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Experts
Melissa Thomas-Hunt
Senior Associate Dean for the Residential Full-Time MBA Program; John D. Forbes Distinguished Professor of Business Administration
Melissa Thomas-Hunt is professor at both the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business and Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy. An expert in in leadership, team dynamics and negotiations, she researches the factors that unleash, leverage and amplify the contributions made by individuals — particularly women, underrepresented individuals and numerical minorities.
Thomas-Hunt is the former head of global diversity and belonging at Airbnb, where she led the strategy and execution of global internal diversity, inclusion, equity and belonging programs, and she retains an external senior adviser role focused on advancing research on connection and belonging. Prior to her role at Airbnb, she served as vice provost for inclusive excellence and professor of management at the Vanderbilt University Owen School of Management. There she was responsible for advancing equity, diversity and inclusion across Vanderbilt's community of staff, students and faculty. Previous to her time at Vanderbilt, Thomas-Hunt served as global chief diversity officer and professor at Darden.
B.S., Princeton University; M.Sc. and Ph.D., J.L. Kellogg Graduate School of Management, Northwestern University
Davide Tomio
Assistant Professor of Business Administration
Tomio’s research focuses on market liquidity, derivative instruments and the consequences of central bank interventions. His recent work delved into the effects that the quantitative easing efforts by the European Central Bank have on the pricing, liquidity and availability of sovereign bonds.
His work has been presented to, among others, the research and policy teams of the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank and Treasury Department, the European Central Bank, and the central banks of Germany, Canada and Italy, where he also taught. Tomio’s work has been cited by Forbes and published in the Journal of Financial Economics.
B.S., Ca’ Foscari University of Venice; M.S., University of Copenhagen; Ph.D., Copenhagen Business School
S. Venkataraman
MasterCard Professor of Business Administration; Senior Associate Dean for Faculty and Research
Venkataraman (Venkat) is an internationally renowned scholar and educator in the field of entrepreneurship. He is also an expert in business and corporate strategy, corporate venturing, new venture creation and financing, regional development and in managing growth.
As a corporate planning executive in a major Indian firm, he was a part of a founding team that created and developed a highly successful new business venture. He consults with Fortune 500 firms as well as several small companies. He facilitates strategy discussion for firms and is counselor to firms, universities and government organizations. He has been a speaker and adviser to the Entrepreneurial Forum — a program of the International Trade Administration of the U.S. Department of Commerce — aimed at promoting trade through entrepreneurship around the world.
From 1995 through 2009, Venkat served as senior editor of the Journal of Business Venturing — a top entrepreneurship journal.
M.A., Birla Institute of Technology and Science (India); MBA, Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta; Ph.D., University of Minnesota
Rajkumar Venkatesan
Ronald Trzcinski Professor of Business Administration
Venkatesan is an expert in customer relationship management, marketing metrics and analytics, and mobile marketing.
Venkatesan’s research focuses on developing customer-centric marketing strategies that provide measurable financial results. In his research, he aims to balance quantitative rigor and strategic relevance.
In 2012 Venkatesan published “Coupons Are Not Just for Cutting Prices” in Harvard Business Review. He also co-wrote “Measuring and Managing Returns From Retailer-Customized Coupon Campaigns,” published in the Journal of Marketing in 2012. He is co-author of the book Cutting-Edge Marketing Analytics: Real World Cases and Data Sets for Hands-on Learning.
B.E., Computer Science, University of Madras, India; Ph.D., Marketing, University of Houston
Veronica Cacdac Warnock
Batten Institute Fellow and Senior Lecturer
Veronica Cacdac Warnock is senior lecturer and Batten Institute Fellow at Darden. Her research focuses on financial sector development and housing. Her teaching and international consulting work is dedicated to transforming societies around the world.
Prior to coming to UVA in 2005, Veronica was senior economist and director at Mortgage Bankers Association (of America) where she was responsible for U.S. economic and housing sector forecasts, econometric analyses and industry survey systems.
B.A., Ateneo de Manila University; Ph.D., Fordham University
Francis E. Warnock
James C. Wheat Jr. Professor of Business Administration
Warnock is an expert in international capital flows, as well as international portfolio allocation and financial sector development in emerging markets.
Before coming to Darden in 2004, Warnock was a senior economist in the international finance division of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System and taught at Georgetown University. Warnock’s international experience includes two years as a Peace Corps volunteer in Malawi’s Thyolo District. His professional career started on Wall Street, where he was a commodity trading adviser.
B.A., Johns Hopkins University; Ph.D., University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Elliott N. Weiss
Oliver Wight Professor Emeritus of Business Administration
Weiss is a top authority in many aspects of manufacturing, including inventory control, manufacturing planning and scheduling, manufacturing project management, materials management, service industry operations, total productive maintenance and lean systems.
Weiss is the author of numerous articles in the areas of production management and operations research and has extensive consulting experience for both manufacturing and service companies in the areas of production scheduling, workflow management, logistics, lean conversions and total productive maintenance.
B.S., B.A., MBA, Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania
June West
Marjorie R. Sands Associate Professor of Business Administration
West is an expert on organizational communication, particularly during times of change.
West was instrumental in the 2003 inception of the Darden/Curry Partnership for Leaders in Education (PLE) to strategically combine the most innovative thinking in business and education to provide education leaders with skills necessary for managing schools. West served as the academic director and continues to be active in the PLE’s School Turnaround Specialist Program, now the most established turnaround program in the country.
She is the university faculty liaison to the FBI National Academy in Quantico, Virginia. West also directs a Darden faculty team that teaches in the summer orientation program for the Secretary of Defense Corporate Fellows program that places active-duty military officers in corporations for a one-year fellowship.
West has consulted for many organizations, including the Louisiana Department of Education and Mississippi State University Colleges of Business and Education.
B.S.Ed., The University of Tennessee, Knoxville; M.Ed., Kent State University; Ed.D., Lehigh University
Kimberly A. Whitler
Frank M. Sands Sr. Associate Professor of Business Administration
Whitler is an authority on marketing, with expertise in marketing strategy, brand management, and marketing performance. Her research centers on understanding how a firm’s marketing performance is affected by its C-suite and board.
A prolific writer as well as researcher, Whitler has authored nearly 100 articles related to C-level marketing management challenges and is a contributor for Forbes and CMO.com. Social Media Marketing Magazine named her one of the Top 100 Marketing Professors on Twitter.
Whitler has held leadership roles, including GM and CMO positions, within the consumer packaged goods and retailing industries, including Procter & Gamble, David’s Bridal and PetSmart. She has helped build $1B+ brands, including Tide, Bounce, Downy and Zest.
B.A., Eureka College; MBA, University of Arizona Eller School of Business; M.S., Ph.D., Indiana University Kelley School of Business
Andrew C. Wicks
Ruffin Professor of Business Administration; Director, Olsson Center for Applied Ethics; Director, Doctoral Program
Wicks specializes in ethics. He is an expert in international business ethics, corporate social responsibility and ethics in public life.
Wicks’ research interests include stakeholder responsibility, stakeholder theory, trust, health care ethics, total quality management and ethics, and entrepreneurship. Wicks also specializes in religion and public life, particularly as it pertains to businesses.
Wicks is co-author of three books — Managing for Stakeholders: Survival, Reputation and Success; Business Ethics: A Managerial Approach; and Stakeholder Theory: The State of the Art. He has published more than 30 journal articles in business ethics, management and the humanities.
B.A., University of Tennessee, Knoxville; M.A., Ph.D., University of Virginia