James Kwak is best known as co-founder, in September, 2008, with Simon Johnson

Simon Johnson (economist)

Simon Johnson is a British American economist. He is the 'Ronald A. Kurtz Professor of Entrepreneurship at the MIT Sloan School of Management and a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. He has held a wide variety of academic and policy-related positions, including...

 of The Baseline Scenario a commentary on the global financial crisis, mostly focused on the situation in the USA. Kwak received his A.B. from Harvard University

Harvard University

Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...

 and his Ph.D. in French intellectual history from the University of California, Berkeley

University of California, Berkeley

The University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...

 (1997.)

He has worked as a consultant for McKinsey & Company

McKinsey & Company

McKinsey & Company, Inc. is a global management consulting firm that focuses on solving issues of concern to senior management. McKinsey serves as an adviser to many businesses, governments, and institutions...

 and later was Director of Product Marketing at Ariba

Ariba

Ariba is a software and information technology services company located in Sunnyvale, California.- Early life :Ariba was founded in 1996 by Bobby Lent, Boris Putanec, Paul Touw, Rob Desantis, Ed Kinsey, Paul Hegarty, and Keith Krach on the idea of using the Internet to enable companies to...

, where he led product strategy and marketing for the Platform Solutions division and the Ariba Network. He was a co-founder of Guidewire Software

Guidewire Software

Guidewire Software Inc., commonly just Guidewire, is a privately-held American corporation based in San Mateo, California. It offers core backend systems for property and casualty insurance carriers in the U.S...

, an independent software vendor for the property & casualty insurance industry.

He is author, with Simon Johnson, of the 2010 book 13 Bankers: The Wall Street Takeover and the Next Financial Meltdown (ISBN 978-0307379054).