Magic No. 9: Three Top B-Schools Each Announce 9 Faculty Hires

Three of the top business schools in the United States have announced identically sized additions to their faculty this fall.

The magic number is nine at UC-Berkeley Haas School of Business, Yale School of Management, and Rice University Jones Graduate School of Business, each of which have announced that number of new professors will join their faculty for the 2022-2023 academic year. At Haas, the new hires include finance, management, marketing, and economics professors, with research interests ranging from
financial crises to the incentives that shape innovation, from health care management to decentralized finance to marketing and the demand for firearms.

At Yale SOM, the new hires include one full and two assistant professors of marketing, one full and one assistant finance prof, and three assistant professors of organizational behavior. And at Rice Jones, the
nine new faculty members — boasting expertise from management to marketing — constitute a record number of new tenured and tenure-track professors hired in one summer by the school. (See last year’s Poets&Quants story on 2021 faculty hires at the top U.S. B-schools, and find links to past stories; the 2022 story will be published this fall.)

‘WE ARE CLEARLY BRINGING THE BEST TO HAAS’

The nine tenure-track hires at Berkeley Haas are the result of efforts by the school to expand and diversify the faculty. They hail from around the world, from Texas and New York to Iran, the Dominican Republic, China, and the Netherlands. Seven are women; one is Black, and one is Latinx.

They are:
Assistant Professor Matthew Backus, Economic Analysis & Policy; Assistant Professor Sa-kiera (Kiera) Tiarra Jolynn Hudson, Management of Organizations; Assistant Professor Ali Kakhbod, Finance; Assistant Professor Ambar La Forgia, Management of Organizations; Assistant Professor Sarah Moshary, Marketing; Assistant Professor Tanya Paul, Accounting; Assistant Professor Carolyn Stein, Economic Analysis & Policy; Assistant Professor Sytkse Wijnsma, Operations and IT Management; and Assistant Professor Valerie Zhang, Accounting. Read more about them here.

“We are thrilled to welcome this wonderful, diverse new group of academic superstars to Berkeley Haas,” Haas Dean Ann E. Harrison says. “We clearly are bringing the best to Haas, increasing the depth and breadth of our world-renowned faculty, and reinforcing our place among the world’s best business schools.”

Jennifer Chatman, Haas’ associate dean for academic affairs and the Paul J. Cortese distinguished professor of management, says the new cohort of profs is the school’s most diverse ever, “each one a rock star in their own right. We are very proud that we were able to lure them to Berkeley Haas.”

In 2021, Berkeley Haas hired 10 new faculty; read about them here.

YALE HIRES 9 FACULTY ONE YEAR AFTER HIRING JUST 2

At Yale SOM, new faculty members will be joining the school across four different groups. In marketing, Deborah Small, formerly the Laura and John J. Pomerantz professor of marketing at the Wharton School, will join Yale as a professor of marketing; the school also hired two new assistant professors of marketing: Corey Cusimano and Joowon Klusowski.

In finance, Alp Simsek, the Rudi Dornbusch career development associate professor at MIT Sloan, will join the Yale faculty as a full professor, and Paul Fontanier as a new assistant professor. In organizational behavior, three new assistant professors will join Yale SOM: Laura Adler, Jennifer Dannals, and Jayanti Owens. Finally, Zachary Bleemer will join Yale SOM as an assistant professor of economics.

Read more about Yale SOM’s new faculty here. In 2021, Yale hired only two new faculty; read about them here.

RECORD FACULTY EXPANSION AT RICE’S JONES SCHOOL

At Rice Jones Graduate School of Business, the “fundamental strategy” is securing the best talent, says Peter Rodriguez, dean of the Jones School.

“Our programs have seen tremendous growth over the years — including our newest business major for undergraduate students — and we wanted to bring in strong scholars to support that growth,” Rodriguez says. “We want to hire the best professors from any region and background to teach our students and enhance relationships in Houston and beyond. This group of chaired full professors and first-appointment assistant professors brings a wealth of diverse knowledge, experience and insight to our campus and the city.”

The nine new tenure-track faculty at Rice Jones include six in management: Nicola Secomandi, Houston Endowment professor of management, who was head of the Ph.D. program at Carnegie Mellon University’s Tepper School of Business; Daan van Knippenberg, also Houston Endowment professor of management, who has been a professor at Drexel University, Erasmus University Rotterdam, the University of Amsterdam and Leiden University in the Netherlands, where he also received his Ph.D.; Yiangos Papanastasiou, associate professor in management who will teach MBA courses in business analytics, data analysis and statistics; Tommy Pan Fang, assistant professor of strategic management; Sora Jun, assistant professor of management; and Süleyman Kerimov, assistant professor of management.

Rice also has hired two in finance: Robert Dittmar, professor of finance, who joins the Jones School after serving at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business and Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business; and David Zhang, assistant professor of finance, who focuses on real estate and household finance. Finally, Jung Youn Lee joins Jones as an assistant professor of marketing, with a focus on how firm or governmental policy affects distribution or efficiency.

“These accomplished scholars and educators will enhance Rice Business’ strong foundation in accounting, finance, marketing, organizational behavior and management as well as the focus areas of energy or entrepreneurship,” Rodriguez says.

Learn more about Rice Jones’ new faculty here. In 2021, the Jones School hired six new faculty; read about them here.

DON’T MISS ALL THE NEW PROFESSORS AT THE LEADING B-SCHOOLS (2021) and ALL THE NEW PROFESSORS AT THE TOP 25 U.S. B-SCHOOLS (2020)