Dr. Kristle Cortés is an Associate Professor in the School of Banking and Finance at the UNSW Business School. Her research interests include financial intermediation, empirical corporate finance, entrepreneurial finance, and the structure, optimization, and regulatory practices of the financial services industry.

She is the co-founder and co-director of the RISE Finance Lab (Responsible, Impactful, Sustainable, and Ethical Finance), which aims to harness finance as a force for positive social and environmental change. Through RISE, Dr. Cortés leads interdisciplinary research and policy engagement focused on climate risk, affordable housing, financial literacy, and harm reduction in financial decision-making.

Dr. Cortés previously worked for the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland where, in addition to her research, she took part in the Federal Open Market Committee process. Her work has been published in the Journal of Financial Economics, The Review of Economics and Statistics, and The Review of Corporate Finance Studies. She holds a PhD in Finance from Boston College and a BA in Economics and Philosophy from Northwestern University.