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Experts
Robert F. Bruner
University Professor Emeritus; Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Business Administration; Dean Emeritus
Bruner is an expert on mergers and acquisitions. He’s written two books on the subject, Deals From Hell: M&A Lessons That Rise Above the Ashes and Applied Mergers and Acquisitions, which have helped countless students and business people deal with the complexity of mergers and acquisitions. His business expertise is wide-ranging; he’s well-versed in corporate finance, financial crises and bank panics, corporate valuation, enterprise leadership and management education. He is co-author of Case Studies in Finance: Managing for Corporate Value Creation, currently in its eighth edition.
Bruner comments on life, business and current events in his blog. He also tweets on his Twitter account.
B.A., Yale University; MBA, DBA, Harvard University
Robert L. Carraway
Yiorgos Allayannis Distinguished Associate Professor of Business Administration
Carraway, professor and former senior associate dean of the MBA program, is an authority on the appropriate and constructive use of quantitative analysis in making important decisions. He focuses on the relationship between intuition and rational analysis and how the two can complement one another, as well as on the role analysis can play in innovating more effectively and efficiently.
He co-authored the book Quantitative Analysis Casebook with Professors Sam Bodily and Phillip Pfeifer and Professor Emeritus Sherwood Frey, as well as authored the articles “Big Data, Small Bets” and “Meeting the Big Data Challenge: DON’T Be Objective” for the Forbes/Batten Institute series.
B.S., MBA, East Carolina University; Ph.D., Purdue University
Raul O. Chao
Oliver Wight Associate Professor of Business Administration
Chao engages in research and teaching geared toward improving how innovation and new product development processes operate. He serves as an adviser to multiple entrepreneurial ventures as well as companies such as 3M, Microsoft, Whirlpool and Lockheed Martin.
Chao’s research has been published in leading scientific journals, as well as popular business press including The Wall Street Journal and Forbes.
B.S., Johns Hopkins University; MBA, M.S., University of Miami; Ph.D., Georgia Institute of Technology
Susan Chaplinsky
Tipton R. Snavely Professor of Business Administration
Chaplinsky’s expertise is in corporate finance, private equity, capital raising, investment banking and valuation. Her research is widely cited and addresses the availability and costs of different forms of capital. One of her research specialties is PIPEs (private investments in public equities) — a method by which companies raise capital by selling their stock at a discount to private investors.
Chaplinksky is perennially recognized for her outstanding teaching — presented in 2013 with the All-University Teaching Award and voted Outstanding Professor in 2007 and faculty marshal in 1996. She wrote an article titled “Private Equity and the Public’s Right to Know” for The Washington Post/Darden “Case in Point” series, in the 14 April 2012 issue. In September 2012 she presented “Trends in the PIPE Market” at Columbia University Law School’s Center for Law and Economic Studies.
A.B., University of Illinois; MBA, Ph.D., University of Chicago
Ming-Jer Chen
Leslie E. Grayson Professor of Business Administration
Chen is a leading authority in strategic management, a field that helps companies align corporate policies and resources with strategic priorities. He is recognized for his pioneering work in competitive dynamics — how firms compete and collaborate worldwide — and ambicultural management — how to integrate the best aspects of seemingly oppositional business cultures and practices, such as Eastern and Western, or competitive and cooperative.
Chen’s corporate clients include Merck, FedEx, Rolls-Royce and Tencent. His work has been featured frequently in global media, including Forbes, The Wall Street Journal and Financial Times, and he contributes a regular column to Harvard Business Review (Chinese). Chen’s article “Becoming Ambicultural: A Personal Quest and Aspiration for Organizations,” based on his 2013 Academy of Management president’s speech, appeared in Academy of Management Review in 2014.
B.S., National Taipei University; MBA, Ph.D., University of Maryland
Yo-Jud Cheng
Assistant Professor of Business Administration
An expert in strategic leadership, Cheng’s research focuses on corporate governance and top management teams. Specifically, she studies how board directors and executives shape strategy, governance and performance through her examination of the nuances of boardroom deliberations and executives’ attributes. Her work has been featured in mainstream media outlets including The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, Fortune, CNBC and Harvard Business Review.
Prior to joining Darden’s Strategy, Ethics and Entrepreneurship area, Cheng received a Bachelor of Arts in economics from Wellesley College. She then served as an economic consultant before earning her Doctorate in Business Administration in strategy from Harvard Business School.
B.A., Wellesley College; DBA, Harvard Business School
Gaurav Chiplunkar
Assistant Professor of Business Administration
Assistant Professor Gaurav Chiplunkar is in the Global Economies and Markets area. His research interests are at the intersection of development and labor economics and examines on the one hand, how large industrial policies affect firm behavior and on the other, how frictions in the labor market constrain job search, recruitment and hiring practices by workers and firms. He also studies how policy reforms and new technologies can help mitigate these frictions.
Ph.D. in Economics, Yale.
Luca Cian
Killgallon Ohio Art Associate Professor of Business Administration
Cian’s area of marketing expertise encompasses consumer behavior and psychology, specifically as related to sensory marketing and social cognition.
His work has appeared in leading academic journals Journal of Marketing Research, Journal of Consumer Psychology and Journal of Consumer Research, and has been discussed on NPR and in other mainstream channels including The Huffington Post, New York magazine, The Atlantic and Fast Company’s Co.Design.
Before coming to Darden, Cian was a postdoctoral scholar at the University of Michigan Ross School of Business, while also serving as a marketing consultant for the Italian Environmental Protection Agency and working at the Sensory Marketing Laboratory and at the Social Cognition Laboratory.
M.S., University of Trieste; Ph.D., University of Verona (visiting at University of Michigan); Postdoc, University of Michigan
James G. Clawson
Johnson & Higgins Professor Emeritus of Business Administration
Clawson is an authority on leadership. He recently wrote books titled Level Three Leadership: Getting Below the Surface (fifth edition), Powered by Feel: How Individuals, Teams and Companies Excel (with Doug Newburg) and Balancing Your Life: Executive Lessons for Work, Family and Self. Clawson has authored more than 300 cases and technical notes.
Clawson is considered an authority in tactical and strategic leadership. He says, “leadership is about managing energy, first in yourself and then in those around you.” His expertise also spills over into fields such as managing change, career management, management development and pedagogy.
He taught at Harvard Business School, worked as a functional trainer for Mobil Oil Company in Japan and served as an international banking officer for Wells Fargo Bank before coming to Darden.
Clawson has consulted on every continent except Antarctica.
A.B., Stanford University; MBA, Brigham Young University; DBA, Harvard University
Alex Cowan
Batten Fellow and General Faculty
Cowan is an expert in digital innovation, agile and lean methodologies, and entrepreneurship. He teaches multiple courses in Darden’s Technology and Operations Management area, as well as the massive open online course specialization “Agile Development” (one of Coursera’s Top 15 specializations) and “Digital Product Management: Modern Fundamentals.”
Author of the book Starting a Tech Business: A Practical Guide for Anyone Creating or Designing Applications or Software, Cowan is also an experienced entrepreneur and intrapreneur who now divides his time between instructing, advising and consulting. He delves into venture design, his systematic approach to developing new products and businesses, on www.alexandercowan.com.
Cowan studied industrial engineering and economics at Stanford University.