The summer before Lori Steffel 21BBA arrived at Emory, she made a deal with herself. Unlike her jam-packed high school schedule, Steffel decided she’d throttle back a bit. She’d pay attention to her schoolwork, of course, but on weekends the plan was to “sleep in and go to brunch,” she said. Steffel tried but grew bored. “I was kind of miserable,” she said. The monotony of studying and sleeping in inspired her to get involved.

In April, Steffel was elected Student Government Association (SGA) president, she is also a member of the professional business fraternity Alpha Kappa Psi, an Emory tour guide, a coach for the Career Management Center, a Wonderful Wednesday moderator and a teacher’s assistant for Goizueta professor Allison Burdette. This summer she’s interning in the leverage finance group at SunTrust, now Truist. “I don’t hide the fact that I prefer to be busy,” she said.

When Steffel campaigned to be SGA president in early March, the true fallout from COVID-19 had yet to come. Then came the death of George Floyd, a black man, at the hands of a white police officer in Minneapolis. Things that had been top of her mind earlier in the year quickly went by the wayside. “Being SGA president is all about meeting the moment,” said Steffel.

According to Steffel, faculty, administrators and students have met that moment. “We were in person, on campus, and then we weren’t. Usually, a physical checkout leads to a mental checkout. Not this year. Students are engaged from their computers,” Steffel said. “One thing that is encouraging for me at a time where there is so much despair is that I’ve never seen the student body at Emory this engaged and this active.” Last summer, in a simpler time, Steffel became a certified bartender. She also learned to rock climb, something she did in pursuit of a dream of hers: to compete on American Ninja Warrior, an obstacle course competition series airing on NBC and Telemundo. “That’s on the bucket list for sure,” she said.

Steffel spent her childhood in Glenview, a suburb of Chicago, and thought she’d go to college close to home. Then Emory landed on her radar. Sparking her interest was the weather — Steffel describes herself as a “seasonal mood person” — and also the chance to gain a new perspective. She couldn’t be happier with her choice. “It’s been challenging in the best way,” she said. “Even living in Atlanta, it’s so diverse, and there’s so much life and energy. It’s been eye-opening.”

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On any given day, you can find Saira Raza, business librarian for Emory’s Goizueta Business School, eagerly assisting students in locating the perfect reference for a project. Then later that evening she switches from librarian to musician, effortlessly serenading an audience with the strings of her cello.

“I am one of those people who is interested in a lot of things and can’t pick just one. Thus, I became a librarian,” Raza said.

Saira means princess in Urdu, a language spoken in Pakistan and parts of India where her father’s family originated. She is super inquisitive, a visual artist, musician, songwriter and producer; an awesome combination for a librarian.

Raised in upstate New York, Raza has degrees in international and Africana studies along with a master of library science from the University of North Texas. She worked as a corporate librarian for Lehman Brothers and later King & Spalding before joining Emory.

In her role at Goizueta’s business library, Raza supports students in the PhD and executive MBA programs, which entails aiding students in detailed research on companies, industries, class projects and career exploration. She enjoys the discovery and vibe of the doctoral students while feeling a kindred spirit with the EMBAs.

“I am someone who went back to school while working full-time, so I am able to relate to the EMBAs in a way that is helpful and valuable,” Raza said. “I know the challenge of coming back to school when you haven’t been for a really long time. Being witness to their journey is my favorite part, and when they graduate, I am in tears because their kids are there to see the culmination of their hard work.”

Music and art also serve as an emotional high for the multi-talented librarian.

“I joined the church choir at age five or six because I really wanted to sing. I began playing the cello at age 10,” Raza said. “I’ve always found a way to make room for music and art in my life.”

Throughout college and a variety of jobs, including running a coffee house in Atlanta’s West End, Raza has nurtured her creative side. An accomplished musician and songwriter, she performs as Sister Sai and has produced four albums, won numerous awards and, recently, began providing and writing music for short and feature-length films. Her futuristic and moody music perfectly complements many films.

“Sometimes I create music for a film and other times, filmmakers I know want to use music I’ve already composed,” Raza said. Today, Raza is melding the academic with the artistic as she undertakes several music projects at Emory.

She is the sound editor for an upcoming video tribute to the late Pellom McDaniels, who was the curator of African American collections at the university’s Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library. He passed away in April.

“I‘ve (also) been asked to help with the music for a new podcast series still under development for the library,” Raza added. “I’m really excited about the possibilities. I like this direction for me.”

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Ray Temnewo 18BBA, an ordered, decisive and systematic business analyst at McKinsey – who regularly checks his wallet to ensure everything inside faces the same direction – is on the precipice of the next season of his life.

Just two years out of school, this Georgia native wants to leave his options open — at least for the time being.

“I’ve enjoyed my time at McKinsey,” he said. “Projects can be extremely fast-paced, but working with achieved, accoladed coworkers and kicking off the experience with a class made up of peers in a similar age group and career position has made it all worth it. I am learning a ton and can’t complain.”

His favorite elements of consulting? “I’ve always been a fan of the variety of projects. While having a bias for TMT (Technology, Media and Telecom), I’ve prioritized getting a feel for what else is out there through different projects and what companies are doing in different sectors.”

One thing that is working well for him, thanks to Goizueta, is his ability to navigate team dynamics.

“I loved the fact that almost every class involves working in teams,” he said. “You learn pretty quickly that people on a team have different motives, different incentives and different priorities, and they invariably clash when working together. I feel fairly comfortable handling team dynamics and helping create collaborative environments that can influence the outcome of a project, in no small part thanks to Goizueta.”

Goizueta has also enabled him to improve his community.

After his senior year, Temnewo worked with Social Enterprise @ Goizueta (SE@G), an action-oriented center that includes research, community-facing programs and teaching, providing research and financial analysis of potential venture options for the former EarthFare location at Emory Point. Ultimately the innovation hub option, now called The Hatchery at Emory, was the top choice.

“Doing that work was super interesting because it highlighted how you can actually use a private sector entity, like Emory University, and local donations and resources to fund products and services aimed at social good,” he said.

As a first-generation college student, Temnewo has maintained a longstanding interest in social impact and economic development. His parents are from Eritrea, a small country in Eastern Africa.

“This project was a symbol of what could be possible on a larger scale. What would this mean to a country like Eritrea, a region characterized by desolate poverty, if you could use private-sector influence and crowdsourced resources to make a positive impact? What does it look like?”

With endless possibilities in front of him, including an MBA, Temnewo has the disciplined mind to sift through his options and make wise choices.

“I have a lot to figure out, but as I continue to learn more, I’m hopeful I’ll make the best personal and professional decisions for myself in the years to come,” he said. “I tend to get in my own head about a lot of this stuff and overthink these things, but at the end of the day, I’m just grateful to have options.”

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With the current economic climate, Camille Bent 09JD/MBA often reflects on the previous recession, which coincided with her 2009 graduation from Emory’s law and business schools. She had graduated with a clear plan: relocate to her native city, New York, begin her career at a large law firm and start her path for future success. But when the recession struck in 2008, Bent’s plans quickly changed. Like many other firms, her firm made the difficult decision to rescind its offers for the entire incoming class.

“I was a new graduate ready to go with no job, in a market where few jobs were available, and I had to quickly figure out what to do,” Bent said.

With the help of the business and law school career services, Bent was able to quickly land a federal clerkship in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where she worked with the district’s chief bankruptcy judge.

“It was a wonderful experience, and I often look back and think about how I handled that time when I’m going through difficult times now,” Bent said. “I wouldn’t trade my clerkship for the world. The life lesson here for me is that when faced with adversity, your likelihood of success is directly tied to your attitude and your approach. The experience taught me to focus on the resources I do have and to make sure that I’m using every opportunity I can. It’s advice I regularly share with my mentees.”

Her career path did eventually lead her back to New York, where she worked at small- and mid-size firms, gaining valuable experience, specifically in commercial bankruptcy and reorganizations. For the past four years, she has been with BakerHostetler, where she works as a senior associate in the firm’s bankruptcy & restructuring group. She represents companies in bankruptcy proceedings, including the ongoing Bernie Madoff litigation and the PG&E bankruptcy. In 2019, Bent was named to the American Bankruptcy Institute’s “40 Under 40” emerging leaders in insolvency practice list.

Bent also serves as co-chair of BakerHostetler’s New York Diversity and Inclusion Committee. “I’m very involved with my firm’s diversity initiatives,” Bent said. “The corporate world is facing a reckoning with regard to its Black professionals. It can either engage in the performative, short-term activism that has become the norm, or it can do the hard, uncomfortable work to make long-lasting change.”

Currently, she is working with office leadership and other committee members regarding the office’s recruitment and retention policies.

When asked about her more than 10-year career as a corporate bankruptcy practitioner, Bent said, “It’s not about enjoying what you do every day. It’s more about the whole picture. Are you living up to your potential? Are you being challenged? When I think about those questions, that’s what motivates me, because I am being challenged, navigating complex legal issues and underlying financial concepts, while simultaneously managing and mentoring junior attorneys. I do believe that my work is impactful and that it provides value, not just to the clients, but to the people that are coming behind me. That motivates me tremendously.”

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Recessions also hurt race relations

Economic downturns aren’t just bad for businesses and households. Recessions tend to spur heightened animosity towards Black Americans in the U.S., and this not only drives social inequality but can significantly impair the outlook for Black professionals. These are the troubling findings of research published in Psychological Science by Goizueta’s Emily Bianchi, associate professor of organization & management, and Erika Hall, assistant professor of organization & management. They ran a number of studies to capture people’s responses and shifts in attitude during periods of recession. They also looked at the impact on professional success for Blacks in areas like the arts and politics. What they found is that when times are hard, White people feel more negatively towards Black people and are more likely to stereotype or compartmentalize them. They’re also more prone to seeing racial inequity as acceptable and even “natural.”

Similarly, Black politicians and musicians were less likely to fare well in congressional elections and in the Billboard charts. Bianchi and Hall’s research is striking in that it explores the more nuanced and subtle forms of racism that manifest when communities face financial downturns. It suggests there is a certain fluidity in attitudes towards race that can be shaped by changes in our economic and social context — which may also help explain, at least in part, why Black people are particularly hard hit in times of recession.

Whose side are you on?

Protest marches grab headlines. But while heightened visibility for a cause might be good news for the social movement in question, the trade-offs for other affiliated organizations may not stack up so positively. So says a recent article in Organization Science by Giacomo Negro, professor of organization & management at Goizueta. Together with Stanford University’s Susan Olzak, he put together a data set of pro-LGBTQ protest events staged across a range of U.S. cities over 20 years to gauge how these events impacted local organizations — social movement groups on the one hand, and on the other, more loosely affiliated organizations like local businesses with customers and stakeholders both in and outside of the LGBTQ community. What they found was that greater participation in pro-LGBTQ protests lowered the market viability of these neutral organizations. Negro puts this down to having to “choose sides” and being less effective at addressing the needs of multiple audiences in the presence of polarizing events such as protests. Protests by nature pose a type of challenge to society, so people associated with the cause motivating the protest have to take a clear side or stance, explained Negro. And the visibility protests generate comes at a price for any participating organization that engages distinctly different stakeholder groups, from customers or clients to employees. If one group endorses a controversial issue, another can shun it. These insights come at a time when U.S. firms are increasingly involved with social causes, from human rights to race and gender issues. They will need to balance the pros of visibility against trade-offs in terms of their stakeholders.

IoT boosts online sales

The Internet of Things (IoT) is a system of smart devices or objects that are connected to the internet — objects that “talk” to each other and that can be combined with automated systems to gather and analyze information. IoT technology is making waves in business today because of a slew of benefits that range from rich data collection, enhanced security and reduced operation costs to enhanced customer-centricity. One space benefitting from the use of IoT is e-commerce. And a forthcoming article in Information Systems Research by Goizueta’s Panagiotis “Panos” Adamopoulos and Vilma Todri, both assistant professors of information systems & operations management, suggests that forward-thinking retailers would do well to understand the advantages of using IoT as an alternative purchase channel for consumers.

Together with NYU’s Anindya Ghose, they tracked sales data from a major multinational online retailer using IoT to automate purchasing and consumers’ convenience. They found that implementing the new technology led to significant statistical and economic gains for the company thanks to increased automaticity and more favorable mental accounting that made these products “easier to consume.” Interestingly, these gains were particularly associated with certain product characteristics, helping retailers determine effective future IoT strategies. As businesses continue to waiver about adopting IoT because of technical challenges that surround its implementation, these findings should provide interesting food for thought.

Learn from experience (just make sure it’s someone else’s too)

Businesses and business managers grow and develop because we learn. We learn from our performance metrics and KPIs — they tell us what we do well and not so well. But it’s challenging. For a start, there’s the issue of the metrics themselves. In today’s complex, fast-changing environment, it can be hard to pin down our KPIs with total accuracy. Then there’s the question of how we learn. Is it better to learn from our own firsthand experience — or from others’? Kristy Towry, John and Lucy Cook Chair and professor of accounting, and colleagues Jongwoon “Willie” Choi 11PhD, Gary Hecht, and Ivo Tafkov 09PhD have explored the science behind learning and decision-making in heightened complexity, and their new paper in The Accounting Review finds that when KPIs are messy, managers learn far better when that learning is vicarious, in other words, when we learn from each other and share our learning. And that’s because vicarious learning helps us to see the bigger picture, the trends and the patterns, Towry said. Learning from our own experience alone tends to make us over-focus on what’s happened most recently and what’s immediately in front of us and miss the greater scheme. The challenge, then, to businesses that want to accelerate their growth is to break through the silos and proactively look for ways to share knowledge, explained Towry. Learn from experience by all means. Just make sure it’s other people’s experience too.

Putting a value on peer pressure

Our colleagues can exert some influence over different aspects of our careers and even our private lives. There’s nothing too surprising about that. However, new research published in The Review of Financial Studies by Associate Professor of Finance Gonzalo Maturana should give households and businesses alike pause. When it comes to making big purchasing decisions — whether or not to refinance our mortgage, say — we could be more susceptible to positive peer influence than we realize. Maturana and Jordan Nickerson from MIT Sloan School of Management leveraged publicly available employment records — public school teachers from Texas — and unearthed something stunning: where there was notable mortgage refinancing activity in a peer network, individuals within that network were 20.7% more likely to refinance their own mortgage and access positive savings. And that’s not all. The peer effect also helped shape individuals’ choice of mortgage lender. And critically, the more savings they were likely to make by refinancing, the more of this activity there was across the peer group. These peer dynamics should be on the radar of policy makers looking to incentivize mortgage refinancing and to drive household liquidity, said Maturana, as well as banks who want to drive their customer base growth responsibly. The latter could leverage the multiplier effect of peer dynamics to make sure that valuable information on mortgage rates reaches more households more efficiently.

Is breakthrough innovation always a team sport?

If you’re looking to innovate, conventional wisdom says you need to build a team. You only get the breakthrough ideas when you have different people working together, collaborating and sharing knowledge, right? Not necessarily, says Tian Chan, assistant professor of information systems & operations management at Goizueta. Chan and colleagues put together a study, published in IdeaWatch, that reveals something striking: in certain circumstances, individuals can be just as effective as teams in creating breakthrough innovations. It all depends on how easy it is to break down your invention into different components or modules, he said. With design patents that cover innovations on the way something looks — think the iconic curved bottle of a Coca-Cola or Apple’s sleek iPhone — innovations tend to be holistic and don’t easily divide into chunks, and a team might get bottlenecked by coordination or communication issues. With utility patents that cover innovations on the way a product functions, you can have inventions that are very modular (such as the Dell PCs) to inventions that are hard to break into components (such as the internal combustion engine). So here, teams do tend to do better than individuals. His advice to business? If you want to increase your chances of a breakthrough, align your human resources and collaboration structures around the type of invention in your sights. But don’t assume you always need a team.

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Healthcare delivery is a relatively untapped area in terms of academic investigation. This is perhaps a little surprising given the breadth of dimensions it offers researchers. From resource and capacity management to quality control, from productivity to decision-making under uncertainty, healthcare is a uniquely complex and rich space to explore, with the added potential to deliver substantive, real-world value in doing so.

So says Diwas KC, professor of information systems & operations management at Emory’s Goizueta Business School and a global authority on healthcare management.

For the last two decades, KC has explored many of the most pressing operational issues that healthcare systems face in the context of patient outcomes and spiraling costs. His research findings challenge basic assumptions about the way that modern hospitals should be managed, from the causal ties between sub-optimal triage frameworks and costly patient re-admittance to worker under-productivity and quality of care.

Balancing these operational challenges with the primary purpose of caregiving means that healthcare faces some of the most acute socio-economic issues of our time, noted KC, both in terms of complexity and scale. Rich pickings indeed for researchers.

“There are so many dimensions to healthcare delivery to investigate, and it’s a field that at the same time gives researchers a chance to make significant potential impact in care delivery,” KC said. “One of my research focuses is capacity management. Providers constantly have to figure out who to admit and who to discharge, and these are complex decisions characterized by trade-offs and uncertainty. And there are lots of insights, frameworks and tools from operations management that can be brought to bear both here and across all kinds of capacity allocation settings that define operational flow in hospitals.”

Since 2005, KC’s research has shed light on how to tackle the bottlenecks in patient flow through healthcare systems that tend to cluster around intensive care units — the most expensive resource in hospitals and, consequently, the most over-utilized.

Recently he has been interested in exploring the impact of policy and regulation in healthcare management and patient outcomes.

One of KC’s latest papers looks at another dimension of healthcare that has come under particular scrutiny from policy makers in recent times: advertising.

“In the U.S., some hospitals allocate a significant amount of budget on advertising, but until now it has been unclear whether this is effective in drawing in patients — and crucially, whether this kind of spending is wasteful given that it doesn’t directly impact caregiving.”

He finds that while advertising is successful in attracting patients from further afield and generating greater demand, it does not negatively impact patient outcomes. And it’s likely because the hospitals that spend money on ads also tend to be higher quality — so the more patients they draw in, the better the overall outcomes are in general.

It’s an insight, says KC, that can genuinely inform decision-making at the policy level — part of his goal of having real impact and finding real-world solutions to real-world problems.

Currently he is collaborating with Emory Healthcare, looking at potential ICU capacity shortages should there be successive outbreaks of COVID-19 in the U.S.

So, is he optimistic that American hospitals will have the resources and the wherewithal to overcome these unprecedented challenges?

“There is so much uncertainty about infection rates and a possible vaccine, and so many things that we still don’t know about this novel disease,” he said. “Something that does give me cause for optimism, however, is that we know more about the virus and how to more effectively mobilize our resources to treat it now than we did when it first emerged. But more than that, I have great belief in the capacity of the human spirit to prevail.”

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While data breaches are costly to companies — a recent Ponemon Institute data breach report found that data breaches cost organizations an average of $7 million in the U.S. — their frequency is enough to cause some consumers to wonder if their private information is safe with their favorite brands.

The increase in data breaches is concerning, noted Jesse Bockstedt, associate professor of information systems & operations management, but several studies have found that the out-of-pocket expense to consumers due to identity theft is less than $1,000. “Which isn’t zero, but it’s not like a few years ago when [identity theft] ruined your life and destroyed your credit,” Bockstedt said. As for the companies, he added, “It’s not a brand killer anymore.”

Yet despite consumers’ growing unease, Goizueta faculty say the relationship between privacy and brand loyalty is a bit more intricate. While a data breach can nick a firm’s reputation, it’s the data that is purposely collected beyond the name and vital statistics that worry consumers more.

Building digital trust

Indeed, data privacy appears to be more of a concern to consumers when it comes to the digital trail users leave as they use search engines, apps and social media. Users often agree to fork over data willingly (providing a genomics company with one’s DNA), but more often, user data is captured by the platforms consumers use as they navigate the internet. These platforms then use that data to pepper users with targeted ads. While those products may be “free,” users fork over their data to use them.

Some users don’t seem to care that companies are capturing their data. Known as “the privacy paradox,” consumers profess to worry about their privacy, but their actions indicate the opposite. They click through “Terms of Service” agreements without a glance, sign up for sketchy services and “do all sorts of things that put their privacy at risk,” said Bockstedt.

That said, there are indications that the privacy paradox is waning. A recent Cisco Cybersecurity Series study illustrated that a growing number of consumers closely associate a company’s privacy practices with the company’s brand. As more consumers become aware of their rights around privacy, the study indicates that users will choose to interact almost exclusively with organizations they trust with their data.

“Companies are increasingly worried that people will buy less from their brand if they’re perceived to be fast and loose with customer data,” said Daniel McCarthy, assistant professor of marketing.

For instance, after political data-analytics firm Cambridge Analytica secretly collected data on roughly 87 million Facebook users, back-lash followed. In an effort to regain users’ trust, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg laid out a “privacy-focused vision” for Facebook, but those efforts were widely criticized as not going far enough. Advertising boycotts followed.

In January 2019, Google was fined $57 million for violating terms of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the European Union’s (EU) digital privacy legislation. The technology company was docked for illegally obtaining data from Android users in an effort to target them with ads. The GDPR, which took effect in 2015, gives EU citizens greater control over their personal data and requires organizations to gather data legally and to protect it from misuse. In the U.S., citizens of California, which passed the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) in 2018, are protected under a similar mandate.

Trust: the key to customer loyalty

Minus regulatory guardrails, the differentiating factor is trust, explained Jagdish Sheth, the Charles H. Kellstadt Chair in Marketing. “Trust is built over time by doing what you promise to do and by company behavior that is considered appropriate or right,” Sheth said. Loyalty programs such as those with airlines, hospitality companies and grocery stores are founded on a relationship between a consumer and a brand. “Loyalty programs mean relationships, and in all relationships, trust and commitment are key,” he added.

When consumers engage with a brand through a loyalty program, they enter into an explicit agreement that ties their ability to earn rewards with the surrender of personal information. But Sheth notes that companies don’t have to offer perks to garner loyalty. They can do so by giving back to society at large. The 2020 BrandZ “Top 100 Most Valuable Global Brands” report showed that almost 9 percent of a brand’s equity is linked to corporate reputation.

“The more you show to the customer that you give back and are a good citizen — that you are giving back rather than just bettering yourself — the greater the loyalty,” said Sheth.

Let’s make a deal

For some firms, being forthright is another way to garner trust. For instance, in exchange for consumer information, Nike offers its 140 million NikePlus “members” perks like early access to new products and free shipping. In exchange, those “members” hand over data to Nike. “If I want to make the landing page at Nike.com better — more appealing to you, specifically, I need to know what your preferences are. The only way I’m going to be able to do that is by using your data — by having your data speak to me,” explained McCarthy.

“Brands that are able to deliver a personalized experience in a privacy-friendly manner will have a competitive advantage,” explained David Schweidel, professor of marketing, in a recent “Goizueta Effect” podcast. “Putting a premium on privacy means forgoing the benefits that come from allowing organizations to collect data they use to deliver a better experience. From a commercial standpoint, the onus is on the marketers to make the case that the benefits outweigh privacy concerns.”

Privacy as a perk

Some companies sacrifice a personalized experience in an effort to provide customers with privacy. Internet search engine DuckDuckGo offers users search capabilities without tracking where they go. “At DuckDuckGo, we don’t think the internet should feel so creepy,” states the company on its About page.

One of Apple’s core values is privacy, and the technology company designs its devices with that in mind. However, not collecting user data has a trade-off. “They’ve done an extremely good job at making products people love, but those products aren’t tailored to individual users,” said McCarthy. “Apple isn’t very good at personalization.”

Simplify Terms of Service

Of the respondents in the Cisco study, of customers who had switched companies or providers over questionable data policies, 90 percent said they believe “how their data is treated is indicative of the way they will treat me as a customer.”

Yet in the same study, nearly 75 percent of respondents agreed to the statement, “It’s too hard to figure out what companies are doing with my data.” Schweidel suggests companies could make things easier by simplifying their “Terms of Service” agreement. Show users “on a single screen what data they’re going to collect and how it will be used,” he said.

Where do we go from here?

Indeed Sheth sees the debate as whether privacy is regarded as a right or a privilege. In Europe, privacy is considered a right. In the U.S., it’s generally viewed as a privilege. He believes the U.S. will take its cues from Europe. “If you make the point that the customer owns the data and not the company, that changes everything,” he said.
Ultimately, Sheth is encouraged by the actions taken by Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation. “It’s a social contract,” he said. Sheth would like to believe we’re due for an increase in “conscious capitalism,” he added. “Where making money in any way is not acceptable.”

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Long before Lawrence Coburn 95MBA became a serial entrepreneur, his love of business started at an early age.

“I started a business selling flower pots when I was in seventh grade, had a T-shirt company in college, etc.,” Coburn said. “It was just a matter of time.”

After graduating, Coburn entered a leadership development program with the telecom equipment company Nortel. However, in 1998, his career took a quick turn after he attended a conference in Atlanta to learn about the internet.

“I found it riveting, and it set my brain running a million different directions,” Coburn said. “That night, I went out with my former roommates from Goizueta, and we stayed up all night kicking around ideas.”

A mere two weeks later, he and his friends Craig Hughes 95MBA, Rob Kroenert 95MBA and Brad Lips 95MBA quit their jobs to head to San Francisco to start their first company, RateItAll.com, one of the first commercial user-generated content sites. After 11 years, Coburn decided to create DoubleDutch, a mobile event app, which gained quick momentum on the heels of the emergence of the iPhone.

The company raised more than $90 million from investors like Bessemer, KKR and Floodgate before it was acquired by Cvent in 2019.

During his time at DoubleDutch, Coburn became obsessed with what he called “engineering serendipity” and asking the question, “How can software help remove the barriers to a meaningful one-to-one conversation?” A question that led him to create his latest company, Twine, with cofounder Diana Rau.

“Twine is an attempt to go big on that concept,” Coburn explained. “It’s best described as a platform that connects members to others around the world for meaningful conversations over video chat.”

His work helped him reconnect with Goizueta after Andrea Hershatter, senior associate dean for undergraduate education, visited DoubleDutch with a group of executive MBAs during a West Coast Business Practice Immersion trip. Recently, he participated in a virtual Emory Entrepreneurship Meetup.

“I’m interested in helping budding entrepreneurs,” he said. “There were a few folks that helped me in the early days, and karma dictates that I do the same.”

Coburn continues to stay motived thanks to his classmates, roommates, and now business partners who have helped him create three successful companies. However, for Coburn, he defines success by more than the bottom line.

“Be a good person, leave a mark and hopefully build something great,” he said. “Leave the world better than I found it and be somebody my daughter is proud of.”

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On the last day of classes, John Kim 05MBA, senior lecturer in organization & management, breaks from the strategy basics he normally teaches to help students focus on their future.

“For me, strategy frameworks are not just for businesses (or someone else). They can help us think through our own careers and lives,” Kim said. “Sometimes, education can feel like a straight line, but let’s all agree that life is a bunch of S curves where there is no syllabus.”

Strategy and operations have been his career focus for the past two decades. The Goizueta alum worked with Deloitte Consulting and Philips Healthcare for 12 years before returning to his alma mater in 2017 to teach. For the last three years, as full-time faculty, he has been teaching strategy, consulting and healthcare strategy across the BBA, MBA and Executive Education programs.

“What I tell people is that I get paid to learn, teach and hang out with smart, curious and ambitious people,” he said. “It’s a bit of a luxury. I see myself as a curiosity coach. For me, if students leave the semester more curious, more open-minded and more empowered to ask good questions, I feel I’ve done my job.”

As a big believer in lifelong learning, Kim started a blog in 2012. The Consultant’s Mind showcases hundreds of posts about consulting tips and tricks, working around real-world scenarios and much more.

Recently, Kim launched a new blog, Strategy Happy Hour, where he invites previous students to connect, write and dive deeper into everyday problems. “This year, by the end of Q1, all strategic plans went out the window. It’s a fascinating time to think about, discuss and hopefully improve business,” Kim said.

“Graduating from school, you learn one-third of what you need. The other two-thirds, you’re going to learn through experience,” he said. “It’s my strong belief that intellectual curiosity is fuel for your career. Strategy Happy Hour is a community where people can geek out and write about interesting business stuff as if they were a student again.”

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When it comes to teaching, there are several philosophies and words of advice professors give their students. And for Usha Rackliffe, associate professor in the practice of accounting, those words are: substance and style.

“It’s to be good, to do good and to look good,” Rackliffe said. “How you define substance may be different, but to me, this is a form of service. I share what I know, and you have to have that intellectual curiosity. You have to be excited about life and all the possibilities that life offers.”

The bright pink couch in her Emory office is not only evidence of substance, but is a reflection of springtime, tulips and her unique style.

“Students are with us in the springtime of their lives,” she added. “I want students to be comfortable, and I want them to recognize that you don’t have to be very staid and serious all the time. And, I want people to know accounting people are a lot more than numbers people. We have a whole personality, and each of us is different, unique and special.”

In a recent Goizueta Facebook Live presentation, Rackliffe discussed the impact of COVID-19 on financial statements and made the topic relatable to a wide audience.

Before coming to Goizueta, Rackliffe worked as a chief financial officer managing a $7 billion budget for the University System of Georgia. After semi-retiring, she started teaching at Georgia State. But, when the opportunity to teach at Goizueta became available Rackliffe could not turn it down.

“I’ve always wanted to work at Emory,” she said. “I’ve just absolutely loved every minute of every day because we have such extraordinary faculty and extraordinary students.”

She currently teaches a variety of accounting classes across a spectrum of students, including a new class focused on holistic financial planning.

“If accounting were a religion, I’d kind of be the pastor-in-chief. I’m a big believer in spreading the word of personal financial planning because it’s a really big deal.”

Rackliffe considers herself student-oriented, understanding that she has a valuable, part to play in each of her students’ lives.

“I can’t imagine really doing anything else,” she said. “I’ve always loved every job I’ve ever had, but this one is something extraordinarily special. I’m so blessed to be in this place, and I’m so fortunate to learn stuff from students. This business of being curious about life, it’s very new. It never gets old.”

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During Georgia’s primary elections on June 9, Abigail “Abbie” Greene 21EvMBA and three friends decided they’d provide pizza and beverages to Atlanta-area voters as they waited in long lines to vote. Dubbed ProtestPizzaATL, voters tagged Greene on Instagram to report long lines, after which she and her fellow organizers, and several volunteers arrived to distribute pizza, drinks, snacks and COVID-19 protective gear to voters.

“All the love to Junior’s Pizza,” said Greene, who worked with the Summerhill neighborhood eatery to feed tired voters. Initially, she thought 60 pizzas would be enough. A reduction in the number of polling places, the coronavirus pandemic, new voting machines and better-than-predicted turn out created “a perfect storm,” Greene explained, that led to hours-long lines and a revised order of 130 pizzas. “It’s sad we had to organize in the first place, but it’s ultimately very inspiring,” Greene said, noting that the group raised more than $11,000 to continue their efforts.

When not coming to the aid of others, Greene works as a partner compensation specialist for McKinsey & Company. It’s a role “at the nexus of financial and people issues,” she explained. “Salaries are humans with mortgages and bills.” Greene is confident in her skills regarding “the human side” of her job but wanted to increase her abilities in the finance function and to hone her leadership skills. So, she decided to pursue an MBA. Preferring a holistic experience, and one that would provide the rigor she deemed necessary to take her to the next level, Greene chose Emory’s Goizueta Business School.

“Goizueta takes a multi-dimensional view of what it means to be a leader and how to develop that,” she said.

Greene grew up in Omaha, Nebraska, and studied organizational behavior and international business at the University of Nebraska. A resident of Atlanta since 2013, Greene lives in Grant Park with her partner, Colin Poe, dog Sadie and cat Nix. Last July, she and Poe trekked 27 miles to the summit of Mt. Whitney. They’d planned a trip to Mt. Kilimanjaro this summer, but the coronavirus pandemic put that trip on hold. These days, the pair hike in the North Georgia mountains and cycle near their home.

After she graduates next spring, Greene plans to remain in Atlanta and at McKinsey. That said, as an undergraduate, she spent five months in Barcelona, Spain, and would be up for an international assignment in the not-so-distant future. For now, Greene continues to work, go to school, and to make plans for how she and her fellow organizers can best assist voting efforts this election cycle — not only by repeating the group’s food-centric election day efforts, but also through community outreach that focuses on early and absentee voting. “We’re working to have a more expansive operation,” Greene said. “We’re thinking more holistically about what we can impact.”

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Like Cuomo, business and government leaders around the world are using data to drive decisions, and their reliance on analytics is only growing in scope and importance. Joining in this data-driven journey are Goizueta graduates from across marketing, manufacturing, healthcare and government. Each one synthesizes data to form conclusions, direct operations and lead change in their organizations — all based on analytics.

Data meets the day-to-day

“Data analytics permeates every aspect of the business,” said Erik Sjogren 99MBA, vice president and general manager of Georgia-Pacific’s Disposable Tableware Business. “I have to know how to read the data and act on it.”

Sjogren works with both product manufacturing and retailers for G-P’s Dixie brand consumer products. “At the manufacturing level, data informs the lines’ efficiency, which gives a true understanding of how much products cost to produce. For marketing, data analytics helps us understand if products are priced right and if the shelf space at the retail level is adequate.”

The benefits of predictive analytics, he says, can signal a negative event in the manufacturing process. For example, if there is an equipment failure, past data combined with the current workflow will alert the manufacturing team that a machine is about to go down. On the retail side, the company’s big data capabilities allow for minimal inefficiencies in the supply chain of products by indicating which products should be in which stores.

“I’ve watched the availability of data as well as tools and technology to understand it,” said Jessica Talpos 12MBA, senior customer development manager for Johnson & Johnson based in Chicago. “Both have exploded, which helps us understand the consumer better than ever before — how they behave, what motivates them, what they buy and don’t buy.”

Talpos manages the Neutrogena Skincare business with retailer Walgreens. “It’s my responsibility to understand how various internal and external factors affect my sales. I look at everything from price elasticity to promotional increases, consumer shopping trends, economic factors and competition,” explained Talpos. “Then I triangulate those pieces of data to understand how they affect my business and what actions I need to take to grow.”

According to Talpos, analytics “helps to decide which products meet consumer needs and to talk about products in ways that resonate, personalizing the message for different audiences.”

Indeed, determining consumer shopping needs has taken a sharp shift back to the basics thanks to the impact of COVID-19. Just ask Pooja Adiseshu 19MSBA, an associate with Tredence Inc., a San Jose-based management consulting firm. Her latest project involves work with a national retailer on the company’s e-commerce website performance. Traffic is off the charts, and determining how to maximize consumer spend by offering relevant products is a challenge she, and a team of others, have embarked on. “We try to determine product categories where the company is doing well and where they can improve,” she said.

The work is fast-paced and intense, but upper management is watching closely, said Adiseshu. “Because of the pandemic, the entire shopping experience has changed,” she said. “So, it’s really important to follow the data and identify what’s working and what isn’t. This information is getting reported to the board every month, so there’s a lot of scrutiny.”

Analytics impacts every industry

Big data has not only changed the game by providing insights on consumers and products, it’s influencing industry makeup and careers.

“From a macro perspective, there’s a convergence of the consulting world, the marketing world and the tech world,” said Nicky Friedman 03BBA, director of creative strategy for Brado, a marketing and strategy agency based in Chicago. “Underlying that convergence means trying to do a better job of integrating the data that’s collected.”

Friedman’s work revolves around helping clients understand consumer motivations, beliefs and perceptions. One example of this is marketing segmentation work that uses quantitative data to identify what types of consumers exist in a given product category. For a recent healthcare project focused on patients with a chronic condition, Friedman and her team found six distinct types of patients, ranging from proactive patients taking a hands-on approach to managing their care to those who struggled to understand and deal with their condition.

“This has implications on how you decide to market to them, who influences their decisions, what information they need and how to deliver that information to them,” said Friedman. “We were able to overlay our findings with some psychological theories to further humanize these patients.”

Tracy Jensen 90MBA/MPA has seen how advances in data collection are changing healthcare.

“My first job was rate setting for hospitals. At that time, we used data to determine which insurer, private or public, was paying for the most procedures,” said Jensen, who is a director with the City of Alameda Health Care District and a board member of the Alameda Health System in California. “When managed care expanded in the mid-1990s, it was a huge change in terms of analytics. We needed to identify the population’s health and the comprehensive number of services, then determine reimbursement for bundled services, as opposed to service by service.” Jensen finds analytics now plays a big part in understanding population health, ensuring proper care is administered and issues are addressed in a comprehensive way. “Predictive analytics is an effective tool to make sure patients are discharged correctly and don’t come back,” said Jensen. Using utilization data to identify appropriate acute care and post-care services has been shown to reduce patient readmissions, improve health outcomes, and support fiscal accountability.

The key to unlocking workplace trends

For Parul Lahoti Bhandari 10MBA, analytics not only influences her decision-making, it changed the trajectory of her career.

Bhandari began her career in human resources, before entering the consulting world managing software customers. “Data took me to this role,” said Bhandari, who is senior manager of customer service success at VelocityEHS in Chicago, which provides software for workplace safety. “Our customers are businesses seeking ways to keep their workplaces safe. Once we understand their goals, we show them how software can help the process. We follow how they use it, and we look at their aggregate data and trends — the ebb and flow of activity,” Bhandari said. “We’re constantly looking at data and metrics. For example, if we see their activity drop in a certain area, even without talking to customers, we know what this behavior tells us.”

Further, Bhandari added, “In my current role, I had to understand what people wanted to see before they knew they wanted to see it. It’s an intuitive role. The data helps you to be intuitive. We now have so many insights we can give our customers to ensure success.”

This type of mental dexterity that allows patterns to form and creates precise conclusions can be taught and has made careers in big data explode. Emory’s Goizueta Business School offers a master’s in business analytics and boasts a diverse and international slate of students every year.

Barely four years old, the master’s in business analytics program is unique because it provides an academic intersection of business, data and technology with practical applications throughout industry, said Ramnath Chellappa, professor of information systems & operations management and associate dean and academic director of the MSBA program. “What makes our program special is that we pay faithful attention not only to the data science but also to the technology component,” he said. “Our goal is to create business data scientists.”

Adiseshu credits the capstone project in the MSBA program with the ability to convey relevant information to C-suite leaders in a succinct and meaningful way. “A big focus was on implementing in the real world. I have to explain to stakeholders what the data means and not get too technical about it.”

Providing insights to government

In the public sector, data drives government spending, informing the decision-making process on the federal, state and local levels.

David Friedman 93MBA works with long-term budget planning as a programming branch chief for the Programming and Formulation Division of the U.S. Border Patrol in Washington, D.C. “We are preparing a five-year budget, and to do that, we analyze data on our current capabilities and on what we want our future capabilities to be,” said Friedman, adding any budget he develops goes through multiple layers of review. “The Office of Management and Budget represents the administration, and they have been increasingly data-focused and results-focused. In the ten years that I’ve been part of the federal government, I’ve seen an increased emphasis on data-driven decision-making. We want to provide data analytics to support our requests.”

Similarly, Jason Cooksey 11EMBA, IT finance manager for the County of San Mateo, California, finds data influences how tech investments are prioritized for the county. Cooksey uses available data to optimize cost strategies to maximize the IT spend and ROI for his county’s 20 cities and over 760,000 residents.

“As a government entity operating in the heart of Silicon Valley, the bar of expectation is raised higher by our cities and peer counties from across the U.S.,” he said. “We can definitely mature more in leveraging the power of data analytics.”

Cooksey is currently allocating resources to upgrade aged IT infrastructure running old applications to allow for more modern data collection and analysis. He is also steering investments into efforts such as creating cloud-based solutions, expanding public wi-fi and fiber connectivity to remote and coastal areas and enabling data sharing between the county’s criminal justice departments, local public safety agencies and superior court. “We are generating volumes of data that are multiplying by leaps and bounds, and we need to find new ways to harness all the data for the good of our communities.”

What’s next?

The need for quality interpretation of data is reflected in the expansion of curriculum at Goizueta, as well as in its influence in every facet of business. The growing importance of data collection and the improvements in machine learning mean collection and analysis are more pervasive than ever. From government officials using data to fight a virus to managers making smarter choices for the benefit of customers and the bottom line, data analytics is here to stay.

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