Dennis Yao

Yao currently serves as a Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School. In 2018, he was a contributor to Dan Koh's congressional candidacy in Massachusetts's 3rd district.

Following the inauguration of Bill Clinton as President of the United States in 1993, Yao was briefly considered for the role of FTC Chair. However, after serving three years of a seven-year term, Yao chose to resign from the FTC on September 1, 1994, in order to return to teaching at the University of Pennsylvania. In 1994, he was replaced as a member of the FTC by Christine Varney.

After working in the private sector as a product planner for Ford Motor Company, Yao would receive his PhD in economics from the Stanford Graduate School of Business in 1985.

From 1983 to 1991, Yao served in various academic capacities within the Wharton School of Business of the University of Pennsylvania. At Wharton, he developed and taught a class that focused on strategies for competition within an oligopolistic framework called “Competitive Strategy and Industrial Structure.”

Dennis Alden Yao (born August 29, 1953) is an American academic who served as a member of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) from 1991 to 1994. A member of the Democratic Party, Yao was the first Asian American to serve on the FTC and the third career economist to serve on the body, which has generally been composed of attorneys.

Dennis Alden Yao was born on August 29, 1953, in Urbana, Illinois. In 1975, he received his undergraduate (B.S.E.) degree in engineering from Princeton University. Yao went on to receive his Master of Business Administration (M.B.A.) degree from the University of California, Berkeley in 1977.