The Favorite Professors Of Top MBAs

Stanford’s Joseph Piotroski

Here are some other business school professors who left an indelible mark on the Class of 2017:

“It would be Professor Joseph Piotroski, who teaches the phenomenal “Accounting-based Valuation” course, which brings together elements from the core courses in accounting, finance and strategy. The professor is a luminary in this field, and he is both entertaining and intellectually challenging. Even the simplest comment develops into a sophisticated discussion. I enjoyed his teaching as it offered me a new way of thinking about all the public information available for a company. I will never forget his first lecture about PepsiCo’s inability to match Coca-Cola’s performance in the mid-1990s, and how this was crystal-clear from the financials and proxy statements. Watching him explain the argument’s logic was reminiscent of an artist performing!”

– Federico Mossa, Stanford GSB

“Professor Bob Frank. He has an incredible ability to distill economic theory down to its basic tenets and relate them to human behavior. It’s also pretty amazing when you learn that your professor co-wrote one of your textbooks with Ben Bernanke.”

– Patrick Grumley, Cornell University (Johnson)

“Professor Jim Olsen is my favorite MBA professor. I enjoyed every minute of his negotiation class. He not only teaches us hands-on lessons accumulated from his extensive entrepreneurial experience, but also provides us a safe environment to role play and make mistakes in negotiation simulations. Professor Jim Olsen is a person with a strong work ethic who knows and cares about every student in his class. It is very impressive that he responds to emails within three minutes even as late as midnight.”

– Grace Guo, U.C. Davis

“Professor Derek Alderton is an Anderson legend because he’s very invested in his students and holds them to incredibly high standards. His practical and no-nonsense approach to entrepreneurship is invaluable.”

– Lynn Compton, UCLA (Anderson)

HEC Paris’ Frederic Dalsace

“Dr. Frederic Dalsace, Associate Professor of Marketing, not only taught us advanced marketing concepts, but also gave useful project execution tips in complex organizations where stakeholder buy in is a must to drive change. He challenges conventional thinking (and at time well established theories) and encourages out of box thinking. Another thing, which left a mark on me, was his advice for value creation to benefit corporate, nature and society alike. He is also the social business and poverty chair at HEC Paris MBA. He puts enormous effort in preparing a lecture. He is innovative, passionate about teaching and has a great (sarcastic) sense of humor!”

– Vineet Kumar, HEC Paris

Charles (Charley) Olson: He taught our Global Economic Environment course. What I most appreciate is that he requires students to have strong opinions on issues discussed in class and expects you to be able to defend them. Still, he never tells you if he agrees or disagrees with you, which emphasizes the idea that your opinion is relevant. This expectation forces a lot of students out of their comfort zones, and encourages a sense of assertiveness and confidence in taking a stand, which I think is practical and will be very valuable in future endeavors.”

– Alexandra Moore, University of Maryland (Smith)

“Professor Fiona Scott Morton. Fiona, particularly in her Competitive Strategy course, opened my eyes to the beauty – and necessity – of confronting difficult, ambiguous tradeoffs with economic principles and ethics – and never compromising one for the other. She has forever changed how I make decisions. Thanks to Fiona (and her cold calling), I now take pause to always keep it simple when communicating – nothing is so complex that it can’t be explained clearly, concisely, and simply. No buzzwords allowed!”

Claire Lee, Yale SOM

“Professor Lee Pinkowitz, who taught our core finance class. I struggled a great deal with the concepts in finance, but Professor Pinkowitz was always very patient with me during his office hours and tutoring sessions. He was so invested. He wanted me to not only do well, but to come away with a genuine foundation of finance at the MBA level.”

Tahira Taylor, Georgetown University (McDonough)

Booth’s Laura Born

“My favorite professor was Booth alumna Professor Laura Born in Cases in Financial Management. Professor Born was a former Managing Director in investment banking for JP Morgan. While many finance classes emphasize a purely academic approach, Professor Born sheds these formalities and instead brings her professional experience to every class. The majority of cases are written by Professor Born based on her personal deal experience, meaning they represent a unique learning experience at Booth that emphasizes the real-world application that is actually seen within investment banks. Outside of the classroom, Professor Born serves as a role model to many Booth women as a successful working mom, all while being open and honest to students about the opportunities and trade-offs that may represent.”

– Jennifer Dunn, University of Chicago (Booth)

 

“Professor Ty Henderson was my favorite MBA professor. He taught me about the growing importance of real-world analytical data on businesses marketplace performance and decision-making processes. He made complex data processing techniques easy to understand, and he was a big influence on my decision to pursue an internship in marketing analytics strategy at Nordstrom and eventually in financial strategy at Amazon.”

– Timothy Carreon, University of Texas (McCombs)

“It would be Professor Reynold Byers of the Supply Chain Management Department. I was fortunate enough to take two classes with Professor Byers (Operations and Supply Management, and Decision Modeling I) and both times I was so impressed with his teaching ability. In both classes, he would teach us the basic building blocks of a topic and would then let us loose and provide us with opportunities to learn by doing, only giving us enough support to have us figure the answers out on our own. But what I enjoyed most about Professor Byers’ teaching style and classes was how much we were pushed beyond our comfort zone. Both of the classes I took with him were some of the most challenging courses in the program. However, the challenges were incredibly thought-provoking and practical so they never felt like busy work or like they were impossible. True learning happens when you step outside of what you are comfortable with, and I sincerely enjoyed Professor Byers’ ability to make you feel uncomfortable with a topic without making you feel lost or defeated.”

John Masline, Arizona State (W. P. Carey)

University of Michigan’s Amitabh Sinha

“Professor Amitabh Sinha, who teaches TO 640 Big Data Management, an introductory course that covers Tableau, Python, and SQL. Professor Sinha goes out of his way to design an inclusive classroom experience, from the examples he uses during lecture to the data sets he assigns and the way he structures group assignments. He cares deeply about his students and has continued to serve as a generous thought partner for other projects, including one about introducing more diverse case studies in the classroom, and another on developing a go-to-market strategy for a Detroit-based social mapping startup.”

Holly Price, University of Michigan (Ross)

“My favorite MBA professor is Professor Carl Briggs. Professor Briggs teaches the Project Management and Six Sigma and Quality courses for MBAs. Professor Briggs challenges his students to learn the theory, but he emphasizes the real-world applications. By doing so, he brings a sense of reality about the class. He creates easy ways to remember the theory and real-world examples of how they can be applied. He uses humor and reality to keep the students engaged. Professor Briggs is always available and makes time to get to know the students. He makes learning fun and applicable to our future careers.”

– Paul Jin Carlson, Indiana University (Kelley)