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10 MBA Professors To Watch In 2022

The world’s best business schools name the up-and-coming MBA professors they’re most excited about

By  Business Because

Tue Dec 14 2021

BusinessBecause
Only the best and brightest minds in business teach MBA students. 

Think former Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen, who developed the theory of disruptive innovation, or INSEAD MBA professors W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne, the minds behind blue ocean strategy.

These kinds of top MBA professors produce cutting-edge research, write best-selling books, train future business leaders, and share their expertise via our BB Insights series.

So who are the next generation of MBA professors to look out for?

We asked the world’s top business schools to nominate one up-and-coming faculty member that they’re most excited about. And we name our BusinessBecause MBA Professor of 2022.*


MBA Professors to Watch in 2022


1. 

Marcel Olbert, Assistant MBA Professor of Accounting
 London Business School

Background:
 PhD & Research Assistant at University of Mannheim, Visiting Scholar at Stanford & University of North Carolina

Industry experience:
 Investment banking at JP Morgan London, Strategy consulting at Roland Berger, Tax & PE at PwC and Flick Gocke Schaumburg.

Marcel Olbert teaches MBA students through the core MBA Accounting course at London Business School.

His passion lies in bringing research insights and timely real world examples into his MBA classroom and engaging in vivid discussions with the students. This year, Marcel invited several friends and former colleagues active in London and Germany’s Startup, VC, and Private Equity sectors to share their experiences with his students.

Marcel’s current research focuses on tax reforms, multinational firm investment, and economic growth in developing countries. He’s aiming to shed light on how multinational firm investment can benefit the economies of developing countries in Sub-Saharan Africa. 


2. 

Anna Stansbury, Assistant MBA Professor of Work and Organization Studies
MIT Sloan School of Management

Background:
PhD in Economics from Harvard University, Scholar in Harvard’s Inequality and Social Policy program, Nonresident senior fellow at Peterson Institute for International Economics.

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Anna Stansbury’s research focuses on topics in labor and macroeconomics, particularly on issues to do with inequality, power, and institutions in the labor market.

In recent work, she has studied the extent of employer concentration in the US labor market, the macroeconomic effects of the decline of worker power in the US, and the incentives for minimum wage non-compliance in the US and UK.


3. 

Christina Patterson, Assistant MBA Professor of Economics
Chicago Booth

Background:
PhD in Economics from MIT, Post-doctoral fellow at Northwestern University

Industry experience:
Federal Reserve Bank of New York

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Christina Patterson joined Booth in July 2020 as Assistant Professor of Economics and Biehler Junior Faculty Fellow.

She currently teaches a course on macroeconomics to MBA students and strives to equip students with the skills and understanding to debate long-standing questions on topics including income and wealth inequality, deficit spending and inflation, as well as the most pressing active policy debates of today. 

Her research, which focuses on how inequality across workers and firms can affect the economy’s response to shocks, has appeared in the Quarterly Journal of Economics, AEJ: Macroeconomics, and European Economic Review.

She also serves as a faculty research fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research and before she entered academia, she was a research associate at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.


4. 

Albert Mensah, Assistant MBA Professor of Financial Accounting
HEC Paris

Background:
PhD in Accounting from the City University of Hong Kong, Principal research assistant and course instructor at the University of Cape Coast, Ghana.

Industry experience:
Financial accounting consultant, CPA, former entrepreneur, MD & CEO

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Albert Mensah is a passionate teacher, who enjoys making lessons fun, lively, and interactive.  To illustrate concepts in his class, he draws from his own academic research, which incorporates theoretical concepts, as well as his past professional experience. 

He uses his experience in entrepreneurial projects across a wide range of industries such as agriculture, consumer electronics and EdTech, to show students how he applies the principles taught in class in preparing the accounts of his Ghanaian business entities. 

He also incorporates his consultancy experience, sharing with his students how he helps companies separate ‘good’ from ‘bad’ accounting experts.
 “I love to ride on the energy of the class, and as such, try my best to keep the class lively,” he says. “There is always room for improvement, and so I try to learn from comments in student evaluation reports and from experienced colleagues about interesting ways to teach.”


5. 

Ivuoma Onyeador, Assistant MBA Professor of Management & Organizations
Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University

Background:
PhD in Social Psychology from UCLA, Postdoctoral fellowship from the National Science Foundation.

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Ivuoma Onyeador joined Kellogg in 2020 and teaches Leading & Managing Teams to MBA students.

Ivy’s research is motivated by contradiction: while equality is ostensibly a core American value, the USA is marked by a profusion of inequalities. 

Further, when confronted with evidence of inequality, many Americans’ first impulse is to deny, dismiss or justify inequality. In rapidly diversifying contexts—organizations, neighborhoods, and other social networks—these impulses can spark conflict and undermine cohesion. 

Ivy’s research examines how dominant and subordinate group members reason about group-based discrimination and disparities. Through her research program, she aims to identify potential threats to cohesion and design interventions to increase people’s understanding of and willingness to address inequality.

Ivy’s research has been published in leading journals such as Psychological Science and Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. Her work has also been featured in popular press outlets, including The New York Times and The Atlantic.

Beyond studying bias in society, Ivy works to address bias and increase inclusion in her affiliated institutions. In her free time, she enjoys reading, travelling, exercising, and discussing current events on the internet. 


Check Out Our MBA Entrepreneurs To Watch In 2022

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6. 

Stephanie Lin, Assistant MBA Professor of Marketing
 INSEAD

Background:
 PhD in Marketing with a PhD minor in Psychology from Stanford University, assistant professor of marketing at Singapore Management University

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Stephanie Lin’s research focuses on how consumers maintain an image of themselves as good and virtuous in everyday life.

People often wish to engage in virtuous behaviors, such as eating healthy, saving money, and supporting worthy causes. They then feel negatively about themselves when they engage in more sinful behaviors, such as eating unhealthy food, overspending, or saying ‘no’ when asked to donate.

Stephanie examines the psychological processes and behaviors that allow consumers to see themselves as good and virtuous even when tempted by these vices.

A piece she recently published, titled ‘We All Want to Be Good—Then Life Happens’, summarizes a recent paper on how people start with the best of intentions but overestimate their ability to follow through.

Stephanie’s academic work has been published in journals such as the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, and the Journal of Consumer Psychology.


7. 

Jinyu He, MBA Professor of Strategy & Research Area Director of CSR/Sustainability
 CEIBS

Background: 
PhD in Strategic Management from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, tenured associate professor, HKUST Department of Management

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Dr Jinyu He joined CEIBS in July 2020 and teaches the core MBA course on Business, Society, and Environment (BSE). He also provides wider research leadership to the school as the director of CEIBS’ new CSR/Sustainable Development research area.

Jinyu is a core member of the editorial board that conducted the 2021 Corporate Social Responsibility White Paper at CEIBS, which summarized the best CSR practices in the context of both China and the wider world. The White Paper also coincided with Social Impact Week at CEIBS, set up by the school’s Social Impact & Responsibility student club and supported by Jinyu.

Jinyu’s research focus examines corporate governance, corporate social responsibility and sustainability, competitive dynamics, and co-opetition. He’s had work published in journals such as Academy of Management Journal, Strategic Management Journal, and Journal of Management.


8. 

Damon Phillips, MBA Professor of Management
Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania

Background: 

PhD in Business from Stanford University Graduate School of Business; Lambert Family Professor of Social Enterprise, Columbia University Business School

Industry experience:

Engineer affiliated with the US Air Force; executive, family-owned electronics manufacturing business

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Damon Phillips’ expertise is in social structural approaches to organizations, markets, and innovation, as well as social network theory and analysis. 

His industry specialties are cultural markets (music industry) and professional services, and at Wharton he teaches Managing Organizational Change. Damon is also a published author, whose 2013 book Shaping Jazz is an innovative study of the emergence and evolution of the market for recorded Jazz. 

He’s been published in top journals within management and sociology and is an associate editor at the Administrative Science Quarterly, a consulting editor at Sociological Science, a former associate editor with Management Science, and former consulting editor at the American Journal of Sociology

When not teaching or researching, Damon enjoys spending time with his family, writing, and listening to music. 


9. 

Michele Gelfand, MBA Professor of Organizational Behavior/Psychology by Courtesy
Stanford Graduate School of Business

Background: 
PhD in Social and Organizational Psychology, the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

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Michele Gelfand uses field, experimental, computational, and neuroscience methods to understand the evolution of culture as well as its multilevel consequences for human groups. 

She has received more than $13 million in research funding from the National Science Foundation, Department of Defense, and the FBI. Her work has been cited over 20,000 times and she’s been featured in the Washington Post, The New York Times, TheBoston Globe, National Public Radio, Voice of America, Fox News, NBC News, ABC News, The Economist, De Standard, among others.

Michele’s research interest focus on cross-cultural organizational behavior, negotiation, conflict, and diversity. Her book, Rule Makers, Rule Breakers: How Tight and Loose Cultures Wire the World, explores the ins and outs of human cultures and uses tightness-looseness theory to offer a startling new view of the world and ourselves.

She was awarded a Katzell Award from the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology in 2020 and became an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences in 2021.


10. 

Nora Colton, MBA Professor & Inaugural Director
UCL Global Business School for Health

Background:
 
UCL Pro-Vice-Provost (Postgraduate Education) & Joint Director of Education at UCL Institute of Ophthalmology and Moorfields Eye Hospital, Deputy Vice Chancellor at University of East London, Dean of Royal Docks Business School, Professor of Economics at Drew University, D.Phil. University of Oxford

Industry experience:
 Trustee and nonexecutive on charity boards, Advisory roles to various international organizations

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Nora Colton is a health and development economist with a regional expertise in the Middle East and a principal fellow of the Higher Education Academy in the UK. 

She has extensive experience conducting field studies on Middle East economies and macroeconomic structural challenges in the MENA region. She’s fluent in Arabic and has lived for extended periods in Yemen, Egypt, Jordan, and Lebanon. 

With close to 30 years of experience, Nora Colton stands out from the other MBA professors in this list. However, we’ve named her our BusinessBecause MBA Professor to Watch in 2022 as she makes history in her new role as inaugural dean of the UCL Global Business School for Health.

Opening its doors to students in September 2022, the Global Business School for Health is the first business school in the world solely dedicated to healthcare, training health professionals in business health through postgraduate level programs focused on health innovation and management.

The school will offer several postgraduate programs, including a flagship Health MBA.

Nora’s passion is in improving healthcare management and leadership for better health outcomes. As dean, Nora hopes to educate the next generation of healthcare leaders and managers to address the healthcare skills gap.


* All MBA professors featured joined their respective schools in the past 18 months. 

For a previous edition, check out our 2020 MBA Professors To Look Out For.

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