The Business of Museums

Originally from Alaska, Lawrence Motz obtained a BS in engineering from Arizona State University in 1989, an MBA from Columbia Business School in 1993, and an ALM from the Harvard Extension School in 2011. Upon graduation from business school, Motz became an institutional emerging markets bond trader and later an investment banker with Prudential Securities, PaineWebber (UBS), and finally Kaufman Brothers, a boutique investment bank specializing in telecommunications. During that time he also co-founded and served as chief financial officer of eNet China, an early online Internet retailer headquartered in Beijing.

Turning his attention to nonprofit finance and museums, Motz interned and then became an employee of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City beginning in 2009, where he held the position of asset/liability manager until 2015. During his tenure, Motz created the museum's debt policy, endowment spending policy, and successfully managed the organization's first ever long-dated taxable corporate bond offering.

Motz received two honors of distinction at Harvard University's commencement in 2012. He both served as class marshall and won the Dean's Outstanding Thesis Prize with his thesis entitled, Understanding and Developing Appropriate Museum Debt Policy: Practical Capital Structure Analysis for Museums. Motz holds the professional designation Chartered Financial Analyst and began teaching for Harvard's Museum Studies Program as an adjunct in 2015.

He currently resides in New York City with his wife of over thirty years and has three adult children.