January 2007
Biographical Summary

Dr. Gavin Clarkson is an assistant professor in the School of Information at the University of Michigan. He also has simultaneous appointments at the Law School and in Native American Studies.

Dr. Clarkson holds both a bachelor's degree and an MBA from Rice University, a doctorate from the Harvard Business School in Technology and Operations Management, and is a cum laude graduate of the Harvard Law School, where he was the managing editor of the Harvard Journal of Law and Technology and president of the Native American Law Students Association.

Dr. Clarkson was on the Computer Science faculty at Rice University from 1991 until 1998 and was a KPMG Fellow at the Harvard Business School from 1998 until 2003. While at Harvard he was also the John M. Olin Research Fellow in Law, Economics, and Business, the Reginald F. Lewis Fellow for Law Teaching, and held a university-wide fellowship, the 1665 Harvard University Native American Program Fellowship. Dr. Clarkson joined the faculty at the University of Michigan in 2003, where he conducts research in two distinct areas: intellectual property management and tribal economic development, including tribal access to capital markets and the determinants of success for tribal entrepreneurship. In 2005, he received the first ever grant from the National Science Foundation to study the dynamics of tribal finance.

An enrolled member of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, Dr. Clarkson has consulted, written, and published extensively on tribal sovereignty, tribal governance and court systems, tribal economic development, and tribal asset management, and has conducted extensive research on the empirical data underlying the American Indian mascot controversy. Dr. Clarkson was also a contributing author for the most recent edition Felix Cohen’s Handbook of Federal Indian Law, providing material on tribal finance, tribal corporations, economic development, and intellectual property.  In May of 2006, Dr. Clarkson testified before the Senate Finance Committee regarding his research that has demonstrated statutory and regulatory discrimination against tribal governments in terms of capital market access.

Dr. Clarkson holds the Series 7, Series 24, and Series 66 Securities licenses from the National Association of Securities Dealers (NASD).