Eric Sussman

Biography

Accepting an offer to teach as a means of earning some additional income may have been one of Eric Sussman’s more auspicious decisions. Currently an adjunct professor in accounting and real estate at UCLA Anderson, Sussman first taught a certified public accountant exam review course after graduating from Stanford’s Graduate School of Business and accepting a position with a small real estate investment firm. It was a role he thoroughly enjoyed. So, when he was first offered a lecturer’s position at Anderson by his mentor and former teacher, David Ravetch, he jumped at the opportunity.

Since 1995, he has been teaching courses in the areas of cost/managerial accounting, financial accounting, financial statement analysis, equity valuation, corporate financial reporting and real estate investment and finance to undergraduate, graduate and Executive Education students. In addition, he has advised numerous MBA and Fully Employed MBA field study teams and led student travel groups to Brazil, China, Dubai, Saudi Arabia and Abu Dhabi. He has also served as a guest lecturer at UC Berkeley, George Washington University and the Helsinki School of Economics, and created a series on accounting and finance for the Great Courses (the Teaching Company).

Throughout his teaching career, Sussman has remained active in the real estate industry. He is president of Amber Capital Inc., manager of Fountain Management LLC and Clear Capital LLC, and managing partner of Sequoia Real Estate Partners and the Pacific Value Opportunities and Clear Opportunity Funds, which have acquired, rehabilitated, developed and managed more than two million square feet of residential and commercial real estate in the past 20 years. The firms’ portfolio at present consists of industrial, multifamily and single-family residential, and retail properties.

He is also chairman of the board of trustees of Causeway Capital’s group of funds (international value, emerging markets, global value, global absolute return funds, and international small cap), which collectively have more than $9 billion in assets. He sits on the board of Pacific Charter School Development Inc. and was former chairman of the Presidio Fund and former audit committee chair of Atlantic Inertial Systems Inc., a producer and manufacturer of electromagnetic sensors.

As an aside, he created Insight FSA™, an analytical software tool that automatically and critically measures, evaluates and reports upon the financial accounting and corporate reporting risk for public companies via EDGAR Online.

With his wide range of expertise, Sussman has consulted for large and small firms, nationally and globally, and is a frequent lecturer on varied financial, accounting and corporate reporting topics. He has served as an expert witness and consultant for commercial litigation, involving matters of corporate financial reporting and disclosure, audit effectiveness, valuation, real estate due diligence and related practices, and overall damage analyses. He is a licensed CPA in the State of California.

Sussman relies on his real-world experiences to make his classes relatable and exciting, aspects that are not lost on the students as well as faculty. He is an eight-time winner of the MBA Teaching Excellence Award, a seven-time winner of the FEMBA Teaching Excellence Award and recipient of numerous other teaching awards and national recognitions. A little known fact: this native Californian is a third-generation UCLA graduate.

Education

MBA 1993, Stanford University

B.A. Business and Economics, 1987, UCLA