCFP) is awarding President of the Republic of Singapore Tharman Shanmugaratnam the Miriam Pozen Prize.
American target-date funds held $4.8 trillion at the end of 2025, a fifth more than a year earlier. Distinguished senior lecturer Robert Pozen has spent this year arguing that conventional advice is too timid for savers who are comfortably off. Pozen's complaint is that the glidepath turns cautious for savers who have no need of the money. Most advisors counsel a 60-40 split between shares and bonds, whereas the wealthier sort would do better holding 90% in a cheap index fund and 10% in a money market fund.
In this podcast episode, distinguished senior lecturer Robert Pozen said that investors with significant savings should eschew classic 60-40 diversification strategies for a mix that is almost entirely stocks, with no bonds at all. "The upside over the long term is tremendous for being 90-10 rather than 60-40. You ought to figure out what you really need from your investment portfolio for living expenses, and the rest going to 90-10; otherwise, you're giving up a tremendous amount of the upside," he said
"Traditionally, at age 60, target-date funds go mainly into bonds. I disagree with that strategy," said distinguished senior lecturer Robert Pozen. "People who are 60 can live to 85. People are highly likely to want to bequeath their portfolio to children — and those heirs might have 30 to 40 years until retirement. The standard practice in target-date funds is damaging to long-term investors who don't need to live off their principal immediately," he said.
Distinguished senior lecturer Robert Pozen wrote: "The National Association of Insurance Commissioners has adopted a process to allow state regulators to challenge individual ratings. It's also developing a due-diligence framework to assess whether private ratings are mapped appropriately to regulatory risk categories. A simpler and more effective solution would be for state insurance regulators to mandate public disclosure of all ratings of private credit, along with explanations on how they were determined."
This productivity course is designed to help enhance your leadership and communication skills in any setting. You will also learn practical digital and AI techniques that can help you manage your career, organize complex projects, and support your team with greater clarity and speed.
