Some of our favorite professors of 2017
Teaching MBAs isn’t for the faint of heart. Graduate business courses aren’t great awakenings – and they aren’t populated by wide-eyed freshmen. These are adults, practitioners even, who are gifted, battle tested, and accomplished. They know who they are…even if they aren’t sure what they want. These students have given up promising careers and paid a premium to sit in class. That means professors have their attention – but only time will tell if they have their respect.
TOP PROFS RANGE FROM A FORTUNE 500 CEO TO A REGULATOR WHO COLLABORATES WITH BERNIE MADOFF!
That’s what makes teaching MBAs so demanding – and rewarding. The top B-school professors aren’t leaving their mark on impressionable plebes. So it takes a special kind of teacher to reach demanding and discerning students. They must play the roles of sages who open up the possibilities; taskmasters who demand their students’ best; and confidantes who can offer a kind word or timely advice from hard-won experience.
This year, there wasn’t one grand formula for what makes a ‘Favorite Professor’ so effective. At Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management, Harry Kraemer bridges the researcher-practitioner divide. He can delve into his years as a Fortune 500 CEO to guide students on managing crises. At the same time, he can tap into a proven framework for harmonizing work and home life. At the University of Maryland’ Smith School, MBAs absorb lessons in white collar crime from David Weber, a former chief investigator for the Securities and Exchange Commission. One highlight of his classes: Students pose questions to a special guest who understands the weaknesses inherent to auditing and regulation all too well: Bernie Madoff.
It isn’t just in the classroom where these professors excel. Look no further than Harvard Business School’s Lauren Cohen, a Booth Ph.D. who has broken powerlifting records. Bernie Banks spent 33 years in the U.S. Army before joining Kellogg as an associate dean; his career was capped by being commissioned as a Brigadier General. And how is this for a pairing: Wharton “rock star” professor Adam Grant teamed up with “It” executive Sheryl Sandberg to author a book on overcoming adversity. A dream team indeed!
Together, these professors reflect that teaching still matters. In fact, teachers are one of the great differentiators that reveals the quality of a program and unleash the transformative nature of the MBA experience. Here are 10 professors – in no order – who reached their students and left their mark in 2017.
Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg & Wharton Professor Adam Grant
Adam Grant (Wharton)
Cain and Abel. Hamilton and Burr. India and Pakistan. Well, those rivalries pale in comparison to the main event: Harvard Business School and Wharton. This year, Wharton trounced HBS in nearly every possible ranking. Somehow, their Cambridge pest still managed to snag all the headlines – when Stanford wasn’t misleading applicants on financial aid, that is.
So you might be surprised to learn that a truce was declared HBS alum Sheryl Sandberg and decorated Wharton professor Adam Grant. They weren’t just from different programs. Try different planets! Sandberg is everyone’s favorite executive. A winning combination of grace, smarts, and honesty, Sandberg has turned “Lean in” from a slogan to a vow. Grant is a top-rated teacher and researcher. A Renaissance Man par excellence, his research has upended convention by tying career success to a willingness to help others. In the process, he has emerged as perhaps the most famous b-school professor around – all at the tender age of 36.
Together, these heavyweights published Option B in 2017, a tour de force of research-driven advice and personal stories on overcoming adversity.
The two had been long-time friends based on Sandberg’s admiration for Grant’s Give and Take. After Sandberg’s husband passed away in 2015, the two increasingly confided in one another. Grant – a psychologist by trade whose life was forever changed by the loss of a mentor and the suicide of a prized pupil – shared data with her on how grief would run its course and make her children more resilient. As time passed, they began to collaborate; Grant broke down the research and Sandberg shared personal stories of her recovery and redemption. Sure enough, Option B became a best-seller, with the New York Times calling it “generous, honest, almost unbearably poignant.”
For Grant and Sandberg, the book was a means to show others the path to rebounding from suffering. Even more, it was a cathartic exercise that ushered both of them through acceptance and ultimately growth. “When people go through hardship, they’re not just more motivated to help others in many situations,” Grant explains. “They often want to help people in exactly the way that they have been hurt. Helping people through the trauma that you’ve faced is not only something that gives your life meaning, it gives your suffering meaning.”
Professor Lauren Cohen on the powerlifting platform
Lauren Cohen (Harvard)
If you met Lauren Cohen in a Boston gym, you’d naturally assume he was pancaking wide receivers on Sundays or body slamming heels on TV. In reality, he is a chaired professor of finance at Harvard Business School – a man who is both a world class teacher and a champion powerlifter.
Last year, Cohen ranked among the top vote-getters for Poets&Quants’ 40 Under 40 Professors. You could say his career choice was pre-ordained. As a 3rd grader, he dressed as a stockbroker for Halloween, replete with blazer and briefcase. However, few might guess that he would eventually break two world records in the squat, with 630 pounds being his best as a 181 pounder. Long ago, he was a self-described “short, chubby kid who was the head tuba player in the school band.” However, few could predict Cohen’s willpower – a virtue that enabled him to earn an MBA and a Ph.D. by the time he reached 25.
As a Wharton undergrad, Cohen dreamed of working as an investment banker at Goldman Sachs, where he’d eventually climb his way to partner and settle down in the Hamptons. Funny thing is, he developed a passion for intellectual property and a distaste for non-practicing entities (aka patent trolls). Even more, the teaching life has given him an ever-changing perspective on finance – one that keeps him inquisitive and invigorated. “This is the best job in the world,” Cohen tells Poets&Quants. “I get to wrestle with ideas with these bright young people and they pay me to do this! It is awesome. I get to reinvent myself with every project. In this job, you can be someone different every day. You walk into a class or start a new project and it’s a new beginning. That keeps me young, and I can’t imagine doing anything else. I love coming to work every day.”
And his students heave picked up on the vitality he brings to the classroom. “Professor Cohen had a serious impression on me,” writes one anonymous student who nominated him for P&Q’s 40 Under 40. “His humility and approachable nature was a great reminder that despite having remarkable accomplishments and pedigree, one can and should still be a good person.”
Bill Aulet of MIT Sloan. Courtesy photo
Bill Aulet (MIT)
Bill Aulet is fond of saying that you learn more from failure than success.
He should know.
Before he became the managing director of the Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship, he ran a startup himself – right into the ground…in just two years. Yes, before he sold startups worth nine figures and raised over a $100 million dollars, Aulet made all the rookie mistakes – and he did so with a family of four and a mortgage to boot.
Aulet ventured out into the fail fast world of startups armed with just a master’s degree in business from MIT that was supplemented with executive experience at IBM. A sure thing, right? Instead of ‘taking the entrepreneurial world by storm,’ he returned a humbled, yet more reflective, man. Aulet’s spell in the wilderness had led him to evaluate where he went wrong – and ask if he could develop a system to better guide aspiring entrepreneurs so he could increase their odds for success. These efforts eventually led to the development of Disciplined Entrepreneurship: 24 Steps to a Successful Startup, an acclaimed step-by-step framework for turning an idea into a sustainable enterprise.
“I felt like I learned a tremendous amount,” he told P&Q in 2017. “But it raised the question, could this have been taught in school while I was still at MIT and there was less money being spent. And to me, the answer was yes, I could have learned that stuff if I had the right program. That influenced me to create a program to teach people what I learned in my first startup.”
Now, Aulet is looking forward instead of back. And his advice to future Bill Aulets is as timeless as it is difficult to do. “You have to get out of your comfort zone,” he urges. “Sales people like to work with sales people. MBAs like to work with MBAs. It’s certainly more comfortable. It doesn’t mean it’s the right thing. Research, again, shows that if your team has different skill sets, their odds of being a successful company increase. So, you have to get out of your comfort zone and meet people who are not like you.”
Brigadier General Bernie Banks. Photography by Eddie Quinones.
Bernie Banks (Northwestern)
Bernie banks isn’t your traditional associate dean, who climbed the ranks after years of being a classroom sage and research wunderkind. Instead, he paid his dues over a 33-year military career that culminated with being commissioned as a Brigadier General. During that time, Banks also earned six advanced degrees, including an MBA from Kellogg and a Ph.D. from Columbia University.
In 2016, Banks joined the faculty of his alma mater, drawn by the opportunity to become a “change agent” who could build on the school’s lush resources and student-centric culture. The former head of West Point’s leadership program, Bank has arrived in Evanston with a mandate to help students consciously develop their leadership capabilities and adopt Kellogg values in a measurable fashion.
“Excellence is not a single act, but a habit,” Banks told P&Q in 2017, reflecting upon one of his biggest disappointments – barely missing a commission as a pilot at West Point. “You can’t flip it like a light switch. If you think excellence is a thing you can turn on or off, one day when you hit the switch and you’re going to find out that you didn’t pay the bill.”
For Banks, b-school success boils down to far more than high marks, an impressive job offer, or a deep network. Instead, it is a matter of answering the tough questions through daily attention and action. “I would really have students not just think about, ‘Where do I want to work,’ but ‘What kind of person do I want to be, what kind of leader do I want to embody, and how can business school help me to become that person,’ he points out. “They need to do an assessment of the kind of person they want to become, the kind of person they are today, and how business school will help them close the gap between present self and future self. It is so important to start with the future in mind. You cannot conflate the fact that you acquired a certain role with I’ve done the work necessary to become the kind of person I want to be. In order to get the most out of the experience, you need to understand that and then be committed to taking the risks necessary to make that developmental leap.”
Kellogg’s Harry Kraemer
Harry Kraemer (Northwestern)
In 2001, Harry Kraemer faced his moment of truth. The CEO of Baxter International, a Fortune 500 medical products company, Kraemer had no choice but to respond when several patients died after using Baxter Dialyzers at a Spanish clinic. Alas, Kraemer could’ve cast doubts about whether the water had been properly sterilized. Who would’ve blamed him if he’d just applied a wait-and-see approach?
Actually, Kraemer would’ve had 50,000 employees blame him. That’s because Kraemer is a value-based leader whose employees expected the same courage and accountability from him as they did for themselves. Such values made the decision easy for Kraemer. A self-reflective man, Kraemer had already played out such scenarios in his head, which enabled him to manage the five emotions that can twist any decision: “worry, fear, anxiety, pressure, and stress.” This grace under fire is why he immediately pulled the product off the shelves and wrote off $185 million dollars.
“If you wait until you are in the middle of a crisis and you start to figure out what you’re going to do then, it’s almost a little too late because you have pressure, press and stakeholders,” he told P&Q in a July interview. “One of the big benefits related to self-reflection is that if you are pretty self-reflective, you’re not going to be surprised very often.”
Kraemer is an anomaly: a regaled CEO who has made the transition to master teacher and respected researcher. Walk with Kraemer through the Collaboration Plaza of Kellogg’s Global Hub and you’d swear he is the most popular man on campus, as he is greeted with waves, winks, and well-wishes from students. That may come as a surprise for a man who poses the questions that many avoid answering during their lives. A sampling: ““What are my values? What do I stand for? What is my purpose? No kidding around: What really matters? What kind of leader do I want to be? What kind of example do I want to set?”
To those, Kraemer offers a humble yet shrewd rejoinder: “I don’t have answers, but I have opinions.”
For Kraemer, teaching is a natural extension of leadership, where he places others front-and-center. “If you take the time to think about it,” leadership has nothing to do with titles and organizational charts,” he observes. “Leadership has everything to do with the ability to influence people to do things that they may not ordinarily do. The only way I know how to influence people is that you have to be able to relate to people. I start off with this very simple model: If I can figure out a way to relate to you, maybe I can influence you and then I can lead you.”
Steven Rogers. Courtesy photo
Steven Rogers (Harvard)
How is this for a jaw-dropping statistic? Of the 10,000 case studies that Harvard Business School has authored, just 100 feature an African American protagonist. This 1% marker takes on even great significance when you factor in that Harvard cases represent up to 80% of the cases studied in business schools worldwide.
Steven Rogers is on a mission to change all that.
A senior lecturer of business administration who joined HBS in 2012, Rogers has created a case-based course that features African American business protagonists. In the process, he has also developed new cases like Ebony magazine, which examines whether a new leader, Linda Johnson Rice, should sell, save, or shutter a mature product. In addition, he has been lobbying other HBS faculty to include or author cases that feature African Americans.
While Rogers sees a defining issue, he remains focused on a specific end. “The reality is, we don’t have an integrated curriculum that showcases and highlights African Americans in the same way it does others,” he tells P&Q. “My desire is that in the immediate future that will be a non-issue, and that all core courses will have cases that have African-American protagonists. And the real idea will be that the need for my course goes away.”
Maryland Professor David Weber (left) is using Bernie Madoff to teach students ethics
David Weber (University of Maryland)
Most business schools perform well when it comes to breaking down financial models or developing soft skills. Too often, they gloss over worse case scenarios. What should students do when they find fraud in their company? Worse yet, what are their options when they take the whistleblower route – and watch their employer turn on them?
These are some themes explored in classes taught by David Weber, a former chief investigator for the Securities and Exchange Commission. Passionate about all things finance, Weber is known for questions and exercises that force students to confront some uncomfortable truths. He has been known, for example, to ask his student to close their eyes and pretend they are white collar criminals looking to circumvent their companies’ controls. Many times, students discover just how open their systems are to fraud – and how few easy answers there are for preventing it.
Unorthodox? Just wait! Weber also brings criminal minds into the classroom. Namely, he solicits the opinions of Bernie Madoff, who has evaluated Weber’s syllabi and even chosen a textbook for one of Weber’s classes. Students can even submit questions to Madoff, who isn’t shy about where companies and regulators are vulnerable to human frailty.
“For more than 75 % of my career I served on regulatory committees and as consultants to the regulators worldwide,” Madoff wrote to P&Q readers in April. “If I became aware of anything it is how LACKING the understanding of both the accounting and legal profession is regarding the very industry they are trying to monitor and regulate. Quite frankly they are ill equipped to perform their obligations.”
Teaching has become a tonic for Weber, who suffered retaliation himself at the SEC for exposing the misconduct of his superiors. In just his third year of teaching, he earned the second-highest teaching award given to professors at the University of Maryland based on evaluation metrics. It hasn’t come without some adjustment however. ““In enforcement and investigations, the only time I saw something was when a problem already existed,” he acknowledges. “Now, I’m having to see it from an enterprise risk perspective, where many of these organizations are trying to do everything that’s required but at the same time earn money.”
Even more, he is learning just how prevalent that chicanery is in business. “You can see the gears working and light bulbs going off above people’s heads in classes like this,” Weber notes. “Everyone has seen fraud.”
Despite the sometimes-dry content, Weber believes his courses offer something quite different than a traditional finance class.
“Most people don’t think ethics will be exciting. The point is, ethics is sexy. Fraud is sexy. Numbers are sexy. Until the minute they get into class, many are wondering, ‘Do I have to take this class?’ What they realize when they get here is that fraud and ethics are about life. It’s about everything in the world.”
Christine Porath is an associate professor at Georgetown’s McDonough School of Business
Christine Porath (Georgetown)
Work brings out the worst in people – especially those who hold power. Some will bully, yell, insult, accuse, ignore, or undermine. Many times, this conduct takes a human toll. Just ask Christine Porath, a management professor at Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business. Her father suffered a near heart attack, which she attributes to years suffering in a “toxic environment.” This event also spurred her to research such workplaces, which ultimately produced Mastering Civility: A Manifesto for the Workplace.
How common are such environments? Porath’s research covering thousands of workers has shown that 98% had experienced some form of incivility – with two-thirds coming from management. Even more, it is becoming all too common, with the percentage of respondents experiencing uncivil behavior at least once a week doubling to 50% between 1998 and 2011.
For Porath, the biggest dangers involve more than just frayed relationships at work or bringing “that stress and mood home.” As her father’s example shows, it can also impair the quality and length of life too. ““Seeing or experiencing rude behavior impairs working (short-term) memory and thus cognitive ability,” Porath wrote in a Harvard Business Review article about a year ago. “It has been shown to damage the immune system, put a strain on families, and produce other deleterious effects.”
The root cause, says Porath, is a lack of self-awareness. She observed, for example, how many employees feel “disrespected” when their bosses are multitasking on their phones and laptops instead of focusing on their needs. This trend produced an unexpected epiphany.
“I started this in a place where I felt like, gosh, there are some real jerks in the workplace and I need to crack this,” Porath admits. “But where I’ve landed is much more of the idea that the vast majority of this stems from a lack of self-awareness. So, again, a big piece of this is getting feedback about what you could be doing differently to affect people in more positive ways where you are going to get their best contributions.”
Al Osborne
Al Osborne (UCLA)
Al Osborne could easily retire. The senior associate dean at UCLA’s Anderson School of Management, Osborne has been a fixture at the school for 43 years. Despite this, he remains one of the most energetic members of the faculty, one who still teaches and supervises projects. “I’m very passionate and committed to helping the learning process,” he told P&Q in 2017. “I love coming onto campus and talking to my students.”
Osborne has long been a legend in South California’s startup scene, where he drove the development of the Price Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, which acts as ground zero for new ventures across the UCLA campus. The program’s strength mirror its Southern California milieu to a T: “Consumer-facing, digital content, entertainment tech-enabled that solves a problem in either the b-to-b or b-to-c space.”
At the same time, his mission is simple: “What’s different about what I’m trying to do is to allow our students to collide with scientists and principal investigators and see if there are ideas that can be licensed to solve real problems.”
He certainly has a lot to work with. Aside from UCLA ranking among the world’s top research universities, the Los Angeles metro is associated with the always-growing entertainment industry, which has become increasingly intertwined with the tech sector. In fact, LA has emerged as an upstart “Silicon Beach” answer to the Bay Area corridor. The SoCal region has spun out leading players like SnapChat, while attracting traditional powers like Google and Facebook along with it. In addition, the area’s traditional strength in aerospace, coupled with a wealth of middle market firms, have only increased Anderson’s value to employers in the region – and beyond.
“Anderson taps into this network of startups and established firms,” Osborne emphasizes. “We are the place where companies look for talent.”
Is it any wonder that he’s still giddy to come to work?”
Karl Ulrich, Vice Dean of Entrepreneurship and Innovation at Wharton
Karl Ulrich (Wharton)
Many people associate Wharton with east coast finance, a place to prep for a lavish and stable banking career. Karl Ulrich is working to change that impression – and his efforts have helped turn Wharton into an entrepreneurial powerhouse.
You won’t find Ulrich in Philadelphia much though. The vice dean of entrepreneurship and innovation, he has set up shop in Wharton’s Bar Area campus, where the goal is expose students to the rigors and rewards of entrepreneurship. Even more, the campus connects MBA students with over 7.000 Wharton, while also providing the flexibility for internships so students. In other words, it offers a built-in network to start, not to mention hands-on experience so students can decide if entrepreneurship is truly right for them.
“People read about Silicon Valley and San Francisco, but being there is different,” Ulrich told P&Q in 2017. “The majority of students who participate in the Semester in San Francisco have an eventual desire to either work in the Bay Area ecosystem or just somehow be connected through either venture capital or partnerships with players in Silicon Valley. For them to be on the ground there provides valuable opportunities to engage with the ecosystem before they decide where they’re going to end up on a full-time basis when they leave school.”
However, Ulrich is careful to note that the Semester in San Francisco isn’t just for future founders. He argues that skills like modeling enable Wharton graduates provides a level of versatility that can benefits Series A or B organizations that are looking to professionalize their operations. He adds that the school has also added a similar Beijing center to deepen Wharton’s footprint in Asia. At the same time, he touts Wharton’s size and scope, a key ingredient for entrepreneurs seeking particular industry and functional expertise.
“If you’re interested in something relatively specialized, Wharton would be a very good choice because you’re likely to find 20 other people who have similar interests,” he says.
DON’T MISS: FAVORITE PROFESSORS OF THE CLASS OF 2017 OR OUR FAVORITE BUSINESS SCHOOL PROFESSORS OF 2016
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