Stephanie Yates

Stephanie Yates is an associate professor of accounting and finance and chair of the Department of Accounting and Finance at UAB’s Collat School of Business; she was the first African-American woman to join the full-time faculty in the school. She describes the income inequality that persists in former slave-holding states in the South today (the widening income gap, with extreme wealth on one end and extreme poverty on the other) and the ways in which the established business culture perpetuates poverty in disadvantaged groups. One of her focus areas is financial literacy as a tool for further empowering African Americans in Alabama; she teaches financial literacy to disadvantaged youth and works with the Innovate Birmingham Workforce Partnership to train local youths for high-tech jobs.