Dr. Paglia, a former Julian Virtue and Denney Professorship recipient, is an associate professor of finance at the Graziadio School of Business and Management at Pepperdine University and directs the Pepperdine Private Capital Markets Project. He has a dozen years of university teaching experience in finance, has performed business valuations for privately-held companies, and has testified on economic damage and valuation matters.

Since 2007, his work on the Pepperdine Private Capital Markets Project-- the first simultaneous, comprehensive, and on-going investigation of the major private capital market segments—which includes cost of capital studies, economic forecasts, and a new monthly private capital access (PCA) index, has resulted in over 30,000 report downloads in more than 75 countries and has earned him the 2011 "George Award," which is given to the one faculty member who best leverages connections with the business community to make a difference in the classroom. He was also awarded the inaugural "Tom Hopkins Award for Excellence in M&A" in 2011 by the Association for Corporate Growth (ACG) and the "Third Annual Middle Market Thought Leader Award" in 2012 by Grant Thornton and The Alliance for Mergers & Acquisitions Advisors (AM&AA) for his groundbreaking research on the private capital markets.

He is a frequent speaker on the topics of privately-held company cost of capital, valuation, access to capital, and financing and deal trends at valuation and M&A conferences pertaining to small businesses and middle market companies. In addition to authoring eight Pepperdine Private Capital Markets Project reports, his other research addresses financial contracting characteristics, discounts for lack of marketability (liquidity), the private cost of capital model, and financing choices for privately-held companies. His work has been published in a number of journals including Journal of Entrepreneurial Finance, Journal of Business Valuation and Economic Loss Analysis, Business Valuation Review, The Value Examiner, Journal of Wealth Management, The RMA Journal, Graziadio Business Review, and others.

Dr. Paglia's research has been covered in The Wall Street Journal, CNBC, USA Today, Businessweek, TIME, Bloomberg, Reuters, Inc., Forbes, Entrepreneur, MSNBC, ABC News, Huffington Post, Crains New York, The Los Angeles Times, and The New York Times, among others. Dr. Paglia holds a Ph.D. in finance, an MBA, a B.S. in finance, and is a Certified Public Accountant (CPA) and Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) Charterholder.