Best 40-Under-40 Professor Catherine Tucker

Catherine Tucker of MIT Sloan is among the 40 best business school profs under 40

Catherine Tucker

Mark Hyman Jr. Career Development Professor and Associate Professor of Marketing at MIT Sloan.

Age: 36

Institution: MIT, Sloan School of Management

Since: 2005

Hometown: Oxford, United Kingdom

Marital status: Married to Alex, my high school sweetheart

Children: Cordelia and Elizabeth, who are 6-year-old identical twins, and a new daughter, who is eagerly anticipated in April.

Education:

PhD in Economics, Stanford University

BA in Philosophy, Politics and Economics, Oxford University

Courses currently teaching: Pricing, Marketing Management for the Senior Executive

Fun fact: I spent a year when I was 18 in a small village in central Java as an English volunteer and ballet teacher.

Professor you most admire: Tim Bresnahan, economics professor at Stanford University. He inspired me to study how technology shapes markets and, as a consequence, society.

Most memorable moment as a professor: Being the first woman to make tenure as a Marketing Professor at MIT

“If I weren’t a B-school professor…” I love what I do, but if I were forced to pick another job, I would like to be a perinatologist.

Twitter: @ce_tucker

Students say:

Prof. Tucker’s simple, effective examples and witty sense of humor keep her oversubscribed classes engaged throughout her lectures. She also casually volunteers unsuspecting students to help illustrate and clarify concepts. It’s difficult to sit through her lectures without laughing. Prof. Tucker doesn’t grade attendance, but her classes are always full.

-Harvey Xiao, MIT Sloan, 2014 MBA candidate

It could be her anecdotes, her in-class mini games, or even her Oxford English that make Professor Tucker’s classes always full of energy. Her topics are very relevant. We are able to use her class teachings, homework, and projects to ace our interviews and make an impact in our internships. The Executive Education students also praise how they are able to immediately apply lessons from her class in their day-to-day work. Many startup founders across the entire MIT ecosystem seek her advice due to her deep subject matter expertise, approachable demeanor, and strong desire to help her students.

With in-class simulations, polling, student-to-student forums, and self-paced learning (her class notes are highly rated), she also pushes the boundaries for innovative teaching. Nonetheless, she still gets the basics right: having an organised class plan, perfecting her class delivery, and giving and receiving feedback from students.

It is a true honor to witness and take part in Professor Tucker’s phenomenal teaching.

-Athens Fitzcheung, MIT Sloan MBA 2013, Prof Tucker’s Teaching Assistant 2012-2013

It’s a bold move to post course evaluations online. Unless you’re MIT Sloan’s Catherine Tucker. Then, your reviews read like this: “Excellent class. Exceptionally well taught. Clear, concise, enthusiastic presentation.” “Awesome.” “Love the props and in class guests.”

Her outstanding class evaluations have not gone unnoticed. Tucker, who teaches MIT’s Pricing elective and Marketing Management for the Senior Executive, was voted the B-school’s “Teacher of the Year” in 2014, an honor she was nominated for three times previously. In 2013, she received the Jamieson Prize for Excellence in Teaching.

Rave classroom reviews aside, the Oxford-native has collected a trophy-shelf of academic accolades for her research, including the Garﬁeld Economic Impact Award for her work on electronic medical records and the National Science Foundation CAREER Award for her work on digital privacy.

She’s also given talks about online privacy before the European Union’s Future of Privacy Forum and the U.S. House of Representatives’ Energy and Commerce Committee. Somewhere between teaching and researching this mother of six-year-old twins (with another on the way), squeezes in her associate editor role with Management Science and a research associate position with the National Bureau of Economic Research.

Catherine Tucker is among “The World’s 40 Best B-School Profs Under the Age of 40“

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