YALI aims to empower young African leaders through academic coursework, leadership training, mentorship, networking, and follow-up support. The initiative was created through a partnership between Nelson Mandela and President Barack Obama in 2010. Currently, approximately 700 YALI fellows selected from more than 50,000 applicants spend six weeks in the U.S. each year. During the visit, the fellows study one of three academic tracks: business and entrepreneurship, civic leadership, or public management. The 25 YALI fellows who visited Goizueta operate in a number of industries, including sustainability, media, technology, agriculture, and cosmetics.

During their time in Atlanta, the fellows are hosted by Clark Atlanta University, and as part of their time in the city spend a day at Goizueta. Benn Konsynski, George S. Craft Professor of Information Systems & Operations Management, coordinates the fellows’ time at Goizueta. Their visit included a full slate of academic sessions with a combination of Goizueta faculty, alumni, and industry experts. After comments from Kristy Towry, John M. & Lucy Cook Chaired Professor of Accounting and Vice Dean of Faculty and Research, and Alicia Sierra, director, Human Resources and Diversity, the sessions began.

Engaging with Experts: Exploring AI, Entrepreneurship, and Innovation

First up was a discussion about artificial intelligence (AI) and the future of work, featuring a team from Microsoft. Bo Beaudion, director, transformation strategy, Microsoft, and Azim Manjee, senior account technology strategist, Microsoft, discussed the fundamental priorities shaping the AI transformation and introduced the fellows to Copilot, Microsoft’s workplace AI tool.

After the fellows spent lunch connecting with Towry, the guest speakers, and Konsynski, the fellows participated in multiple afternoon sessions. The first was “Revving Up Success: Entrepreneurship in the African Automotive Industry.” It featured Vinod Kadadi 12MBA, consulting partner, Automotive, Wipro Limited. Kadadi examined the role Africa plays in the automotive industry—as a consumer, supplier, and innovator. The session also touched on the evolution of propulsion systems and the opportunities such advances present to entrepreneurs in Africa.

Vinod Kadadi’s son,Tejas Kadadi, presented the following session on plastics and the environment. A high school senior at the Westminster Schools in Atlanta, Kadadi is also an entrepreneur. He is the founder of ReycloTech, an app that uses interactive AI to inform the public on how best to recycle and repurpose plastics. He also serves as the lead developer at Fund-A-Box, a company that aspires to connect farmers and plant-growers with donors. Kadadi focused on the transformative potential of generative AI in marketing, product innovation, technology strategy, and the labor market. “The YALI fellows engaged with and offered suggestions on Kadadi’s initiatives,” notes Konsynski.

The session that rounded out the day featured Rajiv Garg, associate professor of information systems and operations management. Garg shared insights on how generative AI is transforming industries. “The YALI fellows were engaged from the beginning and eager to expand the boundaries of learning by discussing the social and policy implications of AI innovation,” Garg says.

Learning from Industry Leaders Across Atlanta

The following week, Konsynski joined the fellows at Clark Atlanta University to discuss disruptive technologies. The fellows also spent time at Microsoft’s and IBM’s Atlanta headquarters during their time in Atlanta. While at IBM, Goizueta alum, Deepa Krishnan 06MBA, vice president of Worldwide Delivery Services, IBM Software, led a discussion on IBM’s cloud and AI initiatives.

Konsynski spent several days with the YALI fellows during their time in Atlanta. He describes them as “a bright, creative, energetic and fun group,” adding, “they return home with a great impression of Goizueta.”

To learn more about YALI, visit https://yali.state.gov/

Goizueta Business School is proud to be an active participant in a variety of organizations and initiatives that support and promote diversity in business and higher education. Learn more about Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion initiatives at Goizueta.

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Healthcare is a business like many other industries, but instead of just making money, healthcare workers must also save lives. Navigating patient care and profitability is a unique challenge that neither business professionals nor doctors are able to address alone. Goizueta helps bridge that gap, teaching clinicians the fundamentals of business and teaching business professionals how to apply their knowledge specifically within the healthcare field.

First and foremost, the chief medical officer must be a good physician, according to Gregory Esper MD 09EMBA, associate chief medical officer of Emory University Healthcare System.

There are no successful CMOs that are not first thought of as excellent clinicians. No physician body is going to follow a chief medical officer who they do not first trust clinically.

Gregory Esper MD 09EMBA, associate chief medical officer of Emory University Healthcare System

“You also have to have transparency and integrity―your ‘yes’ is yes and your ‘no’ is no―and that you are not rash in the decisions that you’re making. It’s important to weigh the gravity of situations and decisions that you need to make with great care,” Esper says.

Preparing Healthcare Leaders to Succeed in Business

It’s not often that medical schools teach budgeting, leadership, operations, and human resources. That’s why Emory University’s Goizueta Business School offers healthcare concentrations in its Full-time MBA, Evening MBA, and Executive MBA programs. Goizueta also offers its Chief Medical Officer Program within its Emory Executive Education department.

Nicola Barrett is Goizueta’s chief corporate learning officer and oversees Emory Executive Education. She says, “Healthcare leaders are facing so many new challenges. There’s the introduction of new technologies, changes in societal expectations, research that’s uncovering patient and population equity disparities, and burnout of clinical staff. And that’s just a few. Understanding these dynamics and leading others in a way that helps them feel valued and willing to embrace change is important.”

We’re helping to equip senior medical officers and healthcare leaders with the skills and knowledge to make good decisions for their patients, their people, and their organizations. We’re teaching them to be aware of the implications and opportunities afforded by the changing healthcare landscape, and to effectively contribute to the strategic direction and success of their enterprise.

Nicola Barrett, Goizueta’s chief corporate learning officer

Healthcare executives and doctors have been through many years of education as well as many years of experience in their field. They might wonder how an MBA or CMO certificate can help further an already established career.

Sarah Kier 20EMBA is vice president of enterprise access at Emory Healthcare. She says that learning with her cohort gave her a broader perspective on concepts that she already understood, but only from the perspective of her niche.

“When you’ve been in your industry for that long, you have a deep but fairly narrow understanding of the business world,” she says. “Gaining that kind of expansion, learning from people across industries, you start seeing things from a different chair or a perspective.”

Adapting to and Adopting New Technology

Goizueta alumni are leading the way in adopting developing technology, like artificial intelligence (AI), to create the healthcare systems of the future. They’re learning those skills at Goizueta.

There are many ways to integrate AI into the medical field. Some are already in use on a regular basis, including patient data analysis, maintaining records, and insurance and billing management. But the prospect of using AI as a diagnostic tool, and not just as an administrator, is expanding. The ability of AI to provide accurate diagnoses and assist in personalizing treatment means it is a viable tool to add to a patient’s treatment team. However, experts say it will never replace trained physicians.

“I like the approach of saying that today’s trainee is going to operate in 2050. What is their world going to be like then?” says Benn Konsynski, George S. Craft Professor of Information Systems & Operations Management.

The world they are entering now is going to be transformed radically, and they can be a part of that. They’re coming in with values that are different than their counterpart 20 years ago, and I think they will have more opportunities to shape that future than their predecessors.

Benn Konsynski, George S. Craft Professor of Information Systems & Operations Management

Embracing AI in Healthcare

Esper has already worked with AI tools like ChatGPT to make his job more efficient, using it recently with a colleague to help write a new policy. This task would have taken his team days, but with ChatGPT’s assistance it took mere minutes.

“AI will create efficiencies in the analysis of data, the ability to have predictive analytics, that are going to be considerable. Even pathologists and radiologists are now using AI to identify areas of abnormality on scans and pathology. At this point, it doesn’t substitute for human interpretation, but at some point, it may,” Esper says. AI is helpful but not quite perfect and may never be, which is where the element of human interaction is crucial.

“You have to be careful. You have to say, is this right? What could be wrong? How can I use this more effectively? What’s the appropriate use of this? If I use this in this circumstance, can someone get hurt? I think those are considerations for the use of AI in medicine,” says Kier.

We have to embrace it. Because if we don’t, we won’t be leveraging technology that can help our patients and our families―and frankly, our people—from an efficiency perspective.

Sarah Kier 20EMBA, vice president, enterprise access at Emory Healthcare

Kier knows the future of healthcare lies in technology. But she approaches it from a more patient-focused view than just data entry and predictive modeling. Most patient portal systems, including the recently launched EPIC system used by Emory Healthcare, can track data like patient no-show rates. But Kier wants to ask even more of AI than just data tracking and analysis.

“The important part for me is what else and where else? So many people suffer from loneliness. And so many people go undiagnosed with mental illness because they’re not speaking to anyone else. How can AI help with that? Could your toothbrush notice that you haven’t brushed your teeth in three days. That probably means you’re not in an OK headspace? How can we plug those things in and get a real 360-degree picture of the person?”

Building Financial Prowess

There’s another formidable challenge for physicians and healthcare executives moving into leadership position. They need a wide range of skills in addition to the ones honed in medical school, residency, and practice as a physician.

Healthcare executives, including CMOs, must be able to work with hospital boards of directors. They handle budgets upwards of hundreds of millions of dollars. These budgets cover not only actual medical care but also staffing, purchasing, general operations costs, and capital improvements. They must also make decisions about “non-funded” projects like free health screenings for the community.

Michael Sacks, is professor in the practice of organization and management at Goizueta. He teaches courses on leadership and organizational behavior in both the CMO program and the Executive MBA program.

It’s unusual for anyone to be equally skilled in distinct skills like finance, healthcare delivery, people management, and so many other topics. We try to build skills in each specific area, as well as teach our participants how to balance across these demands and communicate effectively to different audiences.

Michael Sacks, professor in the practice of organization and management

Any MBA graduate will tell you Excel is a key component of their training. But the Executive MBA program taught Esper so much more than just how to read a spreadsheet. “There are techniques you learn in operations that help you when you’re managing specific projects. When looking at data and analytics, it’s the ability to understand what data was pulled, and how. You ask ‘Is the data answering the most important question?’” he says. “Oftentimes I’ll have experience that I draw on from my case studies. I’m applying things I learned in business school to existing problems in healthcare.”

Handling the Staffing Crisis and Retaining Quality Professionals

Staffing issues have become a common problem in most healthcare and hospital systems. It’s an issue that all CMOs and healthcare executives have to face. The pandemic accelerated retirements of the baby boomer generation. That was expected to happen more slowly over the next 20 years. Burnout of medical staff from the intense and long workdays did not help. “Money is certainly part of the situation; however, it’s much more complicated than that” says Sacks. “Healthcare is a very demanding and challenging workplace where people literally make life or death decisions. Creating an environment where teams work well together, people feel psychologically safe to speak their minds, and support one another in difficult times is essential in healthcare.”

Healthcare workers are so much more than just their roles within an organization, according to Jaclyn Conner, associate dean of the Executive MBA program and Evening MBA. Goizueta graduates learn to work with healthcare workers as both people and employees. “Quality leaders acknowledge that there are people at the core of any operation. It is vital to have empathy, compassion, and consideration as a leader,” she says.

Challenging decisions have to be tackled daily, but strong organizations have a sense of community and core values. Our Executive MBA alumni profess strong values and implement them as leaders.

Jaclyn Conner, associate dean of the Executive MBA program and Evening MBA

One way to circumvent staffing gaps might actually be technology, according to Kier. “We do not have the human capital to do things the way we used to do them. So it’s an exciting moment for technology, because it can help. AI has so much promise in all the things that you’d think of it for. It can remove rote tasks. These are things that are mindless, that we currently pay humans to do because somebody has to push the buttons. AI will certainly be doing all those things.”

The Transformative Power of Executive Education

In the meantime, humans are still running the business of healthcare. Advancing knowledge through an executive education program is one way to keep up with the ever-changing business. Esper says says people ask him about Goizueta’s Executive MBA often. He says they should have a good reason to pursue such a degree. That’s the key success in the program.

“People ask me all the time, ‘I want to get an MBA. What do you think?’ I will tell people that it’s not just three letters behind your name, or behind an MD. That doesn’t mean much if you don’t know why you’re getting it and what you want to do with it.”

Education can be transformational, but you have to lean in and approach the process with purpose. That will be the real game changer.

Are you looking to level up your career? Learn more about Emory Executive Education, our top-ranked Executive MBA, and Goizueta Business School’s many other degree programs to chart your own path to success.

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Created in 2010 through a partnership between President Barack Obama and Nelson Mandela, YALI’s aim is to further empower young African leaders through academic coursework, leadership training, mentoring, networking, and follow-up support. Each year, approximately 1000 YALI fellows spend six weeks in the U.S. studying one of three academic tracks: business and entrepreneurship, civic leadership, or public management. The entrepreneurs who visit Atlanta are hosted by Clark Atlanta University and, as part of their time in the city, spend a day at Goizueta.

Coordinated by Benn Konsynski, George S. Craft Professor of Information Systems & Operations Management, the fellows attended several sessions led by Goizueta faculty as well as a team from Microsoft, including Bo Beaudion, director, transformation strategy; Brad Allen, cloud solution architect; Sanjeev Devarapalli, principal data & AI solutions architect; and Azim Manjee, principal cloud endpoint technical specialist. Topics included augmented and virtual reality, artificial intelligence, and the future of work, as well as monetization trends.

Beaudion kicked off the slate of sessions, speaking to the fellows about the power of technological transformation. “At the end of the day, you have to understand what the cloud is and its value contribution and what role it might play not only in your own business, but in your community and in your country,” he said, underscoring the fact that transformative thinking—doing what’s never been done before “is based on vision, but it can’t be manifested without technology.” The members of the Microsoft team highlighted several of the company’s technological offerings, including Azure, Copilot and its VR tool, HoloLens. “The YALI group was quite interested in the incorporation of AI into the work process,” Konsynski said.

Saloni Vastani, associate professor in the practice of marketing, led a session on monetization trends. “Saloni’s material was critical and informative to these entrepreneurs,” explained Konsynski. “Each of the fellows has an evolving business and is concerned with patterns of pricing, subscription, and transactional relationships.”

During lunch, several faculty members and Goizueta alumni visited with the fellows, including Anandhi Bharadwaj, Goizueta endowed chair in electronic commerce of information systems and operations management, Nana Ama Yankah 13MBA, founder and CEO, NAYA by Africa. Yankah is from Ghana. “Nana works back down the chain helping women farmers in her quality materials sourcing,” said Konsysnski. “Several fellows were particularly happy to engage her in discussion.”

Other alumni included Will Hicks 15MBA, director, digital support and transformation for global services, Baxter International, Vipul Bhatnagar 21EMBA, associate vice president, Coforge, and Joycelyn Streator 03MBA 10PhD, senior fellow, Mozilla Foundation, and director, The Chevron Leadership Academy and professor of practice, Prairie View A&M University.

After lunch, a group of students from Africa who are in the MS in Business Analytics (MSBA) program joined the fellows outside for a drone demonstration. In addition to exposing the students to image recognition, tracking, stabilization, pathing, and autonomous flight, the demonstration gave the fellows a chance to connect with current MSBA students—two of whom had applied to be YALI fellows.

The following week, Konsynski joined the fellows to deliver a session on technology transforming strategic options.

To learn more about YALI, visit https://yali.state.gov/

Check out more photos from this year’s YALI visit to Goizueta below:

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Minority Board Directors Held Back by Glass Ceiling and “Myopic” Biases

Diversity remains a troubling issue in the upper echelons of U.S. business today. A stunning 81 percent of board members in top firms are white and male, according to the Standard & Poor 500 Index. So what prevents women and minority directors making it to the top? Goizueta’s Grace Pownall, professor and area coordinator of accounting,and Justin Short, assistant professor of accounting, together with Zawadi Lemayian of Washington University parsed 12 years of data on gender, ethnicity, and compensation to get insight into who holds power in U.S. board rooms. In Behavioral and Experimental Finance, research results point to two critical roadblocks that continue to stymie the career trajectory of aspiring Black, female, and minority directors: the glass ceiling effect that reduces the talent pool; and what Short et. al. call “myopic” bias entrenched in corporate America.

“The glass ceiling is a bottleneck for diverse talent,” says Short. “But we also see minority directors fail to secure promotions once they’re on the board. We conjecture that this is down to biased or myopic thinking on the part of chairs and peers.” Leaders need to be cognizant of the cut-off points that tie to ethnicity and gender in the U.S. and elsewhere, say the researchers; not least of all because of risk to innovation. “Without diversity, any organization risks deferring to group think, and sourcing creativity and ideas from the same, small pool of shared experience,” says Short. “There’s still work to be done because diversity at top levels of American business should be commonplace.”

B2B Firms Need to Smarten Up before Using AI in Procurement

Procurement, the process of buying in goods, products or services from external suppliers, is critical in the B2B market. But it’s costly, labor-intensive, and time-consuming. To speed and drive efficiencies in supply chain management, procurement managers are turning to artificial intelligence (AI). On the one hand, AI can automate the process of obtaining pricing quotes using tools like AI Assist and chat boxes. Then there’s the “smart control” that AI can leverage to identify the best potential suppliers via algorithms that collect and analyze market information.  Cut-and-dried benefits then for decision-makers? Not quite, says Goizueta’s Ruomeng Cui, assistant professor of Information Systems and Operations Management of research to appear in Manufacturing & Service Operations Management. Because unless your AI system is fitted with the smart control, you run the risk of getting higher price quotes from suppliers than you would if you used human procurement purchasers. And it’s down to how suppliers interact with automated chatbots. Together with colleagues from Rutgers University and Tianjin University, Cui ran a large-scale field experiment using China’s Alibaba trading platform and integrated chat program, Aliwangwang. What they found is that suppliers essentially “discriminate” against chatbot buyers when it comes to quoting prices. “Suppliers see chatbots as lacking expertise around their products,” says Cui. “The fact they don’t have to lower prices to build professional relationships with chatbot buyers means they tend to quote higher than they would otherwise.” This effect is mitigated, however, when buyers signal to suppliers that they also use the smart control: an AI-powered recommendation system. Caveat emptor, say Cui and her co-authors: by all means use AI in your procurement processes, just be smart about it. 

Do Multinationals Enjoy an IT Advantage in Emerging Markets?

We know that digital technology helps firms compete globally. But does IT give foreign firms the edge over local businesses for exploiting opportunities in emerging markets? Yes and no, says Goizueta George S. Craft Professor in Information Systems & Operations Management Benn Konsynski, and his co-authors. Their latest paper in Journal of Management Information Systems looks at data from a large sample of local and international businesses operating in India and reveals two key insights. First, they find that foreign players using IT to boost organizational capabilities do tend to have the advantage over incumbents when it comes to partnering with other companies – a key factor in their ability to scale operations in emerging markets. However, in areas like marketing and customer services, technology gives local firms the edge over foreign competitors, likely because of superior knowledge and understanding of local markets. Konsynski and colleagues shed authoritative new light on two critical areas: how both context and contingency shape outcomes for firms leveraging digital technologies to compete; and the perhaps unforeseen challenges that await newcomers looking to expand operations in emerging markets, which remain an attractive opportunity for international companies.

If PPP Relief is so Attractive, why are so few Small Firms Taking it up?

The Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), part of the U.S. Government’s CARES Act, is a relief package that offers highly subsidized financing to small businesses. With anescalating value, PPP reaches deep into the pockets of Federal Reserve with the aim of helping corporate America weather the economic contraction and job losses due to the pandemic. Yet, despite the “positive shock” it represents to struggling firms, PPP uptake has been far from universal. Not only that, but a significant proportion of firms applying for PPP actually return them to the government without using them. So what’s going on? It has to do with the indirect costs imposed on borrowers, says Goizueta’s Tetyana Balyuk, assistant professor of finance, in the National Bureau of Economic Research: Working Paper. She and colleagues from Johns Hopkins Carey and Fuqua School of Business looked at publicly listed firms that applied for PPP funds using databases maintained by the Securities and Exchange Commission. “These firms are worried about ex-post audits and investigations into recipients of these PPP funds, which are conducted by the government. Specifically they’re worried about subjectivity of these types of audits, and the broad powers the government has to pursue litigation.” The solution to this, she says, is to focus on the objective standards for PPP eligibility, and similarly objective standards for the conduct of ex-post audits. “Among other measures, policy-makers might want to look at delineating safe harbors to circumscribe litigation, which has been a standard practice in securities law since the 1930s.”

What are the Costs – and Opportunities – to Retailers in Returned Merchandise?

In 2018, a staggering 10% of all retail sales –around $369 billion – were returned to the original seller. For retailers, this is vastly challenging. First there’s figuring out how to respond; then there’s the huge financial loss from returned stock. And then there’s simply trying to work out what to do with unwanted merchandise and how to absorb it back into the inventory. But is there an opportunity here for retailers, too? Goizueta’s Ryan Hamilton, associate professor of marketing, and Sandy D. Jap, Sarah Beth Brown professor of marketing,believe so. Together with Wharton Professor and former dean of Goizueta Business School, Thomas S. Robertson, they’ve published their research in Journal of Retailing.

The researchers dive into literature surrounding the returns market – a market so valuable it is “ripe for more research” – and found that returns policies can build reputation, drive customer loyalty, and secure competitive advantage. “Consumers today increasingly expect to be able to return goods easily,” says Jap, “and it’s a burden for retailers. But also an opportunity to deliver a customer experience that drives brand loyalty.” For those retailers, returns provide the chance to exchange goods, or even cross or upsell to customers who return to stores or sites to bring back original purchases. The trick, says Jap, is to “get it right.”An easy returns policy may build erputation for great customer service; too lax a policy and you might end up “training” customers to make returns, she says. There’s the risk to reputation, too, in how retailers absorb or dispose of returned goods: are their policies sustainable and environmentally friendly? More to explore in the potential trade-offs here, says Jap, and she and her co-authors call for more research into this evolving stage in the purchase journey.

Achievement? It’s All in the Eye of the Beholder

There is a well-documented gap in achievement between U.S. social classes  that hurts the perception of, standing, and prospects for people from lower-class, high-school educated backgrounds, vis a vis their higher-class counterparts with college degrees. One way of attenuating this gap might be to rethink the way society measures achievement, says Goizueta Assistant Professor of Organization and Management, Andrea Dittmann. Instead of assessing people’s skills and aptitudes through the lens of individual achievement, might it not be just as helpful to measure ability based on how well people work together, as a part of a team? Together with Nicole Stephens of Kellogg and USC Marshall’s Sarah Townsend, Dittman ran four studies of outcomes for students working alone or in groups. The work published in Journal of Personality and Social Psychology portrayed consistent results: when working individually, higher-class students are better able to showcase their strengths. But in groups, this advantage disappears. In fact, when people from lower-class contexts work in teams, they demonstrate unique strengths that can set them apart from more privileged counterparts. Dittman and co-authors call for gateway institutions – institutes of higher education and workplaces – to integrate these findings into practices and procedures that reflect that one style of achievement is not superior to the other, but simply different.

Is There a Case for Sharing Less Information in Financial Statements?

There’s broad consensus in the world of finance. Disaggregation – the practice of breaking down different components or sources of earnings in a financial statement – is good. After all, for investors looking to predict a company’s earnings from one year to the next, all information is good information, right? Not necessarily, says Goizueta Professor of Finance, Teri Yohn; it all depends on what type of information is being shared. Together with colleagues from Colorado, Indiana, and OSU, Yohn hypothesized that not all disaggregated components in earnings statements are heterogeneous. Not all information might be specific to one year, and that’s problematic. “Investors assume that disaggregation highlights one-off specificities that impact earnings – things like restructuring costs– but won’t have a de facto impact on the future earnings of a company,” says Yohn. However, her research, published in The Journal of Accounting Studies, shows that disaggregation also trawls up homogeneous things – the same components that impact earnings year over year. This can lead to confusion on the part of investors, and actual mistakes in forecasting future earnings. “Our paper has two clear takeaways,” Yohn says “For investors: don’t assume that disaggregation only highlights the one-offs in earnings specific to a given timeframe.” For regulators and standard-setters who have pushed for more disaggregation in recent years, Yohn and her co-authors urge deeper reflection about what type of disaggregation should be included in financial statements, or not.

Learn more about our Goizueta Business School faculty, their research, specialties, and areas of interest. #GoizuetaKnows

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David Nour 00EMBA, CEO of The Nour Group, cringes a bit when people refer to relationship building as a soft skill. A relationship economics advisor, executive coach, and author of 11 books, Nour has spent the last 20 years researching relationships and their effect on business outcomes. During that time, he’s helped his clients create enterprise value by building sustainable, strategic relationships that go beyond the transactional. His latest book, “Curve Benders,” takes a closer look at “those transformational relationships that don’t just help us accomplish or meet our short-term goals and objectives,” he explained. “Curve-benders have a profound impact in shaping who we become.”

Like a young Roberto Goizueta, who fled Cuba and came to the U.S. during the Cuban Revolution, a teenage Nour found his life re-routed by the Iranian Revolution. In May 1981, Nour, who spoke no English, flew from Iran to the U.S. to live with his aunt and uncle in suburban Atlanta. In order for Nour to remain in the U.S., they had to adopt him. Nour’s parents, who still live in Iran and are retired college professors, instilled in Nour a deep belief in the power of education.

Nour earned his BBA from Georgia State University, and subsequently began a career in technology sales and marketing. He noticed that many of the people doing what he was doing in his twenties were twice his age.

“I wanted more,” he said. Nour decided to get his EMBA at Goizueta, after which he went into consulting, managed a startup in New York, and then worked for a private equity firm. He founded the Nour Group in 2002.

Nour credits Goizueta with sharpening his intellectual curiosity and teaching him how to communicate comfortably with executives and leaders across industries. The school also offered Nour a core foundation of relationships. Of the approximately 50 members in his cohort, Nour said he is “proactively in touch with at least 20 of them.”

In an effort to give back and to stay in touch with the school, Nour keeps in touch with several of his former professors, including George S. Craft Professor in Information Systems & Operations Management Benn Konsynski and Associate Professor of Finance and The Robson Program for Business, Public Policy, and Government’s Director Jeffrey Rosensweig.

Nour now teaches a strategy visualization seminar in Goizueta’s EMBA program. The pandemic has disrupted higher education, but Nour sees possibilities for lasting change in the post-COVID era, describing this time period as “a phenomenal opportunity to re-imagine, rethink, reinvigorate, and renew education,” he said.

As a Father’s Day gift 10 years ago, Nour’s wife bought him a Vespa scooter. It jump-started a love for motorcycles. “Riding is my happy place,” said Nour. This summer, Nour and his 17-year old son plan to venture across the Continental Divide from Albuquerque, New Mexico to Helena, Montana. (Nour’s 19-year old daughter also rides.) A few summers ago, Nour, whose motorcycle of choice is a Ducati, rode through Tuscany, Italy and stopped to tour the Ducati headquarters. On weekends, Nour and his family can often be found riding along the back roads from their home in Atlanta through the north Georgia mountains, over to Asheville, NC and back.

“It’s never just about the destination,” he explained. “It’s the journey.”

David Nour is an affiliate faculty member in the Executive Education program, where he teaches a course in Strategy Visualization.

Goizueta MBA students engage with faculty and professionals through experiential learning throughout their program. Do you know which MBA program might be right for your professional journey and lifestyle? Find out which approach suits you best.

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Apple founder Steve Jobs once said, “Everybody in this country should learn a computer language because it teaches you how to think.” That’s the intent behind Think.Code.Make, a popular undergraduate course that uses coding as the foundation for creativity.

“The overarching principle of the course is that it’s not just about coding. It’s about the nexus of technology, imagination and creativity,” says Benn Konsynski, George S. Craft professor of Information Systems & Operations Management, who created the course six years ago with Adjunct Professor Scott Blanck 12MBA. “The Think part is the main principle. You learn to code to learn to think in the 21st century.”

Students take the class with an eye toward broader thinking that future careers will demand.

“We state at the beginning of the course that they’re not going to go out and become developers. They’re not going on to become computer science grad students,” says Blanck, who teaches the class. Instead, they’ll gain an aptitude for the language of coding and systems thinking, giving them another way of communicating with developers, project managers, and marketing strategists down the road.

Decision Systems Impact Workers

“In today’s digital world, decisions are increasingly made by systems,” Blanck says. “Workers need to understand how such decision systems operate and are built.”

Open to juniors and seniors, as well as graduate students, Think.Code.Make is an elective in Goizueta’s STEM portfolio. Students in computer science, public health and other areas take it as well. The course has expanded to meet demand and is now offered twice in the spring and once in the summer. A growing number of juniors take the class to create projects that will help them land summer internships. 

“They very much like to have built apps, to have done coding, and used APIs. Those are nice things to place on your resume for internships,” Konsynski says.

API, or application program interface, is a software go-between that allows two or more apps to talk to one another. Students use APIs to tap online data, and they develop basic skills in Python, a flexible, beginner-friendly programming language, to massage that data. Some also learn web design and JavaScript. They build projects based on their interests, using computer languages and apps best suited for the job. 

Class activities mirror maker practices popular with hobbyists. One student made a device that captured flight data over radio waves to track flight patterns over Atlanta. Other projects determined where political donations were coming from, created a budgeting tool for use by financial analysts, and measured the success of momentum investing.

“From a business and analytics standpoint, their programming skills are needed for data preparation and organization, and Python is particularly useful there,” Konsynski says. “JavaScript is used for pulling information off the internet and for visual displays they might want to create.”

The class is part of a growing portfolio of computer courses at Goizueta; a new course focusing on Python for business started last year. Goizueta’s STEM degree, a Master of Science degree in business analytics, also centers on Python. 

“Python has been used in data analytics courses for some time, and we expect as we develop more and more STEM requirements that programming will be a key part of that,” Konsynski says.

Think.Code.Make gives students the chance to play and create in a whole new language. For most, it is a first step into a new way of thinking they will build on for the rest of their lives.

“It’s about how you approach problems and how you think,” he says. “It’s important to look at the programming per se as a process of taking the discipline of the language and using the language itself as a means of influencing how you think and express.”

Goizueta Business School offers a STEM-Certified MBA Track. Learn how to make better decisions through business analysis. 

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In many ways, this year’s HackATL event marks a new beginning, with COVID-19 adding an X factor into the mix. The pandemic hasn’t been able to dampen the enthusiasm of entrepreneurial-minded students ready to take on a challenge.

For the first time in the event’s eight-year history, it was conducted fully online. In early October, more than 230 students came together, virtually, from across the globe to participate. The essence of HackATL remained the same, however, with students splitting into teams and joining forces as powerful think tanks to build a viable business in 48 hours then pitch their idea to judges, angel investors, and venture capitalists.

“This is historically one of the largest hackathons in Atlanta—and the undercurrent of COVID’s impact was evident,” said Benn Konsynski, George S. Craft Professor in Information Systems & Operations Management at Emory’s Goizueta Business School and a judge at this year’s competition. “But in many ways, it brought about some positives, including diverse and innovative ways of thinking that will fuel opportunities only just created or revealed in a world of new norms. Participants were challenged to push the envelope of what more is possible in a market that’s transitioning to meet these different demands.”

Organized by the student-run Emory Entrepreneurship & Venture Management (EEVM) club, this year’s HackATL attracted undergraduate students from a variety of schools, including Emory and Georgia Tech, University of California San Diego, and UBC Sauder School of Business in Vancouver. The theme of this year’s three-day event was the “Adventure is Out There // Explore the Unconventional,” and it included a full slate of virtual sessions, such as introductory entrepreneurship chats; a keynote speech by Matt Wallaert, author of Start at the End; and informational workshops on ideation and design thinking, alternate paths to building a startup, pitch perfect workshop accelerator, and understanding the product design process (the latter hosted by Atlanta-based Mailchimp).

On the final day, nearly two dozen judges narrowed the field to eight teams, each with unique business ideas, tackling issues from food insecurity to how best to monitor patients with Parkinson’s disease. Five of the judges peppered the teams with questions and collectively decided on the winners. Those judges included Konsynski; Dirk Schroeder, CEO, Updraft Health Innovation Advisors and adjunct associate professor of global health at Emory University’s Rollins School of Public Health; Sarina Virk Torrendell, founder, withSarina; Sig Mosley 68BBA, managing partner, Mosley Ventures LLC and Goizueta Business School’s 2020 Entrepreneur-in-Residence; and Amelia Schaffner, director of entrepreneurship at Goizueta.

The top teams were:

• First Place—oXmosis, a business which would promote cultural connections: Michael Shi 23C, Olivia He 23C, Ishika Gupta 23 (pre-BBA), and Takshil Chittlutur.
• Second Place—MedConnect, an app that would streamline medical supply disbursement: Aayush Setty, Vivienne Yu, Arjun Verma, Nicole Zhu, and Jasmine Zhong.
• Third Place—Datinerary, an app that would connect college couples with small local businesses: Ethan Ng, Raffer Li, Michelle Pan 23C, Jessica Lan 24 (pre-BBA), Rachel Cho 24 (pre-BBA), and Kushal Sanjeev.

Navigating a global event

For organizers, keeping this virtual event going in a seamless manner was its own challenge. EEVM co-presidents Veena Jaipradeep 21BBA and Felicity Lin 21BBA and their team had to balance classwork with the intricacies and rigor of hosting one of the most prominent hackathons in the Southeast.

“It was definitely challenging to do all the behind-the-scenes work virtually,” said Lin. “We had to adapt really quickly and think of innovative solutions to run a high-quality event completely online, which we have never done before. Learning to adapt quickly and utilize our resources and skills was probably the biggest lesson.”

During his keynote address, Wallaert offered sage words to the HackATL participants: “Look at the ‘itch’ that aligns to your passion—i.e., solve a problem that is known on a smaller scale first. Don’t focus on the complex, aspirational ‘scratch,’ because by keeping your eye on manageable aspects of the world’s most pressing issues, achievable through immediate actions, you’ll begin to chip away at those bigger systemic problems. For example, we can’t solve sexism in America with an app but we can create a business solution that ensures equality in gender pay right now.”

For Lin and Jaipradeep and other participants, Wallaert’s keynote summarized their drive and commitment to entrepreneurship.

“We both have a strong passion for the endless opportunities entrepreneurship provides individuals who choose to pursue that career path,” said Lin. “After becoming co-presidents of EEVM, we have experienced this firsthand. We’ve met entrepreneurs of many different backgrounds that have inspired us to start our own ventures or provided us the opportunity to work alongside them.”

Jaipradeep added, “That’s why I think HackATL is such an outstanding conduit for entrepreneurs—it constantly inspires us to continue delivering high-quality entrepreneurship information to students at Emory—because in providing that, we get to see and experience all the amazing ideas that come from a single weekend,” she said. “We can only imagine how their ideas, now accompanied with our resources and support, can grow with more time.”

For more details, visit Emory Entrepreneurship & Venture Management and HackATL.

− Reporting by Jennifer Corbett with Allison Shirreffs

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It may be a generation away, but there will be a day in our society when it’s a surprise that a human driver has arrived your door step. The lifestyle and cultural shift would move at a pace where leaving for work or meeting friends at a restaurant will be done almost exclusively with an autonomous vehicle.

But when will we move past that threshold, that transportation autonomy is no longer a novelty?

A panel of experts in the intersecting fields of automotive technology, safety, transportation and vehicle ownership met for a discussion moderated by Benn Konsynski, Goizueta’s George S. Craft Professor in Information Systems & Operations Management. The event in the Delta classroom was called “Mobility Futures: Connection-Communication-Cooperation.”

There was a wide range of topics addressed, and Konsynski said he focused on covering new business models and predictions for the future, along with security, new models of ownership, transport and structure changes.

Faye DiMassimo of Deloitte, previously the general manager of Renew Atlanta, has worked extensively with the City of Atlanta to solve traffic and safety issues in busy corridors, such as from Ponce City Market to Georgia Tech.

“If we’re really going to harness emerging technology to solve our problems, then we’ve really got to think about it in a far more systematic way, an inoperable way than is really traditional for most cities,” she said.

The mobility reality of the 21st century appears to be a convergence of public-private partnerships, optional human drivers and lifestyle and cultural shifts that are expected to dramatically change how people move around their city.

Konsynski reminded the audience that, “we tend to overshoot on our near-term predictions, and undershoot on the long-term.”

David Braunstein, who is president of Together for Safer Roads, said there needs to a cultural shift to significantly improve a transportation system where annually, more than 30,000 people die.

“It is a very entrenched cultural issue, and there is a lot of messaging that comes at us every day that says, ‘Drive fast, it’s OK to drink, use your phone,’” he said. “All these things are competing for our mindshare and what we do on the road. We’re, quite frankly, not dealing with it very well.”

One piece of the safety puzzle is the arrival of 5G and the Internet of Things, which would make it easier for intelligently connected devices and systems to share data about traffic flow, highway speeds and pedestrians in a given area.

Mark O’Shaughnessy, who works in product development at AT&T, spent more than two decades of his career working for car manufacturers. O’Shaughnessy said 5G will have a greater reach and a lower latency than even 4G LTE.

“Once you start to connect the cars, and you get sensors in street lights and sensors in other places and networks where cars can switch off really quickly from one network to another, there’s no latency, then you can start to make decisions about what’s going on, almost in real time,” he said. “It’s the connectivity and low latency that goes together with all the other cloud platforms that are being built. We’re on the verge of being able to make some pretty real-time decisions as 5G starts to really penetrate some of the inner cities.”

Those technology upgrades give way to other lifestyle choices, such as Clutch, a monthly subscription service, or rideshare companies like Lyft, which would allow a family like Sam Bond’s, general manager of Lyft Southeast, to have just one car.

John Brown, vice president of customer operations with Clutch, said his company helps mitigate the idea of being in a car for several years, of being a “vehicle general contractor,” and offers freedom and experiences they wouldn’t otherwise have.

Bond sees these issues as an evolution of consumer preference and utilization of assets in a smarter fashion. However, the pay-as-you-go model often depends on usage patterns.

“If getting rid of some of the time tax … if a subscription or concierge can take some of that pain off, the next best thing is to basically be able to walk away entirely from any burden on a fixed asset like a car,” Bond said. “If you get around town on Lyft, and you happen to go on vacation, or out of town for four weeks, you’re not sitting on an underutilized asset in the form of a car payment, or insurance payment while you’re gone.”

Today, there is a system of mobility that results in some 32,000 deaths a year and our days are shortened by at least an hour in frustrating distraction from our interests, Konsynski said. In the end, we seek a safe system of mobility that enhances our life, rather than consuming our free time, exposing us to risks that need not exist. Mobility futures involve new systems of technology, ownership and social interaction.

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During the fifth annual Young African Leaders Institute, or YALI, 25 professionals from 19 countries stepped foot inside the Delta Leadership Hub at Goizueta to learn more about the school’s curriculum and culture.

“This is one of the most exciting days for us at Goizueta because not too often do we have so many professionals from Africa,” Director of Human Resources and Diversity Alicia Sierra said welcoming the group. “You all are sitting in the Delta Leadership Hub, and you all are leaders. You’ve been selected for the Young African Leadership Initiative, and it is fitting that you’re here today.”

The 25 individuals are recipients of the Mandela Washington Fellowship. Launched by former President Barack Obama in 2014, the program selects 500 fellows from an applicant pool of more than 50,000. The fellows are divided among 20 academic institutions in the United States to study one of three tracks: business and entrepreneurship, public administration and civic engagement.

The program provides opportunities for young Africans to enhance their leadership skills and create meaningful ties with American citizens, businesses and organizations, as well as each other.

The trip is part of a program at Clark Atlanta University, and the fellows will continue to visit Atlanta universities and corporations for six weeks.

“I’m always so happy to be hosted on your continent because of that sense of personal renewal I get,” Vice Dean of Faculty and Research Kristy Towry said in her opening remarks. “It’s really wonderful now for us to be hosting you here. We hope that you touch our soil and feel a sense of personal renewal here.”

The day was full of learning, meaningful discussions and key networking opportunities. Alex Chanson, senior account manager with sales at Google, kicked off the day’s events with a brief overview of Google and key technologies the company is working on.

“When [Google] designs technology, we try to think about how can we improve the lives of people around us,” Chanson said.

Chanson proceeded to show examples of Google Assistant, Google Home and Google’s self-driving car company called Waymo.

“The important lesson is to be able to be agile and think where we’re going and change the way that we design things for where you want to go,” he said.

The group also got to hear from Scott McNabb with the Rollins School of Public Health on the Google Loon in Africa, a project of using large balloons to bring internet access to rural and remote areas.

Dale Tuck, head of strategy, planning and channel development at Atlanta Applied Artificial Intelligence, discussed AI and block chain, and Assistant Professor of Organization & Management Demetrius Lewis gave a talk on social networks.

The day concluded with primary faculty organizer for the event Professor Benn Konsynski discussing technology and commerce futures. Konsynski brought a variety of technologies, such as a Raspberry Pi, virtual reality headsets and drones, for the group to look at and test.

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Artificial intelligence and blockchain technologies are beginning to change the huge business of healthcare and will continue to transform the industry in some important ways in the future. That was the consensus of a panel of innovators and thought leaders during a recent discussion at Goizueta moderated by Benn Konsynski, George S. Craft distinguished university professor of information systems and operations management.   

Sponsored by Atlanta Applied Artificial Intelligence and Health Futures Forum, the panel-led discussion on “AI and Blockchain in Healthcare” included

• Frank Mascarenhas, Touchpointz
• Nicole Morris, Emory Law School
• Ganeshram Ramamurthy, ObjectFrontier Software
• Thomas Savel, CDC
• Chrissa McFarlane, Patientory
• Roop Singh, IntuitFactory

Although AI is already being used to uncover patterns in mental health, for example, that lead to better patient diagnosis, sharing data across healthcare provider facilities remains largely fragmented today and unsecure.

“The public health universe wants to exchange information in a decentralized way but hasn’t had the technology to do that,” Savel said, adding that the CDC ends up being the trusted third party by default.

The combination of AI and blockchain technologies, however, is a game changer with implications for patient records, predictive analytics, payer-provider relationships and even doctor/patient relationships. Blockchain exists as a shared and continually reconciled database and is not stored on a centralized single server, making it virtually impossible for hackers to corrupt or steal data. Blockchain allows providers to quickly obtain and review vast amounts of data across different providers and healthcare facilities. It also allows them to securely share that information with patients, family members, caregivers, nurses and specialists.

Distributed Trust
“AI is learning from data,” Singh said. “Blockchain results in a much less fragmented model by giving us more training data to make better models and better decisions from those models.” At the core promise of this technology is patient-centric care and patient empowerment, noted McFarlane, whose company, Patientory, is a pioneer in merging blockchain technologies with healthcare.

“Doctors spend less time doing reports and test results,” she said, enabling them to focus more on the actual care of patients.
And patients can have more control over their records and history by accessing their “health wallet” and sharing selected pieces of their records remotely through encryption codes that make it HIPPA compliant, Konsynski added.

This allows organizations to build trust, Singh said, with a movement to more openness and distributed computing with no single owner of information. “Trust is in the chain or algorithm and not in a company or individual.”

For business, this avoids costly data breaches, saving money and time.

Technology and the future of healthcare
As technology continues to evolve, the panel agreed that new business models and entrepreneurs will emerge.

“We will see a growing ecosystem of private blockchains mature and evolve,” Savel said, noting that both public and private blockchains will need to interact and co-exist to solve business problems. There also will be scalability issues for public and private blockchains, Ramamurthy noted. 

Mascarenhas added that AI will also help regional hospitals survive in the future by offering “speed to value and speed to money.” In addition, blockchain can provide more options for patients about where to go, including a huge growth in freestanding clinics, he said.

And as blockchain technology evolves, inevitably there will be some complex legal questions as well. The trend toward more patient control will challenge the assumption of who owns or has rights to patient data, Konsynski said.

“The law punishes unauthorized disclosure of data,” Morris said.

The legal field will need to adjust to how far patient authorization regarding data goes, noting that it “becomes murky when you give permission to release data and don’t know what you are giving it for.”

The goal is “empowerment to the user,” Singh said, allowing consumers to be very selective about what records they want to share and to whom.

As healthcare approaches 20 percent of GDP in the U.S., the panel agreed that there are significant potential benefits for the industry as a whole and for patients. The challenge, Singh added, will be changing mindsets and continuing to explore new ways of doing things.

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A groundbreaking new convenience store concept recently launched by Amazon is set to test the trajectory of how technology will be integrated in the retail industry going forward. 

While one store has opened in Seattle, the question remains how widespread, and in what direction, the model will grow across the country. 

Amazon Go is a store without cashiers, registers or cash, where shoppers buy any number of traditional grocery items, from milk to chips and ready-to-eat salads, off the shelves and walk out. Entry is by scanning a smartphone app through a subway-style turnstile entrance, and items are added to a virtual cart as customers move through the store. 

Three Goizueta Business School professors have said this is a sign of a changing landscape in the grocery and retail industry. It’s a signal that not only is the way people shop changing, but companies like Amazon are increasingly looking for ways to offer products and services based on consumer behavior. Late adopters and psychological hurdles tied to technology are among the growing pains, but those barriers can be overcome.

The Amazon Go model is a sort of beta test to the market, and the company, for more than a year, has piloted a store for its employees at the Seattle headquarters. There are several directions Amazon could pivot depending on the success of, and how consumers react to, the new concept. 

“We see a range of radical transitions in retail,” said Benn Konsynski, the George S. Craft Distinguished University Professor of Information Systems and Operations Management. “Those directions relate to the home, or the place you drive by. Where I drive by is as important as where I live, and in fact sometimes may be more convenient.”

It’s the latest example that shows Amazon is not afraid to do an experiment to test a market. 

“We should not look on these things as determined, committed strategies as much as investments in understanding where they might go,” Konsynski said.

In recent months, Amazon has opened more than a dozen bookstores, bought Whole Foods, which accounts for 470 grocery stores, and added a presence in some Kohl’s department stores. But this specific model has drawn comparisons to the most recent technological addition to grocery stores: self-checkout.

“We saw there that there were a group of people who loved it, who were happy that it was faster, who actually liked having more control over the process. It was more convenient,” said Ryan Hamilton, associate professor of marketing at Goizueta. “There were a lot of customers who complained about it a lot. They liked being able to interact with someone, they appreciated that part of it. They felt like they were doing the work themselves now. I imagine it’ll be something similar here. I think that there will be some customers who love this, and love the efficiency, and think it’s fantastic. There will be others who really feel like they’re missing something important by not being able to interact with cashiers like they’ve been able to.” 

Hamilton added that the primary benefit to the customer would be to make the shopping trip more efficient by removing the slowest part of the experience, the check out. 

“There are many initiatives in retail transformation — online selection, home delivery, showrooming, increasing product knowledge on the shelves, dealing with fewer staff in store, consumer preference profiling, intelligent supply chains and rapid checkout,” Konsynski said. “It is one element in a step toward evolution where there is more and more responsibility of putting the customer to work — to their convenience.”

Hamilton explained that there are two theories for why Amazon is pursuing this model. One is that it’s looking to enter the grocery space. The other is that this is a way to test and refine the technology to possibly lease to other retailers. Either is viable from Amazon’s standpoint, Hamilton said. 

“The advantage for Amazon is that it allows them to test out this technology in a really manageable way,” Hamilton said. “So it’s possible that the next stage is to move it into Whole Foods, but I got to say, I would question whether that’s a good fit. Whole Foods brand positioning is very much around high service, high quality and that typically involves a lot of person-to-person interaction.” 

Algorithms between the customer and the Amazon Go store are built to tailor the experience and shopping history personally. 

“I have a concept that this is my store, not everybody’s store,” Konsynski said. “That when I’m entering, it becomes my shop. I might expect that items that I purchased before would be ‘reminded’ to me when I’m in the store. Items that I’ve purchased before or considered, especially if I’ve picked something off the shelf, put it back. All those elements of history. What I bought and what I almost bought is a part of the package here. Next time I go by there, I would not be surprised if I get a discount. ‘Hey, while you’re here, get this. You bought it before, or almost did so. Or get this with a discount portion.’ Or that it’s based on my profile of other things I purchased, that when I approach it, it contacts me.”

With a reputation as a disrupter in any market it enters, Amazon has also developed brand trust with consumers, and that gives the company a leg up on making this launch successful on a larger scale, according to Morgan Ward, assistant professor of marketing at Goizueta. The offering must always match the customer base, and in this case, one targeted group that would buy in early are millennial customers who aren’t typically as fluent with recipe creation and cooking. 

“I think the upside for Amazon is that people are already so enmeshed in the brand and their default in a lot of cases now is to purchase from Amazon,” Ward said. “That bodes well for Amazon because I think people already have so much trust and experience with the brand. If anyone is going to successfully disrupt this market and make these kinds of technological jumps, and consumers are going to accept them, I do believe that Amazon’s capable of that.”

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