K.C. Ma received his M.B.A. and Ph.D. in Finance from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1983. Currently, he is the Mary Ball Washington/Switzer Bros. Endowed Professor of Finance at the University of West Florida. Dr. Ma is a Charted Financial Analyst, he is the Editor of International Journal of Business, the President of KCM Asset Management, KCM Capital, and KCM Analytics.

Dr. Ma specializes in equity valuations, quantitative modeling, and most recently, social value investing. He has published more than 80 refereed articles and was ranked the top 50 finance authors. Dr. Ma is also a money manager and has worked at Investment Research Company Chicago, Ned Davis Research, and George Weiss Associates between 1990 and 2001. His investment company, KCM Asset Management, has been the managers for many top ranked hedge funds.

For the last 15 years, under his capacity, the student-managed portfolios were able to secure 15 Champions and 4 Second-Place Awards for actual stock & bond portfolio performances in the national R.I.S.E Competitions. Dr. Ma has received awards in: Award of Alumni Graduate Fellowship of College of Business Administration, Texas Tech University, 1989, The Best Paper Award in the Futures and Options Category, with Richard Peterson and Wenchi Kao, 1990, Financial Management Association, A project on high-yield bond market is sponsored by Salomon Brothers, The Rushing Distinguished Faculty Research Award Nominee, College of Business Administration, 1990, 2008 SOBA Service Award, Stetson University, among many others.