Articles
Mouth for Sale: Peter Ricchiuti, Money Man
May
14, 2006
By Kinley Levack, Successful Meetings
Originally published in May 2006 Successful Meetings magazine
Peter Ricchiuti got off to a rough start as a speaker. "The very first speech I gave was when my boss couldn't make a speech to the Rotary Club and asked me to go instead. Five minutes into the talk, a guy in the front row passed out and fell underneath the podium. What do I do? Do I go on? . . . Finally the guy was revived. Someone asked if I wanted to continue, and I thought, 'Well, I think I've lost a lot of momentum,' " Ricchiuti says, but he figured if that didn't stop him, nothing would.
Ricchiuti, a finance professor and assistant dean at Tulane University's A.B. Freeman School of Business, has spent 26 years in the financial world; he began his career in investment sales at Kidder, Peabody, & Co. in Boston, served as assistant state treasurer for Louisiana, and as the state's chief investment officer. In 1993, while teaching at Tulane, he created the Burkenroad Reports, a program in which senior-level undergraduates and MBA students research 50 publicly traded, regional companies, which Ricchiuti says are "just a little too small for Wall Street to justify learning about."
Using his background as a jumping-off point, Ricchiuti speaks to groups on "How Uncertainty Brings Opportunity," "Market Signals: What the Financial Markets Are Telling Us About the Future," and "Making Bets: What Wall Street Is Thinking About the Outlook for Your Company/Industry," among others.
"People don't want to be lectured to. They see 'Professor,' and they think that's what they're getting, but it's not that at all; I'm up there interacting with them." But how do meeting groups compare to students? "In some ways they're more fun. Students sort of have to pay attention because there's a grade at the end," says Ricchiuti. "And in teaching, you get basically the same bunch over and over, but with groups, you have to make adjustments along the way," especially since Ricchiuti's audiences have ranged from a group of 800 nuns, to the New Orleans Saints football team, to a hose and gasket association.
"Finance can be very dry. At the outset, many people would rather eat glass than sit there and listen," he admits, but finds that the magic formula is a combination of anecdotes, humor, and unbiased information. "When you're talking about money, it hits them on a personal level and it hits them on a business level. Everybody needs to know about this and they need an objective source."
The fact that Ricchiuti almost absurdly adores the topic doesn't hurt either. "I'm not faking the enthusiasm—I see a truck go by of a stock I own and I honk the horn," he says.
Contact: Julie Sloway, Prime Time Speakers Bureau, (800) 905-3233 or email julie@ primetimespeakers.com.