Hometown, State, Province, Country: Mataro, Barcelona, Spain 

Previous Academic Institution or Company: Carnegie Mellon University 

What area of business and business education most inspires you? 

I am most inspired by financial reporting, managerial decision making and incentives, auditing and the banking industry. 

Can you share a story from the classroom that illustrates how you were able to connect with a student, or a time when you learned something impactful from a student(s)? 

I enjoy using several teaching methods in my courses. For instance, I use simulations in class to facilitate learning through experience. Students often have a lot of fun and obtain deeper insights with simulations.  

Why did you choose to join the Fisher faculty? 

I joined Fisher College of Business because of the high quality of its faculty. For instance, many of the faculty members in the accounting department are among the very top researchers in the field. 

Please share some professional awards/accolades/recognition of which you are proud: 

I obtained a teaching award at the University of Texas at Austin; I was a three-time finalist for the teaching award at the Tepper School of Business, and two of my PhD students have won best dissertation awards.  

Tell us about some of your hobbies and interests. 

I enjoy drawing, painting, gardening and scuba diving. 

Hometown, State, Province, Country: Spring Hill, Florida 

Previous Academic Institution or Company: Texas A&M University 

What area of business and business education most inspires you? 

Financial accounting and taxation most inspire me. 

Can you share a story from the classroom that illustrates how you were able to connect with a student, or a time when you learned something impactful from a student(s)? 

After handing back one of the exams in a class I taught during my PhD program in which students did relatively poorly, I realized that many of the students looked discouraged and disengaged. Instead of immediately jumping into new material, I decided to take a few minutes of class time to play a YouTube video for the class in hopes of encouraging the students to keep going. In this video, a family of ducks is walking across a courtyard when a strong wind blows all of the ducks across the courtyard. However, once the wind passes, each duck stands up and continues on their path.

At the end of the video, I reminded my students that although the test may have made them feel like one of the ducks being blown around by the wind, the most important thing they could do is to get up, brush themselves off and finish the semester strong. Many of the students who looked like they were ready to give up before I showed the video looked encouraged and reinvigorated after it.  

Why did you choose to join the Fisher faculty? 

I chose Fisher for the strength, depth and breadth of its accounting faculty as well as for the strong reputation of the accounting program and culture of the department. Since interviewing and ultimately starting this summer, I have been consistently impressed by how collegial, productive and helpful the accounting faculty is, and I feel very blessed to have found such a great place to start my academic career. 

Please share some professional awards/accolades/recognition of which you are proud: 

I was a recipient of the 2019 Deloitte Foundation Doctoral Fellowship, the Texas A&M University Community of Scholars Unsung Hero Award and was named a 2018 AAA/Deloitte Foundation/J. Michael Cook Doctoral Consortium Fellow. 

Tell us about some of your hobbies and interests. 

In my spare time, I enjoy sports, reading and playing with my whippet-pointer mix, Annie. 

Please share a fun fact about yourself. 

I have an identical twin sister who hates accounting.  

Hometown, State, Province, Country: Ojai, California 

Previous Academic Institution or Company: Cardinal Health 

What area of business and business education most inspires you? 

I am most inspired by accounting and tax education in a digital world. 

Can you share a story from the classroom that illustrates how you were able to connect with a student, or a time when you learned something impactful from a student(s)? 

Last semester I had a Chinese student who was literally in tears at the beginning of the semester. We had constructive discussions during office hours. She took advantage of these office hours and review sessions and, through hard work and diligence, passed the course with an A-.  It reinforced for me the importance of reaching out to students on an individual basis. 

Why did you choose to join the Fisher faculty? 

I knew individuals on the faculty, had collaborated with the university and had a desire to be associated with a highly ranked accounting program. 

Please share some professional awards/accolades/recognition of which you are proud: 

During my tenure at Cardinal Health, we established a unique accounting internship called the Student Tax Experience Program. This was a collaboration among students, industry and academia that provided a strong experiential learning program for accounting and finance majors. 

Tell us about some of your hobbies and interests. 

I love to fish, boat, wakeboard and hike. I am an outdoors junkie. I am also an avid cyclist (both road and mountain bike). 

Please share a fun fact about yourself. 

I play the violin. 

Hometown, State, Province, Country: Columbus, Ohio 

Previous Academic Institution or Company: Capital University 

What area of business and business education most inspires you? 

Marketing is my true passion and, within marketing specifically, I am most inspired by brand management and consumer behavior. Understanding a consumer’s mindset from the moment they wake up in the morning until the moment they go to bed and how that contributes to their purchasing patterns is fascinating to me. In my professional experience, this information is critical to running a successful and profitable business.  

Can you share a story from the classroom that illustrates how you were able to connect with a student, or a time when you learned something impactful from a student(s)? 

My goal is to create a learning environment where my students gain real-world experiences. I work to achieve this by designing “live” client projects, introducing guest speakers and organizing visits to local companies. That said, I have learned the most from my students when we collaborate on in-class client projects.  

In the spring 2020, I partnered with Pelotonia on an in-class client project. My students were asked to deliver a promotional plan that increased the number of college students participating in Pelotonia. One of the student groups developed a promotional video that spoke directly to the target, college students, and communicated the key messages that would drive student participation. After seeing the video and the promotional plan, the Pelotonia executives said they could theoretically “launch it today” because it fit with the brand and delivered on the key objectives.  

Why did you choose to join the Fisher faculty? 

As a graduate of Fisher’s MBA program, it is nothing short of an honor to be able to work alongside the faculty that taught me. I am a Buckeye at heart, having been raised in Columbus, and I am so excited about the opportunity teach at Fisher.  

Please share some professional awards/accolades/recognition of which you are proud: 

In 2015, prior to entering higher education, I worked for Abbott Nutrition and received the TPC Award which recognizes outstanding marketers of the year. In 2011, while in the Fisher MBA program, I was the recipient of the W. Arthur Cullman MBA Marketing Fellowship.   

Tell us about some of your hobbies and interests. 

In my spare time, I enjoy playing tennis with family and friends.  

Please share a fun fact about yourself. 

I am a fourth-generation Buckeye and my husband and I met in the MBA program at Fisher. 

Hometown, State, Province, Country: Fort Worth, Texas 

Previous Academic Institution or Company: The University of Connecticut 

What area of business and business education most inspires you? 

I am fascinated by consumers and how they behave in the marketplace. We're all consumers at some point, so learning about consumers is an exercise in self-discovery, too! 

Can you share a story from the classroom that illustrates how you were able to connect with a student, or a time when you learned something impactful from a student(s)? 

I had "that student" who sits in the back of class and never participates. He was not disruptive in any way but just seemed checked out. I remember thinking, "Well, you're not going to reach EVERYONE," and essentially writing said student off as apathetic. Near the end of the semester, the student showed up in my office and started talking about setting up a panel discussion on women's equality in sports and entertainment. A ton of work all on his own because of something he cared about. I was blown away by his zeal and passion. It was a great reminder that in every student there is some fire waiting to be lit. 

Why did you choose to join the Fisher faculty? 

There are a ton of different minds in the classroom at Ohio State. Some are new and nervous; some are smarter than I am. Teaching at Fisher is a new challenge each semester, and it keeps me on my toes. 

Please share some professional awards/accolades/recognition of which you are proud 

I am a Second-year Transformational Experience Program (STEP) mentor here at Ohio State.  

Tell us about some of your hobbies and interests. 

I love to travel and experience different cultures. I am also an active board member of the Hilliard Arts Council, which is dedicated to the promotion of arts and arts education. In my spare time, I love to read westerns and build furniture in my wood shop. 

Please share a fun fact about yourself. 

My favorite cartoon character is the Pink Panther. 

Hometown, State, Province, Country: Beijing, China 

Previous Academic Institution or Company: University of Maryland 

What area of business and business education most inspires you? 

My research and teaching are inspired by the dynamic environment of the retail industry. Driven by the evolving needs of consumers, the rapidly changing landscape of retail continuously presents new opportunities and challenges to all aspects of firm operations — from marketing to inventory management and logistics coordination. I truly enjoy working in this area, as I can always connect my research with my daily experience. I am also passionate about sharing my research findings with industry practitioners to help them better understand their operations while gathering feedback at the same time. 

Can you share a story from the classroom that illustrates how you were able to connect with a student, or a time when you learned something impactful from a student(s)? 

I find experiential learning to be a useful method to enhance students’ understanding of abstract concepts. For example, I taught enterprise resource planning in a simulated business environment and built in a business intelligence tool so that students could analyze their results. Usually, I do not need to check my watch for the end of class because students start to pack, but for that session, we ran five minutes over and nobody even realized it was the end of class. That was one moment in my teaching experience that truly made me feel the magic of experiential learning.  

Why did you choose to join the Fisher faculty? 

Fisher is a well-known hub for prestigious scholars who conduct cutting-edge and impactful research. It also offers a friendly and supportive culture that I have experienced since my campus visit. Moreover, my colleagues and I share common research interests that I am eager to collaborate on. I am very excited and proud to be a part of Fisher and look forward to contributing to its growth. 

Please share some professional awards/accolades/recognition of which you are proud: 

I am the recipient of the 2019-2020 Ann G. Wylie Dissertation Award and was a 2019 finalist for the Three-Minute Thesis (3MT) Competition. I also won several academic achievement awards during my master’s and bachelor’s degrees. 

Tell us about some of your hobbies and interests. 

I have been playing piano since I was 5, and my favorite composer is Joseph Haydn. I also enjoy reading and traveling. 

Please share a fun fact about yourself. 

I enjoy gardening and keep over 20 plants of all kinds at home. 

Hometown, State, Province, Country: Seoul, South Korea 

Previous Academic Institution or Company: Michigan State University 

What area of business and business education most inspires you? 

As a management researcher, I feel inspired by and strive to be keenly aware of emerging issues in contemporary business worlds. I feel responsible for providing evidence-based recommendations to the problems that practitioners encounter in the workplace while also contributing to management theory. As a teacher, I source and build the foundation of my classes on research, and it is my hope that I can help students generate an evidence-based understanding of managerial practices. 

Can you share a story from the classroom that illustrates how you were able to connect with a student, or a time when you learned something impactful from a student(s)? 

In my leadership course last semester, students were asked to find issues real-world managers were facing and present as groups their suggestions for addressing these issues. However, the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic made it difficult for students to have face-to-face meetings and interviews with managers as part of their group projects. Thus, I shifted the focus of the group projects and asked students to find leaders that they consider inspiring and effective in dealing with the pandemic. Students shared their findings about a variety of business and societal leaders. Some of my students even talked about their friends who are volunteering to provide support for local communities and hospitals.

My students shared their own actions to help others who are in need due to this pandemic. Having an opportunity to listen to these stories greatly helped all of us feel more encouraged and inspired despite the sudden changes in our work and life.  

Why did you choose to join the Fisher faculty? 

I chose to join the Fisher faculty because of its excellence in research and teaching. In particular, I study leadership and I had a great interest in the Fisher Leadership Initiative. I was intrigued by its mission to connect leadership research to experiential leader development and practical solutions to leadership problems. As a leadership scholar, I wanted to contribute to its mission and have more opportunities to conduct high-quality research that matters. 

Please share some professional awards/accolades/recognition of which you are proud: 

During my time at Michigan State, I was the recipient of two travel awards offered by two major academic organizations in my field, The Society for Personality and Social Psychology (SPSP) and The Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology (SIOP). I was also the recipient of two Best Student Paper awards offered by the POSCO Research Institute and the Human Capital Corporate Panel Academic Conference. 

Tell us about some of your hobbies and interests. 

I like traveling and music. Whenever I have free time, I travel to different places (locally and internationally) and check out music concerts happening nearby.  

Please share a fun fact about yourself. 

I have a bus driver’s license. I served in the Korean Army for two years and worked as a bus driver. 

Hometown, State, Province, Country: Greece 

Previous Academic Institution or Company: Indiana University 

What area of business and business education most inspires you? 

As a researcher, I am intrigued by challenges faced by nonprofits: they strive to stay viable while tackling complex problems (i.e. hunger and poverty elimination) with multiple stakeholders (beneficiaries and donors), in unique operating environments (i.e. natural disasters and armed conflicts). Therefore, nonprofits need to keep a delicate balance: they need to use resources (cash, goods and people) efficiently with the end goal of their operations being efficiency, effectiveness and equity. In this context, nonprofit managers can better assess the impact of their decisions by more extensive use of operations management theory and applications. This led to my decision to become an expert in nonprofit operations management. 

Can you share a story from the classroom that illustrates how you were able to connect with a student, or a time when you learned something impactful from a student(s)? 

I strive to use technology to help students prepare for the lecture before we work on applications in class. For example, to teach the critical path method in project management, I designed a flipped classroom where students first watched a Zoom lecture explaining all the main concepts. Then we applied these concepts in class using the example of the delayed construction of Interstate 69.  

“Without your teaching, I wouldn't have been able to hold a conversation about the critical path and its role in project management that was essential during my interview for a functional consultant at Oracle,” one student noted. Also, because of the increased demand for business analytics in the job market, I have created an assignment that requires my students to use time-series analyses to forecast future population displacement using publicly available data from the Norwegian Refugee Council. This assignment gives my students exposure to my own research stream, so it is a win-win situation for me! 

Why did you choose to join the Fisher faculty? 

I believe that it's the right step for my academic career to join Ohio State because of the high-quality research produced by its faculty, the involvement with the local for-profit and nonprofit organizations, and the memorable in-class experiences for its students. The faculty in the Department of Management Sciences are thought leaders in supply chain management and sustainable operations. Therefore, it is with great excitement that I can learn from them and complement the department's focus with my research portfolio on nonprofit operations management. Also, the Center for Operational Excellence is a promising avenue for me to partner with nonprofits and collaborate with other scholars and experts on their fields. I am eagerly looking to continue my career as an assistant professor at Fisher. 

Please share some professional awards/accolades/recognition of which you are proud: 

On the research front, I have received multiple Doctoral Student Research Productivity awards from Indiana University. On the teaching front, I was a finalist for the Panschar Associate Instructor Award of the Operations and Decision Technologies Department at Indiana. I am proud to have received a Hellenes Scholarship from the Onassis Foundation in Greece, which was instrumental for me in my pursuit of a PhD degree. Earlier, I was awarded the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) Bursary by the School of Mathematics from the University of Edinburgh that financed my tuition during my MSc degree in operations research with computational optimization.  

Tell us about some of your hobbies and interests. 

In my personal time, I love reading non-fiction, listening to podcasts and doing yoga at dawn. When my extrovert-self kicks in, I enjoy dancing swing and salsa, playing tennis and going to the movie theater.  

Please share a fun fact about yourself. 

I have lived in four countries (Greece, UK, France and the U.S.) on two continents. Apart from Greek, I speak four languages (English, French, Spanish and Arabic) which motivated me to visit many more countries as a tourist. Some useful advice I have for fellow travelers are to avoid riding the last camel in a caravan and avoid taking an overnight train across the Balkans!