Percy Muente 08MBA’s office is in a modern, mid-rise building in the upscale Chico neighborhood of Bogotá, Colombia. It’s a relatively quiet area, with good restaurants and shops, several blocks away from Bogotá’s congested thoroughfares. Dressed in khakis and a button-down shirt, Muente blends in with employees moving about Kimberly-Clark’s open office space. He is quick to say hello to coworkers, often stopping to give them a hug and a single kiss on the cheek—a typical Colombian greeting. He keeps a low profile, but Muente is the boss. As general manager of Kimberly-Clark’s Colombia, SA operation, Muente oversees nearly 2,000 employees (Kimberly-Clark has nearly 42,000 employees in 35 countries) and is responsible for ensuring that all aspects of the company’s business in Colombia, from sales to supply chain, are aligned. 

A native of Peru, Muente began his Kimberly-Clark career as an intern a decade ago. After he graduated from Goizueta, Muente accepted a full-time role with Kimberly-Clark, an $18.2 billion consumer products company that produces some of the world’s most recognized brands, including Huggies, Kleenex, and Kotex. “The values of the company resonate with me. The leaders inspire me. I feel good about the culture here,” he says. “I love what I do. That’s helped me grow in the company.”

While with Kimberly-Clark, Muente has worked in Peru, Bolivia, and Colombia, where he’s been for the last three years. Toggling between cultures, Muente realized he needed to be humble and learn different approaches—both personally and professionally—to connect and engage with people. “You cannot come in and impose your ideas and strategy without gleaning an accurate picture of what’s going on from your team,” he says. “You have to have an active listening approach.”

When he’s in the office, a typical day might mean huddling with his sales and marketing team or getting briefed on how the turmoil in Venezuela is affecting business in Colombia. But much of Muente’s time is spent in the field, visiting supermarkets and vendors—from chain retailers to mom-and-pop shops in impoverished neighborhoods. When company representatives noticed that the small storeowners sold individual Huggies diapers to customers who couldn’t afford to buy an entire package, Kimberly-Clark designed a large pack so that small shopkeepers could sell individually wrapped, hygienically sealed diapers.

Muente relishes this proactive approach and is often guided by the principles of Roberto Goizueta, who is quoted as saying, “Competition may copy your strategy, your product, and your go-to-market strategy, but they can’t copy your people and your culture.”

“That’s the ultimate strategic advantage a company can have,” Muente says. “People see who you hire, who you promote, and who you fire. Meritocracy is the most powerful message you can send in an organization.

“Roberto Goizueta has a famous phrase—‘The only task a leader cannot delegate is communication.’ I carry that with me always,” he explains. 

When he first moved to Colombia, Muente’s fellow Goizueta classmate Lucas Marulanda 08MBA, director at Advent International in Bogotá, helped him get settled. “Goizueta creates a great sense of community, of friends all around the world. That’s huge. I love the relationships I built over those two of years of my life,” he says. In 2013, Muente accompanied Peter Roberts, professor of organization & management, and a group of Goizueta students on a trip to Bolivia. The team prepared a feasibility study for Kimberly-Clark regarding the improvement of the paper recycling
program in Santa Cruz. “It was a win-win project,” states Muente. Each year, he returns to Atlanta to judge student presentations at Goizueta IMPACT Showcase Day. “It’s a way to give back,” he says. Plus, many of the project solutions shared at the event “are great starters of ideas that I can apply in the company.”

Percy isn’t the only Muente to graduate from Goizueta. His older brother, Arturo Muente Kunigami 06MBA, inspired Percy to choose Goizueta. (Arturo currently works for the Inter-American Development Bank in Washington, DC.) A younger brother, Juan Jose Muente, lives in Lima, Peru. Percy and his wife, Carla, have two children, Ignacio and Antonio. What Muente likes most about living in Colombia is “the culture and warmness of the people and the ability to enjoy a variety of wonderful places with my family. Colombians are very educated, warm, and happy people. They are proud of their country, heritage, music, and their development in recent years.”

When he’s not working or exploring Colombia with his family, Muente likes to go to the gym. If he’s watching television, it could be Game of Thrones. “I’m a big fan,” he says. 

Muente plans on staying with Kimberly-Clark for the foreseeable future, but he’s motivated to do more. He’d really like to teach at a university in Latin America. “As a way to give back to society and to develop new leaders,” Muente says. “People are the base to build a better future.”

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For analytical sleuths like Michael Lewis, associate professor of marketing, and Michelle Andrews, assistant professor of marketing, the impact of branding is everywhere, from major league teams to politics.

In a recent conversation, the duo discussed academics, sports, and the future of marketing.

EB: Analytics is a hot topic and Goizueta even has a new master’s in business analytics program. Has analytics replaced old-fashioned marketing techniques like focus groups?

Andrews: There is a difference between attitude and behavior. A focus group is about intent or how people feel, but analytics really captures behavior. Are you physically present? Did you actually buy tickets? This gives a better picture of what actually occurs.

Lewis: That’s a good way to look at it. Analytics is evolving. “Big data” is a buzz word that did not mean a lot seven or eight years ago. Now we are hitting a second or third generation of analytics, and the reality is companies really need to do both. Companies need to use the traditional techniques like a focus group to talk to customers and then back it up by actually seeing what’s happening in terms of the data.

EB: Speaking of analytics, tell us more about the Emory Marketing Analytics Center (MAC).

Lewis: In the past, Emory MAC has put on conferences, started to build bridges to the local business community, and offered student-level options, like applied class projects. One of the reasons Michelle joined us is to help take the analytics center to the next level. She has expertise in working with companies on field experiments, which is a great addition to our services.

EB: Michelle, would you talk a little bit about field experiments with companies and what they entail?

Andrews: A lot of begging. I say that honestly. We are interested in publishing insights we gather in the field. However, companies are very competitive. They are not very open to someone who they consider works only on theory. Also, they are concerned that information will be released and their competitors will find out. Since my research is in mobile marketing, I ask how firms can deliver better mobile messages. I look at factors that affect people’s likelihood of responding, such as where they are, the time of day, and what’s going on around them when they receive the message.

Lewis: Can I take this in a different direction? Michelle used the word begging to describe how academics interface with the business community, and this does happen a lot. Companies have an agenda: they are driving revenue and trying to launch new products, and the thought of exploring ideas is not top of mind for them. One of the things we really emphasize in analytics is the need to go beyond the traditional academic approach of “let’s explore this theory” to “here’s a theory that is dead-on relevant to what a company is going to do.” When we develop these partnerships with businesses, we are offering them information with immediate impact. I see our role as the long-term R&D arm for companies that partner with us.

EB: Would you give us an example?

Andrews: A recent project involved how crowds may make people more responsive to mobile ads. My colleagues and I recently approached a mobile marketing company and said, “We think that when people are in crowded situations, they tend to deal with anxiety by looking at mobile phones. If you capture people when they are in crowds, this would be a perfect time to try to send them a message.” We ran an experiment in an underground subway system of a large city that was mobile equipped, where you could actually use your cell phone while riding the subway, and found that people were more likely to respond to an incoming message from a marketer when the train was crowded than when it was not.

EB: So is companies’ ability to target mobile users the holy grail of marketing?

Andrews: I don’t think mobile is the endgame. As consumers, we have technology in our cars, we wear smartwatches and Fitbits, and many people are comfortable moving across devices throughout the day. The next step for marketers is not to have a strategy for a single device, but a strategy for the consumer.

Lewis: I will go a bit more old school. This idea that the mobile phone is something fundamentally different, I don’t buy that. When grocery stores began scanning products and adding loyalty cards, that was considered revolutionary. From there we went to e-commerce to track all the clicks. And now we have mobile. What we see over time is a continual growth in the amount of data that companies potentially have access to with customers. The real black box becomes, “How do I use this massive amount of data?”

EB: Coming back to the business school, would you talk about your teaching methods and what classes you teach?

Andrews: I teach the core, which is the first class students take if they major in marketing. It covers marketing principles, and I use cases and lectures.

Lewis: In the last couple of years, I’ve focused on teaching sports marketing classes here at Emory. The course has evolved into a guest-heavy format, so in a given semester I might bring in 10 people from the local business community who range from the president of the Atlanta Hawks, to former NFL players, to the GM of the local Atlanta professional disc team. My job becomes knitting all of these stories together to tell a big-picture story about marketing.

EB: On a personal note, when you’re not working, what are your outside interests?

Andrews: Mike, do you want to talk about your knitting hobby? Or is it crochet? I keep forgetting.

Lewis: In addition to her encyclopedic knowledge of women’s sports, Michelle is a beer lover.

Andrews: My favorite beer right now is a sour beer called Duchesse De Bourgogne.

EB: And you Mike?

Lewis: I’ve got four kids plus two Great Pyrenees dogs and two cats—that is the extent of my hobbies!

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Is the time of the employee close at hand? After more than 20 years of downsizing, offshoring, buyouts, and innovation setting fire to traditional rules of the workplace, things are looking up for experienced, in-demand professionals. Many economic trends are on the uptick, and the unemployment rate continues to drop, from 8.2 percent in July 2012 to 4.3 percent in July 2017.

For workers with specialized skills, the job market is ripe with opportunity.   

Top talent can be picky about where to work, and it isn’t necessarily about more pay. No, highly educated and skilled professionals are looking to work for companies where they feel motivated, engaged, and appreciated.

Employers must learn—quickly—what that means.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 25 percent of US employees quit their jobs in 2015.

The ability to recruit and retain top talent has become a valuable competitive advantage. Human capital, like equipment or products, translates to the bottom line. So why do established companies find it difficult to attract and keep the best and brightest? While many factors contribute to such turnover, research suggests one key reason workers leave jobs is because they aren’t sure they can trust their employer.

Recessions, globalization, and technological advances lead companies to downsize. But downsizing can exact a heavy emotional cost on workers—on those who lose their jobs and on others who remain.

These actions alone can breed distrust. It’s no wonder much of the workforce takes pause when choosing a place to spend their workdays.

According to Emily Bianchi, assistant professor of organization & management, trust and fairness impact recruiting and retention. She says employees must have confidence in employers to feel committed to their work and to the company.

“People are more likely to stay with employers they believe are trustworthy and fair,” she says. Indeed, a study from the Society for Human Resource Management ¹  indicates that “a culture of respect, trust, and belonging” is a key component for creating an effective workplace.

The rules of engagement

Long ago, corporate leaders embraced the importance of feelings in the workplace. But the competition for talent is steep and deep in intangibles, particularly for older companies looking to compete with Millennial-heavy firms embracing work-life balance, community activism, and any number of perks. A large, well-established corporation may not be seen as nimble or creative enough to attract experienced executives or retain more motivated employees. Highly skilled workers often seek smaller, more innovative firms that can add to their skill set and ability to pivot to the next career opportunity. With less hierarchy, smaller companies often offer a better chance for advancement and the opportunity to play a more decisive role in the organization’s future.

The result? Employees are more engaged.

A new guard of technology firms dominates Fortune magazine’s 100 Best Companies to Work For in 2017. Bianchi believes employers underestimate the role of trust, fairness, and engagement in recruiting and retention. She finds engagement improves recruiting and retention efforts and adds to worker productivity.

Culture and profit are connected.

Understanding fairness

So, what’s a company to do?  Bianchi argues corporations should work hard to develop a sense of trust in order to win—and keep—the best and brightest.
One way organizations can build trust is through transparency.

“Organizations and managers that are transparent about how they make decisions tend to be more trusted,” she says. “When they are not transparent, there is a sense there is something people are hiding—a reason they don’t want employees to know what is really going on.” 

Bianchi says it’s in a company’s best interests to figure out what truly motivates employees. That’s more than throwing money at the problem. She says employers assume employees care primarily about outcomes—how much they are paid, chances for promotions, and titles.

Not completely true.

“Of course people care about these things, but they also care a lot about whether they are treated respectfully and in fair and transparent ways,” Bianchi says.

Research suggests employees form trust judgments early in their tenure with an organization. Bianchi says once an employee forms a judgment, it’s hard to change and recommends managers do their best to earn employees’ trust early and often.

“Being fair and transparent is an inexpensive and relatively easy way to recruit and retain the best employees,” she says.

And retention is certainly in a company’s economic interest. According to the Society for Human Resource Management², employers shell out about six to nine months of an employee’s pay to recruit and train a replacement.

And don’t forget productivity.

The IBM Smarter Workforce Institute’s research report “The Employee Experience Index” notes, “Positive employee experience can contribute to higher motivation to apply extra effort at work and go ‘above and beyond’ typical job responsibilities.”

While it’s inexpensive (and smart) to be fair, Bianchi’s research suggests several ingrained behaviors work against managers. For example, people often have different assumptions about whether other people are trustworthy. Bianchi says employers may not recognize it, but some people are simply more trusting than others.

“They assume others have good motives and will act in the common interest,” she says. “Others tend to view people with suspicion and expect that others will somehow harm them. People who are more generally trusting tend to have more positive perceptions of whether their workplace is fair and equitable.”

In this sense, it can be hard for employers to change people’s preexisting beliefs about whether or not workplaces are fair.

A sense of belonging

But building trust and creating a culture of fairness can’t occur in a vacuum. A long stream of academic research, including that performed by Goizueta’s Erika Hall, reveals the power of bias in the workplace.

Hall, assistant professor of organization & management, notes racial and gender bias hurt employee engagement. Her research indicates most bias is not obvious, but the mere perception of bias can impact job performance and employee retention.

“People tend to know about overt prejudice, but bias isn’t always readily apparent,” she says. For example, a manager might favor one employee over another for a position simply based on perceived gender roles and what they think a “male” or “female” job should be.

Hall argues companies can work to handle covert biases and begin to create a fairer and more trusting workplace by acknowledging that bias exists and that most people have preconceived notions about a group or gender.

“If you’re conscious of bias and you have a desire to create a bias-free environment, it means you can work against it,” she says. “If employers can recognize the systemic bias in commonplace incidents, they can counteract it in the workplace.”

According to Hall, companies can select leaders who recognize what an inclusive workplace truly means. According to research from Catalyst³, “inclusive leaders both value their employees’ unique diversity and also find a common ground to foster a sense of belongingness.” 

As employees place an ever-increasing value on the company culture, it’s impacting the job decisions they make. If company culture is seen as inviting and accepting, then prospective employees will likely hear about it.

If the company is seen as a place where opinions and people aren’t valued, then the world will know it.

“Current and prospective employees are, generally speaking, looking for their companies to be more
socially minded or conscious,” Hall says. “Reputation follows a company, and even prospective employees know about the ‘feel’ or environment at certain companies.”

All things being equal

If negative impressions have an impact outside company walls, what is the impact inside? Rarely do decisions affect an internal or external audience exclusively. Willie Choi 11PhD, associate professor of business administration at the University of Pittsburgh, says choices managers make about an employee are observed and assessed by other employees in the organization. His research into “vicarious learning” shows a trickle-down effect leaders should recognize, especially if there’s a misstep.

“Imagine two coworkers, one more senior than the other,” Choi says. “If the more senior employee is let go, the more junior coworker sees that decision and will immediately think about the implications for himself or herself.”

But Choi says issues of fairness and trust can have differing implications depending on whether or not the manager makes decisions for recruiting or retention.

“I think there is a distinction regarding what fairness and equality mean for recruiting compared to what those concepts mean for retention,” Choi says. “In particular, recruiting processes are embedded within an external labor market, in which there are many prospective job candidates looking for jobs and, likely, many employers looking for qualified candidates.”

Uncertainty exists in an external market. No one is certain any specific job candidate is a perfect match for the position. That uncertainty affects what job candidates and employees view as fair or equal.

In contrast, retention is part of an “internal” labor market where employers and employees have
more information about the nature of the job and its demands.

“Both sides have tangible, firsthand experience of the employment relationship and thus have a better sense of the match between the employer and employee,” Choi says.

Those assessments relate to how the employee is performing in his or her current job and how said employee might perform if promoted.

A strategic approach

Additional insights change what employers and employees view as equal or fair.

Research indicates employers take a proactive approach to creating a fairer and more engaging work environment. Unfortunately, employers may not be making the critical link between improving the company culture and its positive impact on retention.

Karl Kuhnert, professor in the practice of organization & management, says high employee turnover is no surprise given a large number of companies have no efforts to address attrition. To rectify this, formal and informal training, as well as mentorship, should focus on future jobs, not merely improving current performance. Kuhnert’s research shows younger employees especially want to feel like the company is invested in them. Kuhnert joined the Goizueta faculty this fall, and for more than 20 years his research has focused on leadership development and organizational change.

“Your best employees want access to ways to increase their skills to rise within the company,”
Kuhnert says.

It’s no secret employees want work with a purpose.

One of the best retention strategies, according to Kuhnert, is to have a company purpose that deeply resonates with the people in the organization.

“If I am contributing to a worthwhile mission, and we are doing that together, I am unlikely to seek out [other] employment options,” he says. “Most employees want to know how they’re doing on their jobs. In too many jobs, people don’t see a connection between their work effort, pay, and rewards.” 

Employees and leaders working as one is of great importance, says Graham Geiselman 06BBA, manager in the human capital practice at Deloitte Consulting. He says collaboration can go a long way to bridging the gap between employer and employee. He recommends companies encourage a collaborative environment to build camaraderie and trust between employees and, consequently, the organization.

The end result, he argues (and research supports), is a more productive company.

For managers looking to encourage collaboration, they’ll need to think beyond the office. Leaders should appreciate work-life pressures their employees face and how the same pressures can tank a productive and collaborative workplace, says Geiselman. He notes Deloitte and its own generous leave policy as an example of such understanding. But the upstarts in the corporate world are leading the way and changing what top employees expect from a company.

“It seems that some of the companies that are best at embracing the balance of work and play are smaller startup organizations that feature things like unlimited PTO, flexible work schedules, and outstanding family benefits,” Geiselman says.

Value of empathy

Successful leaders are attuned to the particular needs, values, and motivations of their employees. In the book titled The Map: Your Path to Effectiveness in Leadership, Life, and Legacy, Kuhnert and coauthor Keith Martin Eigel argue great leaders lead where others are, not where they themselves are. This level of understanding creates a sense of inclusiveness and trust, and, in turn, employees feel more committed to the organization.

“Effective leaders know how to put themselves in another’s shoes and see what others see,” Kuhnert says. 

It’s a big mistake for top managers to forget their empathetic side, says Kuhnert, especially given the demands of a younger workforce. Perks like time off and higher pay are relevant, but growth opportunities, like increasing job responsibility and access to leadership development programs, are essential.

“What young leaders want is a chance to help grow the company,” he says. “Too often many managers miss the opportunity to invest in employee loyalty by not including young leaders in their executive development programs.” 

Loyalty is bred through trust and a sense of fairness in the workplace.

“In today’s organization, we are all networked, and we depend on one another to do our jobs,” Kuhnert says. “When we let others down, communication and relationships become strained and problems go unaddressed, and it eventually impacts bottom-line profits. With so much daily stress, there is little time for the important kind of reflection that unlocks commitment, trust, courage, loyalty, and other vital virtues necessary for leadership.”

The takeaway

Research is clear.

Companies must invest more time and money toward motivating employees—as much or more than skills training.

Bianchi says the absence of investment can have devastating consequences, whether it’s a drop in employee productivity or an increase in attrition.

While her research continues to delve into trust and fairness issues in the workplace, she has expanded it to study CEO misconduct, the impact of the economy on ethics, and the effect of economic recession on individualism.

But she isn’t surprised trust and fairness remain at the top of her mind in today’s ever-evolving and fractured workplace.

For organizations hoping to change the current dynamic, Bianchi recommends leaders start at the beginning and understand what causes employees to worry about trust and fairness in the first place.

“It’s simply because humans are hardwired to care about it,” she says. “Our attention and anger spike when we believe we are being treated unfairly. It’s something we see very clearly in children, but what we may not recognize is that adults care just as much about it. Employees who don’t believe they are being treated fairly are likely to be looking for other opportunities and putting in less effort towards helping the organization succeed.”

1  Society for Human Resource Management’s “Effective Workplace Index,” 2017

2  Society for Human Resource Management’s “Human Capital
Benchmarking Report,” 2016

3  Prime, Jeanine and Elizabeth R. Salib. “Inclusive Leadership:
The View From Six Countries.” New York: Catalyst, 2014

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At 84 years old, Robert “Bob” Owens 55MBA insists on carrying a camera bag up a flight of stairs. “How do you think I got to be 84?” he asks, depositing the bag on the landing. His wife, Alice, three years Bob’s junior, shakes her head. Recently, she spotted her husband on top of a rickety ladder, trimming trees in the backyard. When Alice suggested they hire someone to do the trimming, Bob bought a new ladder. It’s not surprising, then, that Owens isn’t really retired. Retired from decades in the banking industry, maybe. But not from entrepreneurship.

An economics major with a degree from Samford University, Owens chose Emory, a school just launching its MBA program, over other schools, not least because the school offered him a full ride. Not long before Owens had applied, he’d contracted nonparalytic polio, which made work difficult. Emory gave him $1,200 for tuition and expenses for the one-year program.

After graduating, Owens took a job at GE, but his career stalled over a technicality. Owens’s mom, born to her missionary parents when they lived in Argentina, was considered a foreign national. Because of her status, Owens was denied the security clearance necessary to work on top projects, so he left GE. He went into banking, working for various banks before becoming a senior vice president loan and investment specialist at what is now SunTrust.

In 1998, in an attempt to diversify their investments, the Owenses became part owners of Pirate’s Island, an “adventure golf” experience with outposts in several cities, including Gulf Shores, Alabama. Originally approached to run the day-to-day operations, Owens convinced the owners to sell him part of the Gulf Shores business. A small business entrepreneur was born. “Best investment we ever made,” he says. He surveys the 36-hole course, which is a beehive of activity, with visitors of all ages putting around cannons and through caves. His investment in Pirate’s Island illustrates Owens’s fundamental tenets of successful investing, both professionally and personally: “Buy quality to hold with minimal expense and without leverage,” he says. “Spend less than you make—that’s how you get comfortable.”

He and his wife are two years shy of their 60th wedding anniversary. They have two grown sons and five grandchildren. The Owenses also attended the 50th reunion of Emory’s Class of 1955. Asked for words of wisdom he likes to pass on to young people, Owens recalls a Benjamin Franklin phrase: “An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.”

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When Aurora Hill 17EvMBA was introduced to the Delta Leadership Coaching Fellows Program (LCF), she figured it would be just another class, definitely worthwhile but not transformative.

Instead, it changed the trajectory of her career.

In the Delta LCF Program, student fellows receive opportunities to lead through three pillars: academic learning, experiential learning by coaching first-year MBA candidates, and a reflection learning component, whereby a fellow works with an executive coach on self-development.

For Hill, the feedback she received from her coach, Danielle Rubenstein, senior associate director of Goizueta Alumni Career Services, proved invaluable.

“The two biggest lessons for me were the power of active listening and the flexibility that comes with having a set of skills that enables teams to navigate complex problems for which I have no defined answer,” she notes. “Before I started the program, I assumed the only way I could lead a team through an obstacle was to have experienced something much like it. Instead, I learned how to help teams identify potential roadblocks and how to be open with one another, such that they facilitate solutions on their own.”

Freed from the constraints of her former thinking, Hill blossomed.

“This knowledge gave me the self-assurance to pursue opportunities that were not directly applicable to my past experiences. It definitely helped bolster my confidence as a leader,” says Hill.

A biomedical engineer by trade, Hill was accustomed to dealing with algorithms and programs. Previously, “if I asked you a question and you said ‘X,’ then I knew to do ‘Y.’” In the leadership fellows program, her skills broadened. “I developed some of those softer skills that helped me understand how a person’s feelings might influence their team interactions.”

Armed with her newfound communication skills, Hill has struck out on her own, opening Gray Ivy LLC. There, she provides services as an independent consultant and manages projects for midsized and start-up medical technology companies. The MBA has elevated her status in the marketplace, allowing her to offer clients in the biotech and
medical technology space a familiarity with FDA regs and strategic options.

As for the fellows programs, she is a big proponent. “I absolutely would encourage anyone to take advantage
of this, because most of us want to be managers someday. If you can’t get a team to move towards a goal, you are going to be an ineffective leader. Absolutely, I would recommend this program over and over again.”

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Since 2015, Alpa Sutaria 96MBA has been working on some of the biggest transformations in The Coca-Cola Company’s recent history, each with a set of sticky, challenging problems and opportunities.

And that’s just the way this Coca-Cola veteran likes it.

Until recently, she worked with the leadership team of Coca-Cola Refreshments to tackle the daunting task of seamlessly selling off all of the company-owned bottling operations in the US to independent bottlers, all while driving great business results.

Sutaria worked closely with a cross-section of leaders to craft and execute “a really good game plan for how we would accomplish it, while we were actually going through it ourselves.” They had to ensure that thousands of employees were delivering the business plan, successfully refranchising, and staying engaged and empowered, all while in transition themselves. “Truly a case study of leadership and resilience on steroids,” she says.

In June, she was tapped by the new Coca-Cola Company Chief People Officer, Jennifer Mann, and CEO James Quincey to help take the 135-year-old company to the next level and beyond.

“At Coca-Cola, we are working to give our consumers what they are telling us they want, where they want it,” Sutaria notes. “We have a great foundation to get there as a total beverage company. To go further, we must become flexible and agile, more curious and entrepreneurial.”

Sutaria’s current title is lead for strategy execution and culture transformation. In this role, she is figuring out how to utilize “the amazing talent we have all around the globe and leverage their passion to drive some of the changes we’d like to make.”

Not surprisingly, Sutaria has built a reputation for delivering value over the nearly 15 years she’s worked at the beverage giant. What sets her apart, she says, is focusing on learning instead of a career goal, being fulfilled, and accurately connecting the dots.

“For me, fulfillment comes from the ability to deliver results that really last,” she says. “This requires me to be open
and creative.”

Sutaria uses her innate curiosity and varied network of fellow employees to make connections. “Because I’ve had so many different types of jobs within the company, I am able to pull different groups together, which brings fresh ideas to problems.”

Her flair for solving problems propelled Sutaria from an initial path of industrial engineering to earning her MBA at Goizueta. Not only did she gain the necessary tools to move into the field of consulting, but she got her first taste of the principals and legend of Roberto C. Goizueta.

“I began school just as the gift named in Mr. Goizueta’s honor was announced and the school named for him,” recalls Sutaria. “It was such an honor meeting Mr. Goizueta. He was the speaker at our graduation and gave us our diplomas. Needless to say, my passion for the Coke system started way back then.”

She spent eight years at Deloitte before joining Coca-Cola in 2003. Reflecting on her tenure, Sutaria credits the work ethic and values instilled in her by immigrant parents.

“I come from a family of first-generation immigrants. My parents are Indian ethnically but have roots in East Africa—Kenya and Uganda. I was actually born in Uganda,” she says. “My parents worked multiple jobs just to make ends meet, and yet we had a wonderful childhood growing up. Our life was really all about focusing on hard work, dedication to each other, and enjoying what we had. I learned about grit from them. They really inspired me to think beyond our problems and to understand that we are on this planet to make a difference, and we can do that in so many ways every day.”

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If you haven’t been back to campus lately, chances are you won’t recognize the changes on Clifton Road. Not only did the University and Emory Healthcare totally revamp the road, but they added a new access street to accommodate traffic and opened a new state-of-the-art hospital tower, just adjacent to the law school and encompassing the original B Building of Emory Clinic.

The 450,000-square-foot, $400 million tower, across Clifton Road from the current hospital, comprises 232 patient beds, including 40 critical care beds. The new hospital tower provides an additional 128 net beds, bringing the total number of licensed beds at Emory University Hospital to 733.

“The opening of this tower is the first major expansion at Emory University Hospital in years,” says Robert Bachman, executive director for expansion/renovation at the hospital. “When we admit the patient, we admit the family, and we want this building to truly represent the importance of interdisciplinary patient- and family-centered care.”

In July, more than 1,200 Emory employees and physicians got a sneak peek of the new facility during a staff open house. Attendees explored the first two floors of the new building, which contain the radiology department, anesthesiology pre-admission clinic, admissions, guest services, and the dining facility—the Clifton Café. They could also tour one of the patient floors nearing completion.

Floors one and two opened July 31, along with an underground parking deck, complete with 500 parking spaces. Patient floors began opening in late August, and the hospital tower became fully operational in late October.

—excerpted from Emory Report
July 31 edition

Visit emorycliftonroadwork.com for more on the Clifton Streetscape project. 

Jack Kearse/Emory Health Sciences Photography

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Jill Perry-Smith, associate professor of organization & management, began her career as a civil engineer, which would seem a far cry from her current role as an academic and researcher in the field of organizational behavior. However, the evolution from working for a large oil and gas company to her life as a professor came about organically, she says. “While the technical aspects of my job were very interesting, I was always much more fascinated by the interpersonal dynamic that existed in the company and how that dynamic drove decision-making.”

Perry-Smith spent six years at Exxon Research & Engineering, earning her MBA at Pepperdine University during that time. She left her project engineer job to earn a PhD in management from Georgia Institute of Technology in 2002 and accepted a post at Goizueta that same year. It’s a decision she doesn’t regret.

Perry-Smith admits she was simply much more attracted to the “less defined” side of making an organization work. Engineers are problem solvers by design. Their work is often black and white, and that wasn’t the way Perry-Smith wanted to see the world. Specifically, it was social dynamics and how they played into creativity that really piqued her interest.

Companies often ignore the influence of organizational behavior on the creative output of their leaders and employees, but it all plays back into the success of the business, she says. “It’s not the formal policies that companies institute that encourage creativity. It’s the social networks. The less-formal processes often work better. It’s a low-cost lever compared to some big, expensive program.”

Debunking the myth

Part of her research into organizational dynamics sheds a light on what makes highly successful people tick. According to Perry-Smith, the idea of the solitary misanthrope, endlessly toiling away to come up with the next big thing, is a fallacy. “There’s this idea that eminent creators are different and quirkier than most people,” she says. “We assume they are socially inept and hard to work with, as if they’re sitting around in a cave getting groundbreaking ideas, and that’s
simply not the reality.”

This illusion of the “difficult to understand” and solitary leader, says Perry-Smith, might be a common misperception, but for leaders, especially for those at large corporations, social networks are at the heart of creativity. “My research is looking to help people buy into a different approach—to drop the myths around personality and temperament,” she notes. Perry-Smith argues that leaders need community to operate and to effectively develop ideas. Her research not only shows how input can help leaders come up with creative ideas, but it also points to the value of heterogeneous networks in pushing novel thinking.

Taking the entrepreneurial path

For entrepreneurs just starting out, social networks may be even more profound. At first glance, some business ideas might seem crazy, and others may be abandoned too early. Perry-Smith’s research finds that successful creative ideas go through a number of stages: generation, elaboration, championing, and implementation. She says feedback and encouragement are essential to that process—once again, it’s the informal relationships that help make or break a new idea. But while input and affirmation are important, disagreement and criticism can also help to refine and retool business concepts.

Entrepreneurs are in the business of generating ideas that hopefully change their field. “They need to spot new concepts and implement them, as well as convince others that their ideas have merit,” she says. Some individuals are comfortable talking to one business confidant, but others may need many more people to be their sounding board. That feedback remains important at certain points in the creative process, but not in others, she admits. “We have to adapt informal relationships throughout the entire creative process.”

The driving force

Creativity is very much a collaborative process, she says. Whether it’s dealing with a large conglomerate or a small business just out of the gate, Perry-Smith says she’s determined to find the best ways to define creativity and explain how social networks drive it. Her research continues to inform her teaching, she says, and her students, most of whom are corporate leaders and entrepreneurs themselves, share their career experiences with her. Whether it’s in her research or at Goizueta, Perry-Smith is a big believer in the power of collaboration. “It’s not as mystical a process as some might make it out to be, though I know it hasn’t always been well defined,” she says. It can be a long and difficult process to bring an idea to life, says Perry-Smith, but it shouldn’t be a solitary one.

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Previously serving as the associate vice president for finance systems and data analytics for Emory University, Belva White 08WEMBA, CPA, returned to Goizueta on August 1. White joined Goizueta as the new chief business, analytics, and operations officer. “[White’s] institutional knowledge and familiarity with data-driven decision-making will be invaluable to Goizueta as we look to take advantage of operational efficiencies and continue to innovate in technology, classroom delivery, and interactions with corporate entities,” Dean Erika James says. White has been with Emory since 2002 and has overseen several major projects, including upgrades to accounting, billing, and reporting software. She has experience in leading cross-functional teams and gaining consensus among business units including human resources, facilities, information technology, and finance.

On August 1, Wendy Tsung assumed the position of associate dean of working professionals programs. Previously serving as the associate dean of the MBA Career Management Center (CMC), Tsung brings a wealth of knowledge about the working professionals population. Having stewarded Goizueta’s full-time programs to national career success and launched the school’s CMC for Working Professionals office, Tsung is equipped to bring valuable perspective to operations and help distinguish Goizueta further in the marketplace.

In addition to directing the curricular aspects of the full-time MBA experience, Ted Rodgers, associate professor in the practice of accounting, will now be the senior associate dean for graduate programs, with over-arching accountability for both the full-time and working professionals suite of graduate programs.

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Panagiotis (Panos) Adamopoulos, PhD
Assistant Professor of Information Systems & Operations Management (ISOM)

Panagiotis (Panos) Adamopoulos completed his PhD in information systems at New York University in 2016. Prior to joining the faculty at Emory, Adamopoulos held positions at the University of Minnesota as well as Relational SA and Toyota Hellas. Adamopoulos’s primary research interests include data science, machine learning, econometrics, and experimental research designs in the areas of personalization, mobile and social commerce, and online education.

Tetyana Balyuk, PhD
Assistant Professor of Finance

Tetyana Balyuk completed her PhD in finance at the University of Toronto’s Joseph L. Rotman School of Management in 2017. Balyuk has held positions at the University of Toronto, Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, and Telenor Group Ukraine. Balyuk’s primary research interests are corporate finance, lending, fintech, banking, and household finance.

Ruomeng Cui, PhD
Assistant Professor of Information Systems & Operations Management (ISOM)

Ruomeng Cui completed her PhD in operations management at Northwestern University Kellogg School of Management in 2014. Prior to coming to Emory, Cui held positions at Indiana University’s Kelly School of Business. Cui’s primary research interests include empirical operations management, supply chain management, information sharing, consumer behavior, social media, and government procurement. She has published articles in a number of leading journals, including Harvard Business Review, Management Science, and Production & Operations Management. Media reports on her research include National Public Radio and the Globe and Mail.

Christoph Herpfer, PhD
Assistant Professor of Finance

Christoph Herpfer completed his PhD in finance at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne and the Swiss
Finance Institute in 2017. Herpfer has previously studied at the London School of Economics and held positions at Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank, and Oliver Wyman. Herpfer’s primary research interests include corporate finance, banking, and law and finance.

Özgecan Koçak, PhD
Associate Professor of Organization & Management

Özgecan Koçak completed her PhD in organizational behavior at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business in 2003. Prior to joining the faculty at Emory, Koçak held positions at Columbia Business School and Sabanci University. Her research in the fields of organization theory, economic sociology, and strategy focus on market structures and meaning systems that shape organizational and individual behavior. Koçak’s articles have been published in a number of leading journals, including Management Science and the American Journal of Sociology.

Daniel McCarthy, PhD
Assistant Professor of Marketing

Daniel McCarthy completed his PhD in statistics at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School in 2017. McCarthy is also the cofounder and chief statistician of Zodiac, a predictive customer analytics platform. McCarthy’s primary areas of research include Bayesian models, computational methods, customer lifetime value, and the marketing-finance interface. His articles have been published in leading journals, including the Journal of Marketing, the Journal of the American Statistical Association: Theory and Methods, Statistica Sinica, and the Annals of Applied Statistics. His work has also been featured in media outlets such as the Wall Street Journal, Fortune, Barron’s, CBS, Slate, Business Insider, and The Motley Fool.

Karen Sedatole, PhD
Professor of Accounting

Karen Sedatole completed her PhD in business administration at the University of Michigan in 2000. Prior to joining the Emory faculty, Sedatole was the Russell E. Palmer Endowed Professor of Accounting at Michigan State University. Her research focuses on the design and effectiveness of performance measurement and reward systems, the role of forecasting and budgetary systems within organizations, and control in interorganizational collaborations. Her articles have been published in a number of leading journals, including Contemporary Accounting Research, the Journal of Management Accounting Research, and The Accounting Review. Sedatole is a two-time recipient of the American Accounting Association Notable Contributions to Management Accounting Research Award and currently serves as senior editor of the Journal of Management Accounting Research.

Jianxin (Donny) Zhao, PhD
Assistant Professor of Accounting

Jianxin (Donny) Zhao completed his PhD in business administration at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2017. Before coming to Emory, Zhao held positions at the University of North Carolina. His primary research interests include debt markets, financial accounting, social networks, and corporate governance.

Renee Dye, PhD
Associate Professor in the Practice of Organization & Management

Renee Dye completed her PhD in English at Emory University in 1994. Dye has previously held positions at Emory, McKinsey, and Navigant, and she is the founder of Stratitect, an independent consulting firm. Her articles have been published in a number of leading journals and magazines, including Harvard Business Review, Fortune, and The McKinsey Quarterly.

Karl Kuhnert, PhD
Professor in the Practice of Organization & Management

Karl Kuhnert completed his PhD in industrial and organizational psychology at Kansas State University in 1985. Prior to joining the faculty at Emory, Kuhnert was a professor at the University of Georgia, where his teaching and research interests include leadership development, organizational change, and decision-making artificial intelligence. His articles have been published in a number of leading journals, including the Academy of Management Review, Leadership Quarterly, the Journal of Management, and the Leadership and Organizational Development Journal.

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Age 18 is often seen as a rite of passage, swinging open the doors for students to enter college, the workplace, and increased independence. But for young adults with special needs, graduating from high school ends the legal mandate public schools have to provide support and training. This closes the door on their ability to maximize and broaden their skills and talents.

That’s why a group of dedicated BBA and Emory students started the Spark Mentorship Group. Every Thursday, these students welcome a group of young adults ages 18 to 24 from the Emory Autism Center on the Clairmont campus to Goizueta to gain essential business and life skills.

“Very often, young adults with autism, who possess many gifts and talents to add to society, are left to figure out the next stage of their lives without necessary support systems,” says Spark founder Jacob Lepler 18BBA. “Our goal is to unlock the true potential of our participants.”

The idea for Spark ignited in Lepler because his brother, who has Asperger’s, will turn 18 soon and no longer receive services. His volunteer work at the Emory Autism Center solidified the plan. “As I interacted with young adults at the center, I witnessed the same potential I see in my own brother. I knew I had to help foster that in some way,” he adds. Along with Jared Linsky 18BBA, Isaac Feiner 18BBA, and others, a partnership between the Emory Autism Center’s myLIFE program and Goizueta was cemented. The Spark curriculum includes one-on-one coaching and group trainings, all of which focus on initiating a career and life path participants might not otherwise pursue.  

“What makes Spark unique is something we call ‘peer-level mentorship.’ As students of a similar age, we provide coaching and training, but at the same time develop a friendship that makes the relationship between us and our participants more sacred,” says Lepler. For more information, contact Lepler and team at Jacob.Lepler@emory.edu or Jared.Linsky@emory.edu.

For more on autism, visit the Emory Autism Center at emory.biz/autism.

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