Experts

Porter’s areas of expertise include forecasting, machine learning and anomaly detection, with special focus on event prediction and pattern detection. The models he’s developed have been applied to Yelp, crime and terrorism and led to a winning performance in the National Institute of Justice’s Real-Time Crime Forecasting Challenge.

Prior to his joint appointment at the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business and School of Engineering and Applied Science, Porter taught at the University of Alabama and served as a principal research scientist at Digital Globe and project engineer at Sanford/Newell Brands.

B.S., Purdue University; M.S., Vanderbilt University; Ph.D., University of Virginia

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Powell’s current academic interests are mindful communication and leadership presence. She also has expertise in leadership and management communication, corporate reputation and diversity. In addition to her roles as professor at the UVA Darden School of Business and UVA School of Nursing, she also serves as director at the University's Compassionate Care Initiative. 

Powell has authored numerous cases and is co-author of Women in Business: The Changing Face of Leadership. She is currently working on a new book — Present: Leadership as Wise Practice. She has presented her work at the Academy of Management, the Association for Business Communication, the Management Communication Association, the National Communication Association, and the Reputation Institute’s Conference on Reputation, Image, Identity, and Competitiveness conferences.

Powell has been a consultant, facilitator, instructor and coach to a number of individuals and organizations. Her clients have included the Council for Public Relations Firms, Federal Bureau of Investigation, KPMG, Lagos (Nigeria) Public Schools, National Industries for the Blind, Premier, Providian Corporation, United Technologies, University of Virginia School of Medicine and World Bank. She has taught internationally and worked with Executive MBA students from IAE Business School (Argentina), IBMEC Sao Paulo (Brazil) and the Stockholm School of Economics (Sweden).

B.A., M.A., University of Virginia; Ph.D., Northwestern University

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Prengler’s research focuses on employees at the leading edge of two trends in organizations. First, she studies how employees in remote work arrangements create a sense of workplace out of nonwork space. Second, she studies how employees can reduce systemic discrimination in their organizations via allyship and anti-racism. In particular, she has examined the strategies used by Black law enforcement officers to reduce discrimination in police organizations and encourage diversity, equity and inclusion in both organizations and society. She has also investigated how employees can be allies to postpartum women returning to work, as well as how allies can maintain resilience through allyship shortcomings.

Prengler’s research has received numerous awards, including the 2021 AOM MOC Division's Best Student-Led Paper award, a 2021 SIOP Anti-Racism grant, a Mays Innovation Research Center grant, and her dissertation was recognized as a finalist in the 2021 INFORMS Dissertation Proposal Competition. 

B.A., Texas A&M University; M.A., Sam Houston State University; Ph.D., Texas A&M University Mays School of Business

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Raveendhran’s research focuses on the future of work: how technological advancements influence organizational actors and business practices, the integration of novel technologies into the workplace and how organizations can increase the effectiveness of their human resource management practices to address the changing nature of work.

With expertise in leadership and decision-making, Raveendhran holds a bachelor of arts in psychology from the University of Texas at Arlington and a Ph.D. in business administration from the University of Southern California, where she received multiple teaching awards. Her dissertation on behavior-tracking technologies was recognized as a finalist in the INFORMS Best Dissertation competition.

B.A., University of Texas at Arlington; Ph.D., University of Southern California

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Vivian Riefberg is a professor of practice at the University of Virginia Darden School of Business, where she holds a David C. Walentas Jefferson Scholars Foundation Professorship chair. In June 2020, she retired as a senior partner with McKinsey & Company, where she worked for over 31 years. Riefberg is now a director emeritus and senior adviser with McKinsey. She is also a board member of Signify Health.

In her time at McKinsey, Riefberg held a variety of senior leadership positions, including leader of the public sector practice for the Americas and co-leader of the U.S. health care practice. She served on McKinsey & Company's global board of directors and on the Senior Partner Committee, evaluating and developing global senior partners. Additionally, she led major strategy development, performance improvement, and organizational and operational programs across various participants in the private, public and nonprofit sectors. She worked across a range of arenas including health care, security, infrastructure and commerce.

B.A., Harvard-Radcliffe College; MBA, Harvard Business School

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An expert in diversity, authenticity and leadership development, Roberts’ research and consulting focuses on the science of maximizing human potential in diverse organizations and communities. The author of more than 50 research articles, teaching cases and practitioner-oriented content aimed at strategically activating one’s best self through strength-based development, her work has also been featured in global media outlets. She has also edited three books: Race, Work and Leadership; Positive Organizing in a Global Society; and Exploring Positive Identities and Organizations.

Prior to joining Darden, Roberts served on the faculties of Harvard Business School, Georgetown University McDonough School of Business and Antioch University’s Graduate School of Leadership and Change.

B.A., University of Virginia; M.A., Ph.D., University of Michigan

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Dwaipayan (he/him) studies socially responsible operations, focusing on the topic of diversity and inclusion within organizations and across their supply chains. In his research, Dwai attempts to blend theory with practice to analyze the opportunities for the inclusion of underserved communities in supply chains. His research takes an interdisciplinary approach to uncover new insights into the ways in which organizations design and sustain inclusive supply chains.  

Prior to joining academia, Dwaipayan worked as a project manager with The Royal Bank of Scotland. When not at work, he enjoys cooking, exploring nature and catching up on lost sleep. 

The late Professor Rubin (1951–2016) was a Darden faculty member for more than two decades. Area coordinator of the Management Communication area at Darden, Rubin was an expert in corporate communication, media and business relations, and organizational communications theory — the art of successfully communicating within organizations. He used this expertise to consult for communication specialists and give talks on management and corporate communications.

Additionally, Rubin wrote numerous cases on corporate communication, as well as articles on corporate brand and crisis communication. His work has appeared in publications including The Washington Post, the Journal of Brand Management and Strategic Communication Management. He was a member of the Arthur Page Society, the Conference on Corporate Communication, the Corporate Branding Initiative based at the Copenhagen Business School and the Association for Business Communication.

His book, Reset: Business and Society in the New Social Landscape (Columbia Business School Publishing), co-authored with Barie Carmichael, is due out 9 January 2018.

For more on Rubin, please see “In Memoriam: Professor James Richard Rubin.”

Saffie’s research focuses on the intersection of international finance, firm dynamics and economic growth. Methodologically, he combines empirical work with quantitative theory, using granular data to understand aggregate phenomena. He has studied classical topics on international finance using micro data from emerging markets, including the effect of financial crises on productivity in Chile, the transmission of commodity fluctuations through an economy in Brazil, and the effects of financial liberalizations on the allocation of resources in Hungary. His work also examines the political influence of firms in U.S. policy and their effects on the allocation of resources.

Before joining Darden, Saffie was an assistant professor of economics at the University of Maryland.

B.S., M.Sc., Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile; Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania

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Named one of the Top 18 Entrepreneurship Professors by Fortune Small Business magazine, Sarasvathy is a leading scholar on the cognitive basis for high-performance entrepreneurship. Her work pioneered the logic of effectuation — a set of teachable and learnable principles used by expert entrepreneurs to build enduring ventures.

In addition to being author of the book Effectuation: Elements of Entrepreneurial Expertise, Sarasvathy is also co-author of the textbook Effectual Entrepreneurship and the doctoral-level text Made, as Well as Found: Researching Entrepreneurship as a Science of the Artificial.

B.Com., University of Bombay, India; MSIA, Ph.D., Carnegie Mellon University

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