More Than 140 New Faculty At Top 20 Business Schools

OLD WORLD FOR THE NEW

Jana Gallus, assistant professor of strategy at UCLA’s Anderson School of Management, didn’t come to her new job directly from Europe, but she is among 10 professors with international B-school experience to transition to a top U.S. school in 2016-2017, some from as nearby as Canada and others from as far away as Turkey. Gallus, who spent four years at the University of Zurich (where she earned her Ph.D.), the University of Basel, and Zeppelin University in Friedrichshafen, Germany, completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard this spring before moving west, where she is learning how to get around Los Angeles as she prepares to teach two sections of Anderson’s winter core Strategy course.

“I’m used to biking everywhere and obviously in L.A. you can’t do that!” says Gallus, a native of Frankfurt, Germany. “I am excited to get settled and start my academic life here, to be a member of this fantastic school.”

Gallus chose UCLA for the faculty who would become her colleagues; the only factor that curbed her enthusiasm “even a little” was the notorious Lose Angeles traffic, she says. “But I have good news,” she says, “in that I found an apartment really close to campus, and I actually walk past the botanical garden, which really by far exceeds any expectations I had for my move to L.A.” She also has discovered Uber.

PROXIMITY TO SILICON BEACH A MAJOR MOTIVATOR

Gallus’s research is in behavioral economics and strategy, with a focus on nonfinancial incentives and their effects on decision-making. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in Management Science, Strategic Management Journal, Labour Economics and Applied Economics.

Though she has yet to start teaching at Anderson, Gallus has had “fantastic, terrific” interactions with some “very motivated” students, and everyone else in the Anderson community. “People in California are just really nice, and the atmosphere on campus is really wonderful,” she says. She is especially excited about her new proximity to the “Silicon Beach” business sector, where she has already established contacts and has plans for field experiments.

“I am very much looking forward to the winter term,” Gallus says.

TRAVEL INFORMS RESEARCH, AND CAREER

Though she hasn’t exercised her professorship overseas, Alixandra Barasch brings a certain amount of knowledge about international life to her new position as marketing professor at NYU-Stern. That’s because while she hails from Texas and earned her Ph.D. at Wharton, Barasch is as well-traveled as any gap-year backpacker, having been a Fulbright scholar at the University of Macau and used her year in Asia to the utmost.

“The year in Macau was one of the most important years in my life, both personally and professionally,” says Barasch, who lived with locals and visited a dozen countries. “I taught a freshman writing class and did research, and a lot of things that I work on now started back then, working with a professor at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. So it was an important year for me, and it was also a very fun year.”

Travel continues to inform Barasch’s work: Her area of research is how consumers enjoy and are satisfied with experiential consumption more than material purchases. “So I travel as much as I can,” she says.

NEW YORK WAS A DRAW, BUT STERN’S MARKETING DEPARTMENT WAS THE DEAL-MAKER

Barasch spent a short stint in New York between her undergraduate degree at Duke and her Fulbright year in Macau, and quickly fell in love with the city. So when the opportunity to teach at Stern came her way, she jumped at it, moving to the Village so she could “live in the best place in the best city in the world.”

“I’m just surrounded by energy and students who are excited about being at NYU,” says Barasch, who will teach a core Introduction to Marketing course to undergrads in the spring. “But the real draw was Stern’s Marketing Department. It’s top-notch. It has some of the best researchers, the most published and well-known names. I did not want to go to a school where I was going to be the person who knew the most. And I’m just surrounded by brilliant scholars and I’m very excited to work with them.”

That work will include continuing her research into judgment and decision making, sharing and experiential consumption, social judgment and signaling, and prosocial behavior — as she puts it, how people share experiences and resources, and how they make charitable decisions.

Barasch says she’s excited to share her research and work with her students, who she has been meeting at student events and around campus. “The name of the game in my profession is research and how much you publish, but I actually really like the teaching side of it as well. I’m very excited to have students here.”