Written by Brad Seehausen
Marketing and Communications Intern, Lacy School of Business ’26
Is your equity valuation professor a pro piano player and published author?
Probably not. But if you’ve ever had Dr. Tom Hanson, you know he’s not your average finance professor.
From working as a tour guide and playing piano, to now teaching future finance professionals how to analyze macroeconomic trends through spreadsheets and Wall Street, his path has been anything but ordinary.
Dr. Hanson, an Associate Professor of Finance at the Lacy School of Business, also serves as Faculty Director of Bulldog Reports and advisor to the Financial Management Association (FMA). He maintains a busy schedule centered around the financial world, but his journey did not start here.
“I came to finance through a very non-traditional route,” Dr. Hanson says. “As an undergrad, I was primarily a math major, but I was also playing piano many hours a week.” When he graduated, Dr. Hanson worked as an accompanist and tour guide while running a theater company and teaching at a high school.
After several years of a gig lifestyle, he decided it was time for a new challenge.
“I eventually decided to use my math degree and got a job at the investment bank Piper Jaffray in Minneapolis,” Dr. Hanson offers, “They were very committed to my professional development. So that’s where I started my journey on the CFA.”
After earning a CFA, MBA, MS, and a PhD, Dr. Hanson’s found his niche in equity research: a field that combines analytical rigor with intellectual curiosity.
“In equity research, you get to be creative and do math at the same time. You ask ‘How do we marry together the quantifiable data and Excel spreadsheets with really understanding a business and trying to predict the future and understand the macroeconomy?’” Dr. Hanson shares.
That passion for equity research inspired Bulldog Reports, a program where Lacy students analyze small- and mid-cap publicly traded Midwest companies and publish professional-quality equity research reports. For Dr. Hanson, having Lacy students gain this real-world experience is one of his top priorities.
“We get to sit down with students and teach them the theory, the spreadsheets, and the data used to predict trends,” Dr. Hanson says. “But then we also get to visit companies, talk with people, interact with their products, and see what’s really happening in the business.”
Dr. Hanson’s passions for finance and education are palpable. In addition to lecturing in data science and equity valuation, he has led students to New York City on the annual Wall Street Trek as well as across the pond as a faculty member of Leadership London.
Beyond the classroom, Dr. Hanson also serves as faculty advisor for Butler’s Financial Management Association (FMA), a chapter recognized nationally as a Superior Chapter. However, he attributes the success of the chapter to LSB students.
“It’s always fantastic to work with Butler students. The ones that I work with are some of the most motivated. They want a leadership role. They want to create something new. They’ve got big dreams,” Dr. Hanson highlights. “I love getting to enable that. They always surprise me with really creative ideas.”
Dr. Hanson’s commitment to research extends well beyond his own graduate studies. In his time, he has co-authored several student-led research papers, along with co-authoring the book Quantitative Research Methods in Translation and Interpreting Studies with Dr. Christopher D. Mellinger, professor at University of North Carolina at Charlotte.
“I teach courses related to research methods in translation and interpreting, communication studies, business analytics, and many others. Because I’ve got this toolkit of statistics that everybody needs, and the book is that side of my work. My goal is to help teach other people how to use this toolkit wherever their disciplinary home is,” Dr. Hanson says.
His most recent research focus? Financial literacy.
“I just published a paper recently on digital financial literacy in the age of AI,” Dr. Hanson comments on his article, Trust in Financial Technology: The Role of Financial Literacy, Digital Financial Literacy, Technological Literacy, and Trust in Artificial Intelligence, coauthored with Lacy alum Caleb Ott ’26. “The reality of it was very sobering because it found that people use financial technology because they like computers and they like AI and not because they understand anything about finance. That is one of several research projects that I’ve done around how we can improve people’s understanding of finance so that they have better, more successful lives.”
Life isn’t all finance and equity research for Dr. Hanson. In his free time, he enjoys traveling, including hiking the Camino de Santiago in Spain last year, as well as cycling and the creative arts. Even during the summer, Dr. Hanson’s passions for finance and research follow him.
“At the moment, I have a couple of research projects I’m really excited about. It’s probably the dorkiest thing ever, but I’m really looking forward to reading and writing this summer and just having time to do some deep dives into projects,” Dr. Hanson adds.
For all of his accomplishments, the most rewarding part of Dr. Hanson’s work remains seeing former students succeed.
“I’m incredibly proud that when I take students on career exploration trips now, we visit a lot of my former students. I’m proud of their accomplishments, and that I have played at least some small role in where they ended up. I love seeing those generations of students building on one another. It’s one of the great things about teaching at Butler.”