2023-2024 Annual Report

A Message From the Dean

It has been a year of excellence for the GW School of Business, animated by a successful reaccreditation, affirming our place among the world’s elite business schools.

The Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB), which accredits top business education programs around the globe, cited the impressive research and scholarship produced by our award-winning faculty and noted our students’ conviction that they are supported by our professors and staff. The review team praised the gender parity in our enrollment as a benchmark that distinguishes GW Business from most other business schools and noted our strong culture of diversity, equity, and inclusion. It also acknowledged the F. David Fowler Career Center for the valuable asset it is.

Our robust student recruitment, retention and engagement strategy, for both domestic and international students, played an important role in our reaccreditation, as did meaningful engagement by alumni on the school’s advisory boards and corporate council. I remain immensely grateful for the multitude of ways alumni and friends of GW Business support the school and provide exemplary opportunities for our students.

Students are the heart of our mission and we worked hard this year to broaden and deepen their learning experiences, both inside and outside the classroom. Students engaged in real-life consulting work through our dynamic Consulting Abroad Program and the career center’s Careers360 program. They took part in rigorous case competitions across the country, using those opportunities to apply what they have studied in the classroom. Our undergraduates also took advantage of the Business Leader Development Program (BLDP), which advances their career readiness.

Read More

Additionally, students tapped myriad opportunities to learn and network through GW events, seminars, and lecture series. These events leverage our location, engage alumni, and elevate the visibility and reputation of our school. They also turn a spotlight on the meaningful way research and thought leadership at GW Business inform public policy. This year’s GW Business & Policy Forum—a signature event spearheaded by the School of Business—and the Future of Finance & Trade in Africa conference were high-visibility examples.

The daylong GW Business & Policy Forum convened government experts, scholars, policymakers, corporate leaders, and other high-profile changemakers for a dynamic discussion on the promise and the peril associated with accelerating advances in artificial intelligence (AI), an issue of vital importance to our nation and the world.

Our faculty members are among those at the forefront of scholarship in this arena. For example, Assistant Professor of Decision Sciences Patrick Hall is engaged in research in support of the National Institute of Standards and Technology AI Risk Management Framework; he also serves on the advisory board of the AI Incident Database. Donna Hoffman, the Louis Rosenfeld Distinguished Scholar, and Thomas Novak, the Denit Trust Distinguished Scholar, research consumer interaction with AI. Avram Tucker Distinguished Scholar Herman Aguinis has studied the use of generative AI as a human resource management asset. And the GW Investment Institute’s 2024 annual conference, led by Vice Dean for Undergraduate Programs Rodney Lake, who is a faculty member in the Department of Finance, was focused on finance and AI.

Our school offers a Graduate Certificate in Artificial Intelligence and the role of AI is examined in several of our courses, including marketing and information systems and technology management. The GW Center for International Business Education and Research (GW-CIBER) has included AI in its podcast discussions on global careers.

The Future of Finance & Trade in Africa conference, meanwhile, brought an estimated 150 corporate executives, economists, U.S. Congress members, digital technology leaders, academics, and global development experts to our campus to examine how emerging technologies and financial innovation can drive inclusive growth in Africa. The Growth Dialogue at the School of Business was a key contributor to that vibrant discussion.

Over this past year, GW Business faculty have continued to trailblaze across disciplines as they publish books and research in high-impact academic journals and attract project funding from the National Science Foundation and other high-level grant makers.

Our good work paid off as GW Business once again stood out in the rankings, including a No. 9 ranking for graduate programs in international business.
We remain unwavering in our commitment to excellence in teaching, research, curriculum development, and learner success. The reaccreditation proved we are on the right track, but we believe we can do even more. We are already working on AACSB’s recommendations for strengthening the school, including fundraising for new endowed faculty positions.

The stories in this report detail the transformative ways our ambitions are enabling our students’ aspirations, advancing research with impact, and contributing to a better world. I am grateful for the many ways our GW Business community is our partner in making these achievements possible.

Image

Dr. Vanessa Perry
Interim Dean

Reaccreditation

Image

The GW School of Business has been granted reaccreditation by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB). The extension of the accreditation of the business and accounting programs offered by GWSB was granted following an assessment by the AACSB Continuous Improvement Review Committee and the Accounting Accreditation Committee and final approval by the AACSB board.

Read the article in GW Today

GW Business in the News

During the 2023-2024 academic year, the GW School of Business and its faculty were featured an impressive 513 times by media outlets, which collectively had a reach of 3.3 billion. Faculty were quoted and cited by top-tier, trade and niche media outlets, nationally and internationally.

Faculty shared their expertise about artificial intelligence and technology. The New York Times quoted Louis Rosenfeld Distinguished Scholar Donna Hoffman, who teaches marketing and co-directs the Center for the Connected Consumer, about the branding decisions of companies that want to influence younger audiences. Teaching Assistant Professor of Decision Sciences Patrick Hall was interviewed in stories about the rollout of a new AI Google search feature. Interim Dean Vanessa Perry, a professor of marketing, strategic management and public policy, provided both the New York Times and NPR with expert commentary and context about homeownership and inequities in the U.S. real estate market.

Lisa Delpy Neirotti, associate professor of sport management and director of the M.S. in Sport Management Program, shared her take on the business of sport and sports tourism for collegiate and professional athletes for outlets including CNBC, the Boston Globe and The Athletic.

Faculty were also sought for their experience and understanding of the global economy and financial markets. Scheherazade Rehman, professor of international finance and business and professor of international affairs, was quoted by news outlets covering the dynamic relationship and economic ties between the U.S. and China. The Associated Press, U.S. News & World Report and NPR also cited her in news stories focused on a G7 plan for using frozen Russian assets to aid Ukraine.

The expertise of faculty from the Department of Management, including department Chair Christopher Kayes, was tapped by BBC News, ABC News and in interviews with CNN about current events in the labor market, including strikes and management decision making. Korean Management Institute Project Director Jungho Suh, who teaches management, provided media outlets with insight on changes and trends in the tourism sector. He spoke with Condé Nast Traveler about a change in its security camera policy, discussed a traveler practice known as “skiplagging” with the Washington Post, and talked to CNN about the launch of a new visa for travelers working remotely in South Korea. 

New Faculty Books

Faculty published books this year detailing the dynamics of the housing market, and methods for conducting high-quality and impactful research. 

“Research Methodology: Best Practices for Rigorous, Credible, and Impactful Research” by Avram Tucker Distinguished Scholar and Professor of Management Herman Aguinis

In four parts, a book authored by Herman Aguinis, Avram Tucker Distinguished Scholar and professor of management, offered an expert overview of how to conduct research in a book titled “Research Methodology: Best Practices for Rigorous, Credible, and Impactful Research,” released in March 2024. It begins by describing the methodological landscape for research and then walks readers through each step of the research process, from data collection to reporting results. It also includes advice on how researchers can increase the impact of their work. Aguinis has been recognized as one of the world’s 100 most highly-cited and impactful researchers in economics and business. He served as chair of the Department of Management at GW Business, and as president of the Academy of Management. His research and teaching focus on the global acquisition and deployment of talent in organizations and organizational research methods (i.e., behavioral science and data science). His recent publications have delved further into these areas, with insights on corporate social responsibility and workforce diversity.
 

“Applied Psychology in Talent Management” by Professor Aguinis and University of Colorado Denver Professor Emeritus Wayne F. Cascio
 

Creating productive and enjoyable work environments is the cornerstone of the ninth edition of “Applied Psychology in Talent Management,” a book co-authored by Professor Herman Aguinis. The book draws from psychological theories to offer an in-depth discussion and analysis of talent management and its relationship with firm performance. It includes topics such as diversity, equity and inclusion, artificial intelligence, globalization, and human resource and workforce development strategy. This is a majorly updated and expanded edition of a classic book that has been translated into several languages and used by hundreds of business schools around the world since its first edition was published in 1978. 

“When Housing Markets Meet Shadow Banking: Bubbles, Mortgages, Securitization, and Fintech” by University of Macau Professor in Finance Rose Neng Lai, and GW School of Business Oliver Carr Chair in Real Estate and Professor of Finance and Economics Robert Van Order

Shadow banks and their role in the housing markets of the United States and China is the focus of a book co-authored by Robert Van Order, Oliver Carr Chair in real estate, and professor of finance and economics. The book, released in April 2024, is titled “When Housing Markets Meet Shadow Banking: Bubbles, Mortgages, Securitization, and Fintech.” It compares the evolution of mortgage markets in the United States and China, and how they have led to different outcomes in terms of stability and efficiency in the two countries. Recommended for practitioners, researchers and general readers with interest in the intersection of banking, finance and real estate, the book also provides perspective about recent events such as the COVID-19 pandemic and the emergence of securitization and financial technology, or “fintech,”  and their influence on the housing markets.

“Concise Introduction to Organization Theory: From Ontological Differences to Robust Identities” by Thaddeus A. Lindner and Sergius Gambal Professor of Business Ethics and Professor of Strategic Management and Public Policy Joel Gehman, and University of Alberta Professor of Strategy, Entrepreneurship and Management Michael Lounsbury 

Exploring the field of organizational theory, this book, released in May 2024, offers readers an overview of the debates that are defining its parameters. Scholars and practitioners in the field, including co-author Joel Gehman, Lindner-Gambal Professor of Business Ethics, outline the rationalist, pragmatic and co-constitutive theories of organizational studies within the framework of the philosophical traditions that have formed them. The authors provide a lens through which scholars can shape their contributions to the field from a practical and theoretical basis. The book, “Concise Introduction to Organization Theory,” has been hailed for being comprehensive and is aimed at both established scholars and doctoral students alike.

Awards & Recognition

June 2, 2023

Joel Gehman, Lindner-Gambal Professor of Business Ethics and professor of strategic management and public policy, won election to become the next chair of the Organization and Management Theory (OMT) Division of the Academy of Management. Over the course of a five-year term in the office from August 2023-August 2028, Professor Gehman will rotate in OMT positions that include Professional Development Workshops (PDW) Chair, Program Chair, Division Chair Elect, Division Chair, and Past Division Chair. Learn more.

Donald E. Hawkins, emeritus professor of tourism studies, management and international affairs at GW Business, was awarded the Gold Medal of Tourism Merit, 1st degree, from Nuno Fazenda de Almeida, Portugal's Secretary of State for Tourism, Commerce, and Services, for his “remarkable” work in the field of tourism, including his efforts to promote sustainable tourism worldwide, and his contributions to strategic tourism planning and tourism development over the past 50 years. Among Professor Hawkins' current and past leadership roles and service activities are envoy to the Sustainable Tourism Global Center (STGC) in the Saudi Arabia Ministry of Tourism; chairman of Solimar International; special advisor to the Secretary-General of the United Nations World Tourism Organization (2013-2017); and chairman emeritus of the SAVE Travel Alliance, Volunteers for Economic Growth Alliance, and the Sustainable Travel Alliance.

July 7, 2023

Amando Cope, a doctoral student in the Department of Management at GW Business, has been named a recipient of a “Best Reviewer Award” from the Organizational Behavior (OB) Division of the Academy of Management (AOM) for his service to the profession as a reviewer of papers submitted for presentation at the AOM annual conference. The AOM is the “preeminent professional association for management and organization scholars” with approximately 20,000 members in over 110 countries. Amando will receive the award during the AOM 83rd Annual Meeting, which will be held in Boston this August and typically has around 12,000 attendees from more than 90 countries. Amando’s doctoral advisor is Herman Aguinis, Ph.D., Avram Tucker Distinguished Scholar and professor of management.

July 28, 2023

Jennifer Merluzzi, associate professor of strategic management and public policy at GW Business, and Professor Jirs Meuris of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, have been invited to present their paper, “Devaluation by association: Gender diversification and performance recognition in male-dominated occupations” at the 16th Annual People and Organizations Conference, which will be held at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania from September 22-23.

August 4, 2023

Vikram Bhargava, assistant professor of strategic management and public policy at the GW School of Business, has received the 2023 Best Ethics Paper Award from the  Academy of Legal Studies in Business (ALSB) for a paper entitled, "The Case for Heritage Reparations," which he co-authored with Suneal Bedi, Ph.D., assistant professor of business law and ethics at the Kelley School of Business at Indiana University. The paper introduces the concept of heritage reparations, a novel approach to address historical wrongs through the representation of marginalized cultural groups in corporate strategy decisions.

August 11, 2023

Jorge Rivera, professor of strategic management and public policy and Tucker-Endowed Fellow at GW Business, co-authored a book titled Business Adaptation to Climate Change (Cambridge U. Press, 2022) which has received the 2023 Best Book Award from the Organizations and the Natural Environment (ONE) Division of the Academy of Management (AOM). The book has also been recognized with the Best Book Award from the AOM Social Issues in Management (SIM) Division.

September 29, 2023

Young Hoon Kwak, associate professor of decision sciences, received a certificate of recognition for delivering a talk as part of the Tishman Distinguished Lecture series at the University of Michigan’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering.

October 13, 2023

Jin Hyung Kim, assistant professor of international business, was awarded the Strategic Management Journal’s(SMJ) Best Reviewer Award for the third consecutive year. He has served on the journal’s editorial board since 2021.

November 17, 2023

Jin Hyung Kim, assistant professor of international business, was awarded the Strategic Management Journal’s (SMJ) Best Reviewer Award for the third consecutive year. He has served on the journal’s editorial board since 2021. Strategic Management Journal is one of the top international business, management, and strategy journals ranked by FT 50 and UTD journal lists.

Assistant Professor of Strategic Management & Public Policy Vikram Bhargava’s article "Hiring, Algorithms, and Choice: Why Interviews Still Matter," appeared among a list of high impact management articles, curated by Cambridge University Press. Prof. Bhargava and his co-author ask: Are interviews worth preserving in a world with hiring algorithms? They argue that even if hiring algorithms ultimately become better at predicting performance and fit than humans, it nevertheless does not mean we ought to do away with interviews—this is because there are commonly overlooked intrinsic values associated with our ability to choose with whom we would like to work.

December 15, 2023

N. Sharon Hill, professor of management, received a 2023 Outstanding Editorial Review Board Reviewer Award from Organization Science “in recognition of her timely, rigorous, and thoughtful assessment of handled manuscripts.”

Sanjay Jain, associate industry professor of decision sciences, received the Distinguished Service Award from the Simulation Society of Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS) in recognition of his long-standing, exceptional service to the simulation community. The award was announced during the plenary session of the 2023 Winter Simulation Conference in San Antonio, TX on December 11.

January 22, 2024

N. Sharon Hill, professor of management, and Isabel Villamor, a former doctoral student at GW Business and now an assistant professor in the Managing People In Organizations Department at IESE Business School, are co-authors of the fourth most cited and 10th most read article published by the Academy of Management Annals in 2023.

January 29, 2024

The paper “Changes in Hiring Discrimination Against Stay-at-Home Fathers during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Evidence from Online Experiments, 2019-2021” co-authored by Jennifer Merluzzi, associate professor strategic management & public policy, with Professor Julia Melin of the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth, has been accepted for the Work and Family Research Network Conference, a convening of policymakers, researchers, practitioners and thought leaders who explore the intersections of work and family. The paper is also under review by Management Science.

February 19, 2024

Herman Aguinis, Avram Tucker Distinguished Scholar and professor of management, is the author of a book, Performance Management for Dummies, that has been recognized as one of the "10 HR Game-Changing Page Turners."

February 22, 2024

Li Liang, doctoral student of finance, won fourth place out of 24 contestants in the Three Minute Thesis (3MT) competition. This competition is open to PhD students and asks them to present their research in a concise and compelling manner. It is held by more than 900 universities and allows participants to develop their research communication skills. The 3MT competition at GW was held on February 22.

March 4, 2024

Joel Gehman, Lindner-Gambal Professor of Business Ethics and professor of strategic management & public policy, received the Board Member of the Year Award from B Academics, a non-profit organization committed to the use of business as a force for good and to the study of B Lab, B Corporations. Professor Gehman co-founded B Academics in 2019 and serves as vice president and board member.

March 11, 2024

Joel Gehman, Lindner-Gambal Professor of Business Ethics and professor of strategic management and public policy, co-authored an article that was recognised as a finalist for the Publication of the Year Award from B Academics. The article, titled "Pathways to Social Value and Social Change: An Integrative Review of the Social Entrepreneurship Literature,” is a systematic review of 347 published studies and conceptually differentiated between social value and social change as distinct outcomes of social entrepreneurship and identified seven pathways for achieving these outcomes. It was published in the International Journal of Management Reviews.

March 18, 2024

Chukwuma Dim, assistant professor of finance, was recognized with the Best Paper Award in Investments and Asset Pricing from the Midwest Finance Association Annual Conference 2024, for a paper he co-authored, entitled “Optimism Shifting.” The award is sponsored by the American Association of Individual Investors (AAII).

March 25, 2024

Mary Granger, professor emerita of information systems & technology management is the recipient of the Distinguished Educator of the Year Award from the Information Systems Computing Academic Professionals (ISCAP). The award is presented to educators in recognition of their “distinguished teaching, research and service” in support of information systems graduates.

April 15, 2024

Herman Aguinis, Avram Tucker Distinguished Scholar and professor of management (#34 in the US, #60 in the world); Elias Carayannis, professor of information systems and technology management (#137 in the US, #274 in the world); Donna Hoffman, Louis Rosenfeld Distinguished Scholar, professor of marketing, and co-Director of the Center for the Connected Consumer (#504 in the US, #1,127 in the world); and Young Hoon Kwak, associate professor in the Department of Decision Sciences (#715 in the US, #1,639 in the world) were all listed on the latest “Best Business and Management Scientists” list from Research.com. The list was created using multiple bibliometric data sources and a Discipline H-index or “D-Index,” which is based on citations and publications of each researcher in the discipline of business and management.

April 22, 2024

Miguel Lejeune, professor of decision sciences and of electrical and computer engineering, has been recommended to receive the 2024 Excellence in Research Award in Applied Mathematics from the Washington Academy of Sciences. The awards committee for the Academy cited Professor Lejeune’s “scientific contributions to understand the mathematical structure of optimization problems, design computationally efficient model formulations and scalable algorithms, and provide scientific solutions to societal and industry problems.” The award was presented during the Washington Academy of Sciences Annual Awards Banquet on Friday, May 17 at the National Academy of Sciences Building in Washington, D.C.

June 24, 2024  

Herman Aguinis, Avram Tucker Distinguished Scholar and professor of management, is the recipient of the 2024 Academy of Management Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Division Award for Scholarly Contributions. The award recognizes career-long and significant scholarly contributions that have advanced our knowledge of diversity, equity, and inclusion. The award ceremony will take place at the August meetings of the Academy of Management. 

Publications

July 7, 2023

Herman Aguinis, Avram Tucker Distinguished Scholar and professor of management, is an author of “Stronger Together: A Call for Gender-Inclusive Leadership in Business Schools” a recently-published paper in the Journal of Management. The paper offers 11 solutions for more gender-inclusive leadership in business schools.

Sanjay Jain, associate industry professor of decision sciences, published a paper titled “Digital Twin Enabled Machine Learning for Smart Manufacturing” in Volume 7, Issue 1, of Smart and Sustainable Manufacturing Systems journal.  The paper was co-authored with Dr. A. Narayanan based on joint research at the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology.

Li Jiang, assistant professor in the Department of Marketing, published a paper entitled “The Early Impact of GDPR Compliance on Display Advertising: The Case of an Ad Publisher” in the Journal of Marketing Research.

August 18, 2023

Robert Van Order, professor of finance and economics, Oliver Carr Chair in Real Estate, and Co-Chair of the department of finance, and Rose Neng  Lai of the University of Macau, have completed a book titled, When Housing Markets Meet Shadow Banking: Bubbles, Mortgages, Securitization, and Fintech in the Two Largest World Economies. The book is scheduled for release in December 2023.

September 1, 2023

Ursula Martin, a second-year doctoral student in the Department of Management, co-authored a paper that was published in Business Horizons journal, entitled “ Punishing the Good? How to Minimize an Unfair CSR-washing Label.” Additional co-authors of the paper were Herman Aguinis, Avram Tucker Distinguished Scholar and professor of management, and Urusha Thapa, a doctoral student of strategic management and public policy.

James Wade, Avram Tucker Professor of Strategy and Leadership, co-authored an empirical study, “Racial Disparity In Leadership: Evidence of Valuative Bias In The Promotions of National Football League Coaches,” analyzing data on NFL coaching staff between 1985-2015 and finding persistent racial disparities in the promotion of head coaches. The study was published in the American Journal of Sociology in July 2023.

September 8, 2023

Lauryn Burnett, a second-year doctoral student of management, co-authored an article entitled, "How to prevent and minimize DEI backfire,” with Herman Aguinis, Avram Tucker Distinguished Scholar and professor of management, published by Business Horizons journal.

September 15, 2023

Şenay Ağca, professor of finance, co-authored an article titled "The Impact of COVID-19 on Supply Chain Credit Risk,” that was published in the Production and Operations Management. The article examines the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on global supply chains across various regions of the world and the resulting credit risks as measured by abnormality in CDS (credit default swap) spreads.

October 13, 2023

Jin Hyung Kim, assistant professor of international business co-authored an article with Jordan Siegel of the University of Michigan, titled “Paying for Legitimacy: Autocracy, Nonmarket Strategy, and the Liability of Foreignness, published by Administrative Science Quarterly, one of the top international business, management, and strategy journals ranked by FT 50 and UTD journal lists.

December 1, 2023

Edward Sul, assistant professor of accountancy, co-authored an article titled “Takeover Threats, Job Security Concerns, and Earnings Management” published byThe Accounting Review.

January 8, 2024

A paper co-authored by Jennifer Merluzzi, associate professor of strategic management and public policy with Professor Jirs Meuris of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, titled "A Hidden Barrier to Diversification? Performance Recognition Penalties for Incumbent Workers in Male-Dominated Occupations,” was published by the American Sociological Review.

January 22, 2024

Herman Aguinis, Avram Tucker Distinguished Scholar and professor of management, co-authored an article tilted “Corporate social responsibility and individual behaviour,” that was published in Nature Human Behaviour.

January 29, 2024

Chad Yi-Chun Ho, associate professor of information systems & technology management, was named the recipient of the Outstanding Associate Editor Award 2022 from Information Systems Research.

Herman Aguinis, Avram Tucker Distinguished Scholar and professor of management, and Amando Cope, a second-year doctoral student, co-authored an article in the journal Organizational Dynamics titled “How to use generative AI as a human resource management assistant.” Their article describes how generative AI can assist overworked HRM professionals in both strategic and operational tasks by providing guidelines for creating effective prompts, implementing a verification process, and demonstrating its utility in reducing job burnout and allowing more focus on strategic issues.

Joel Gehman, Lindner-Gambal Professor of Business Ethics and professor of strategic management and public policy, co-authored the article “Organizations as Algorithms: A New Metaphor for Advancing Management Theory,” published online by Journal of Management Studies.

N. Sharon Hill, professor of management, is co-author of the article, “The Impact of Team Virtuality on the Performance of On-Campus Student Teams,” published by the Academy of Management Learning & Education.

February 19, 2024

Herman Aguinis, Avram Tucker Distinguished Scholar and professor of management, co-authored an article in the Journal of Business Venturing Insights titled “Under the weight of heavy tails: A power law perspective on the emergence of outliers in entrepreneurship.” The study reveals that a pure power law distribution does not typically govern firm outcomes in entrepreneurship, but rather by distributions such as a power law with an exponential cutoff and lognormal for revenue and employee numbers, challenging the dominance of extreme outlier firms and suggesting a need for research into systemic constraints and underlying mechanisms for top entrepreneurial performance.

February 26, 2024

Joel Gehman, Lindner-Gambal Professor of Business Ethics and professor of strategic management and public policy, contributed to a collection of articles published by the Journal of Management Inquiry focused on “The Future of Research in an Artificial Intelligence-Driven World.” With co-author Professor Vern L. Glaser of the University of Alberta, Professor Gehman discussed “Chatty Actors: Generative AI and the Reassembly of Agency in Qualitative Research,” exploring AI's potential to take on traditionally-human roles of research assistant, data analyst, and co-author, and the governance principles that might accompany their performance.

Herman Aguinis, Avram Tucker Distinguished Scholar and professor of management, co-authored an article in the journal Academy of Management Collections titled “Corporate Social Responsibility Research: An Ongoing and Worthwhile Journey.” The article offers a comprehensive overview of corporate social responsibility (CSR) research evolution, methodology, and impact from 1973 to 2022 and provides recommendations for enhancing the impact of CSR research that is more transdisciplinary, participative, inclusive of stakeholders, methodologically rigorous, translational, and attentive to specific CSR initiative characteristics and intended beneficiaries.

March 4, 2024

Herman Aguinis, Avram Tucker Distinguished Scholar and professor of management, co-authored an article titled “Improving our Understanding of Predictive Bias in Testing” that has been published in the Journal of Applied Psychology. The article describes a computer simulation and a study using admissions data of more than 400,000 students to identify instances of predictive bias, an occurrences which the paper describes when students minority racial/ethnic groups with the same test scores as majority students from are not predicted to have the same college GPA.

March 11, 2024

Herman Aguinis, Avram Tucker Distinguished Scholar and professor of management, published a book titled Research Methodology: Best Practices for Rigorous, Credible, and Impactful Research. This 616-page book takes a 360-degree view of understanding and doing research, helping readers become expert researchers, reviewers, and consumers of research. Each of the 16 chapters thoroughly explains a different aspect of methodology step by step, from choosing useful and compelling research topics to reporting results accurately and credibly. Researchers at all career stages will find this book helpful to structure and conduct high-impact empirical research to produce a thesis, dissertation, or journal publication.

Jennifer Merluzzi, associate professor of strategic management and public policy, is co-author of an article titled “A Hidden Barrier to Diversification? Performance Recognition Penalties for Incumbent Workers in Male-Dominated Occupations” published by American Sociological Review, with Professor Jirs Meuris of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The paper proposes a performance recognition penalty that occurs towards an individual worker as his or her work unit proportionately increases in women workers, and and after testing the penalty among 13,000 + Chicago Police officers from 2004 to 2027, found that an individual officer’s (within-person) propensity to receive a performance award to decrease as women enter his or her police unit.

March 18, 2024

Herman Aguinis, Avram Tucker Distinguished Scholar and professor of management, co-authored an article with Isabel Villamor (Ph.D., ‘22), assistant professor at IESE Business School in the Journal of Organizational Behavior. Using three studies and eight different samples, their article “Think star performer, think male? Implicit star performer theories,” discovered an important reason for the star performer gender gap: People associate star performers with more masculine than feminine attributes, and this association is even stronger in men-dominated occupations. Their research has significant implications for gender equity and the identification and development of star performers.

Vikram R. Bhargava, assistant professor of strategic management & public policy, published an article entitled “Autonomous Vehicles and the Ethics of Driving” with co-author Brian Berkey, Associate Professor of Legal Studies & Business Ethics at The Wharton School of The University of Pennsylvania in the journal Social Theory and Practice. Motor vehicle collisions are among the most common causes of premature death, killing more people each year than HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and diarrhea. The article argues that once autonomous vehicles (AVs) are ready to bring to market, there will be strong grounds to regulate the sale of non-autonomous vehicles and, ultimately, to ban humans from driving non-autonomous vehicles, that  driving in a standard vehicle rather than riding in an AV will become analogous to driving drunk rather than driving sober, and therefore impermissible. The article also develops an argument based on vaccination policy: Just as realizing the benefits of herd immunity are conditional on widespread vaccination, the same is true for the expected harm and pollution reductions associated with AVs. Crucially, the article has important implications for automotive industry policy: widespread adoption of AVs will require firms in the automotive industry to cooperate with competitors to ensure a safer and more sustainable transportation system on our roadways.

March 25, 2024

Robert Van Order, Oliver Carr Chair in Real Estate, professor of finance and economics, and co-chair of the Department of Finance, is co-author of a book, titled A When Housing Markets Meet Shadow Banking: Bubbles, Mortgages, Securitization, and Fintech.

April 1, 2024

Joel Gehman, Lindner-Gambal Professor of Business Ethics and professor of strategic management and public policy, co-authored an article titled, “Large Language Models and the Future of Organization Theory” which was published in Organization Theory Volume 5, Issue 1.

May 6, 2024

Joel Gehman, Lindner-Gambal Professor of Business Ethics and professor of strategic management and public policy, co-authored a book titled Concise Introduction to Organization Theory. The book offers a fresh perspective on the field of organization theory, taking as one point of departure, Burrell and Morgan's (1979) classic work. Professor Gehman and co-authors differentiate rationalist, pragmatic and co-constitutive theories, in terms of their ontological and their axiological commitments (Chapter 1). They apply their framework to the fields of organization theory (Chapters 2-4), strategy and entrepreneurship (Chapter 5), and the growing conversation on grand challenges (Chapter 6).

June 10, 2024

William C. Handorf, professor of finance, published “Ex ante Autopsy of a Failed Bank Using Public Information,” in the International Banker  (Spring, 2024, pp. 36-39). Professor Handorf also published “Bank Failure, a Risk Index and Capital,” in the Banking and Financial Services Policy Journal (May, 2024, Volume 42, Issue 05, pp.1-7).

Patrick McHugh, associate professor of management, co-authored "Opening the ballot box: Examining the union voting behavior of scholarship football players" with Matthew Hinkle and Mark Hyman in the Labor Studies Journal.

June 17, 2024

Denise Falchetti, assistant professor of management, has a new article entitled “Radically concrete or incrementally abstract? The contingent role of abstract and concrete framing in pitching novel ideas,” published in the journal Innovation. Additional co-authors include Professor Gino Cattani of the NYU Stern School of Business and Professor Simone Ferriani of the University of Bologna.

July 1, 2024

Donna Hoffman, Louis Rosenfeld Distinguished Scholar, professor of marketing, and co-director of the Center for the Connected Consumer, co-authored an article entitled “How Artificial Intelligence Constrains the Human Experience.” The article is published in the Journal of the Association for Consumer Research.

Herman Aguinis, Avram Tucker Distinguished Scholar and professor of management, published the 9^th edition of his classic textbook “Applied Psychology in Talent Management.” The 700-page book provides a comprehensive overview of psychological theories and how they impact people’s decisions in today's workplace. It equips students and managers across all industries with the tools necessary to create productive and enjoyable work environments. New and expanded topics include how talent management practices are affected by social media, machine learning, AI, gamification, virtual reality, and big data, as well as demographic trends.

Research by Herman Aguinis, Avram Tucker Distinguished Scholar and professor of management, and Jing Burgi-Tian, adjunct professor of management, was featured in Nikkei, Japan's most prestigious business publication. The article, including an interview with Ryosuke Sasaki, Chief People and Culture Officer of PwC Japan, refers to Aguinis and Burgi-Tian’s “Performance Promoter Score,” a new performance management approach described in their Business Horizons article Measuring performance during crises and beyond: The performance promoter score.

Interest in GWSB’s Research Remains High

This past year alone, GWSB’s thought leadership produced acclaimed, groundbreaking work that is advancing our understanding of the business world. Here are just some of the examples:

Image

Ph.D. Students’ Research Offers Strategies to Counter Unfair CSR-Washing

When two second-year doctoral students at the GW School of Business decided to look into so-called corporate social responsibility (CSR)-washing, when companies espouse commitments to social concerns out of self-interest, they honed in on why companies’ CSR goals and actions are sometimes unfairly branded as inauthentic. Even more, they wanted to understand what those firms could do about it.

Read More

The resulting research by Ursula Martin and Urusha Thapa is the foundation of the paper “Punishing the good? How to minimize an unfair CSR-washing label.” The paper, co-authored with Avram Tucker Distinguished Scholar and Professor of Management Herman Aguinis, was published in Business Horizons.

“When we started the project, we were talking about how CSR is viewed from a consumer perspective,” Martin said. “We looked at how these organizations are structured and whether their commitment to CSR is as authentic as it is portrayed to be.

“Rather than always looking for the negative side of CSR, Urusha and I came up with the idea of looking at best practices and focused on companies that genuinely engage in sustainable practices but are still accused of CSR-washing and find themselves having to prove that their CSR initiatives are authentic,” Martin added.

Martin and Thapa said it can be difficult when companies that have made significant and genuine efforts to address social or environmental issues are lumped alongside businesses that tout an interest in CSR merely for financial gain, distorting internal practices to project a CSR façade to stakeholders. An unjust CSR-washing label can harm a business’s reputation, erode its consumer and stakeholder trust and even lead to lawsuits.

Martin and Thapa’s research resulted in four interconnected, evidence-based recommendations to minimize the likelihood that a business would be unfairly viewed as a CSR-washer. The paper also offers implementation guidelines for each of the four recommendations.

The first recommendation is to integrate CSR into core activities rather than making it a peripheral concern.

“It’s about being consistent and transparent with their CSR objectives and considering our recommendations to support those objectives,” Martin explained. “For example, if a company shares a big CSR initiative on social media and sets the target goal date for 2030, they must demonstrate consistency and transparency in their actions throughout the campaign. It is not a one-time action.”

Thapa said another recommendation is to foster a bottom-up approach to CSR to harness the value that employees can contribute to a sustainability culture.

“We focus on meaningfulness, on the things that employees are passionate about so that they feel they are part of the CSR culture,” Thapa said. “The actions or decisions come from top management, but how about letting employees contribute and have an opportunity to gain shared ownership?”

The other recommendations call for developing a performance management system that aligns with CSR objectives and advancing an effective and consistent CSR communications strategy.

“The article by Ursula and Urusha demonstrates the interdisciplinary, impactful and relevant research conducted at the George Washington University School of Business,” Aguinis said. “Ursula is in the doctoral program in the Department of Management and Urusha is in the program in the Department of Strategic Management and Public Policy, so they were able to provide different yet complementary perspectives to the topic of corporate social responsibility, which is critical for organizations and society.”

Martin and Thapa’s work exemplifies how early doctoral students have opportunities for research collaborations with professors at the School of Business. Thapa, who is from Nepal, said she applied to GW after finding that it was producing research that looked at how businesses can tackle grand challenges through strategy. She was especially interested in work on B corporations—organizations that meet various standards related to performance, accountability and transparency.

Martin was already in the Master of Human Resource Management program at GW Business when she began to think about a PhD as an avenue to merge her academic experience with her industry experience. Her interest lies in the human aspect of organizational behavior and issues related to marginalized groups.

Both PhD candidates, who are on track to graduate in 2027, said companies that want to succeed cannot remain on the sidelines about CSR.

“I would question companies that try to stay safe by saying nothing about CSR. The greater good lies with sustainability,” Thapa said. “Companies that are pro-CSR perform better in the long run and they work better with all kinds of stakeholders.”  

Image

CRES Positions for Research and Policy Influence on Affordable Housing

Stephen O’Connor, the new chair of the Center for Real Estate Studies (CRES), sees a powerful opportunity for the GW School of Business to establish its credentials as an influencer in national affordable housing discussions.

Read More

“There isn’t an academic program in the United States that has any materially reasonable focus on affordable housing, on teaching students the nuances in building lower- and middle-income houses,” O’Connor said.

O’Connor, whose research expertise focuses on affordable housing, said even as CRES students continue to learn about commercial real estate, he would like to see the curriculum expand further to address affordable housing, a growing national and international challenge.

O’Connor joined the George Washington University community from Bucknell University, where he helped to deepen the real estate program and launch a real estate minor that quickly became one of the most popular concentrations at the university’s Freeman College of Management. He has begun connecting with leaders in D.C.’s affordable housing community. Long term, he sees opportunities for interdisciplinary collaboration between CRES and GW Law, the Trachtenberg School of Public Policy and Public Administration, and the Department of Sociology at Columbian College of Arts and Sciences.

“I see D.C. as a research laboratory,” O’Connor said. “The ability to attract expertise on affordable housing is greater here than any place else. You also have a city that has a level of density that could make commercial-to-residential conversions possible. And you have a housing crisis here, in terms of market and affordability.”

O’Connor, who teaches real estate finance, said CRES is well-positioned to carve out research expertise on issues that influence housing affordability, including zoning, taxes and tax credits, loan structures, and grants.

He also is considering ways CRES can contribute to the reputation of GW as a global university, whose School of Business has become a recognized leader in global business education. While at Bucknell, for example, he took students to Ireland, where he taught a course in housing economics.

O’Connor had already more than three decades of experience in the real estate industry when he decided to pursue his PhD in planning and public policy. He brings with him to CRES the knowledge he gained working in property development, which included multi-family apartment buildings.

“I knew how to build physical infrastructure, but I didn’t know how to build the social infrastructure that makes urban communities better,” said the new CRES chair. Now, he explained, “we can distinguish ourselves with that kind of research.”

Image

GW School of Business Research Examines Effectiveness of NFL’s Rooney Rule

In the two decades since the National Football League (NFL) developed the Rooney Rule in a bid to bring more Black head coaches to the sport, businesses have adopted similar candidate-search policies to ensure diversity in their boardrooms. Some investors screen companies based on whether they have implemented a Rooney Rule policy.

Read More

But has the Rooney Rule worked as intended for the NFL?

No, according to research by Avram Tucker Endowed Professor of Leadership and Strategy James Wade — although it could with some modification.

The original rule, which has been expanded over the years, addressed the historically low number of minority coaches in the NFL by requiring that teams interview at least one minority candidate when a head coaching vacancy occurred.

The coaching staff at most NFL franchises is led by a head coach and the defense and offense coordinators who report to the head coach. Position coaches make up the tier below coordinators.

“Racial Disparity in Leadership: Evidence of Valuative Bias in the Promotions of National Football League Coaches,” published in the July issue of American Journal of Sociology, analyzed 1,300 coaches at all levels in the NFL between 1985 to 2015, using detailed data from the NFL Record and Fact Book. It found that white coaches were almost twice as likely to be promoted to coordinators, putting them in the most advantageous position for future selection as head coaches. Professor Wade co-authored the study with Christopher Rider at the University of Michigan, Anand Swaminathan at Emory University, and Andreas Schwab at Iowa State University. 

“Distinct from prior work, we hold constant many relevant factors like initial and current coaching position, college playing position, team and unit performance [and] time trends,” Professor Wade explained. “In short, no other empirical study on minority advancement accounts for as many factors as ours does.”

The study found that while white coaches are no more likely to be promoted to head coach than coaches of color in the same position, white coaches are nearly twice as likely to be promoted to the coordinator position — which accounted for roughly 79 percent of the observed promotions from head coach over the three-decade period the authors analyzed.

The study also found racial disparities to be persistent, existing both before and after implementation of the Rooney Rule.

Professor Wade suggested that a better strategy for narrowing the racial gap would be to apply the Rooney Rule to “lower-level positions in which most coaches start their careers.”

“However, such a rule — or any other intervention — is still unlikely to close the gap until equally performing and equally qualified coaches are promoted at the same rate regardless of race,” he added.

According to the Associated Press, at the start of the 2024 season, 53.5 percent of NFL players were Black, yet only six of the NFL’s 32 head coaches were Black: Atlanta Falcons Coach Raheem Morris, New England Patriots Coach Jerod Mayo, Las Vegas Raiders Coach Antonio Pierce, Pittsburgh Steelers Coach Mike Tomlin, Coach Todd Bowles with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, and the Houston Texans’ Coach DeMeco Ryans.

Professor Wade previously studied leadership positions in college football teams, where he found a strong white advantage grew out of racial stereotypicality based on physical features. He is now examining data from interviews with head coach candidates in the NFL to gauge the likelihood that minority candidates are given an interview and the chances that they will subsequently be hired.

Some of his other current research explores the determinants of and outcomes of scandals and corruption, status dynamics among corporate CEOs, and the effects of race and gender on career mobility.

“I was trained as a sociologist,” Professor Wade said. “I’ve always been interested in why some people do better than others.”

Image

Journal Publishes GWSB Doctoral Student’s Paper on DEI Backfire

What happens when employees push back against businesses that embrace diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI)?

As organizations increase their focus on DEI, they sometimes face unintended negative outcomes. How they can mitigate that pushback, which may include discrimination against underrepresented groups or resistance to required DEI training, is the subject of research by doctoral student Lauryn Burnett, whose paper on the topic has been published in Business
Horizons.

Read More

Burnett is a co-author with Avram Tucker Distinguished Scholar and Professor of Management Herman Aguinis on “How to prevent and minimize DEI backfire.” Her research found that off- track messaging, inadequate support from leadership and weak workplace structures can contribute to the backfire.

The research pointed to five evidence-based actions that can help prevent or mitigate negative reactions. The first focuses on job recruitment and calls for realistic job previews in order to minimize staff turnover. Other recommendations included greater engagement of managers in the recruitment process — and giving them increased autonomy in hiring decisions. Clarity on merit- based advancement policies can also help defuse pushback, according to the research.

Other recommendations include a context-conscious perspective on diversity training, creation of an accountability mechanism for DEI, the alignment of DEI with the organization’s communications and culture and a multi-tiered approach to monitoring and evaluating DEI practices within an organization.

Burnett said she started working on the paper in her first semester at GW. “Dr. Aguinis made it into an assignment,” she explained. “The idea needed to be framed... so the recommendations were specific enough to help address this particular problem.

“To be published at this point is beneficial for me professionally. Because this is a practitioner bridge journal, it means that I understand how to translate research into practical advice for managers — something I want to continue throughout my research,” she added.

Burnett said DEI is a subject that has interested her for some time.

“I am very proud of our stellar doctoral student Lauryn Burnett, who exemplifies what we do in GWSB’s PhD program: Prepare students to be successful academics who will contribute to both theory and practice,” said Aguinis. “Lauryn is studying a critical issue for society and organizations and shows that research conducted at GWSB is both rigorous and relevant.”

Burnett worked in human resources at L3Harris, a technology company, defense contractor and information technology provider in Florida, when she decided to pursue a PhD, which she is on
track to complete in 2027. She holds a master’s degree in human resources from the University of South Carolina.

“I am grateful to have had such great mentorship early on and to be seen as a colleague and not just a student, to have my ideas and perspectives valued. Reaching this publication milestone at the start of my second year is a testament to the exceptional quality of the program at GW,” she noted, acknowledging the support of her advisers, Associate Professor of Management Margaret Ormiston and Professor of Management N. Sharon Hill.

GWSB Professor Receives Excellence in Research Award

Miguel Lejeune was recognized for his work providing scientific solutions to industry problems.

Miguel Lejeune, a professor of decision sciences and of electrical and computer engineering at the GW School of Business and GW Engineering, has been recommended by the Washington Academy of Sciences awards committee to receive the 2024 Excellence in Research Award in Applied Mathematics. 

Read the article in GW Today

Image

GW Business Doctoral Student Cited by Academy of Management

Amando Cope, a doctoral student in the Department of Management at The George Washington University School of Business, has been named a recipient of a “Best Reviewer Award” from the Organizational Behavior (OB) Division of the Academy of Management (AOM) for his service to the profession as a reviewer of papers submitted for presentation at the AOM annual conference. 

Read the article in GW Today

 

GW Cuts the Ribbon on Revitalized Business Education Spaces at Duquès Hall

A generous gift from a distinguished George Washington University family, Henry “Ric” Duquès  (B.B.A. ‘65, M.B.A. ‘69) and Dawn Brill Duquès (B.A. ’69), will revitalize the GW School of Business building bearing their name.

Over the years, the couple, who married less than a week after their graduation 57 years ago, has given generously of time and treasure to strengthen GW. Their most recent gift of $2.5 million has allowed for game-changing technological upgrades and physical enhancements at Ric and Dawn Duquès Hall. The couple, along with their family members including their grandchildren, attended a ribbon cutting on Oct. 27 to mark the exciting moment.

Read the article in GW Today

 

 

The MS in International Business Focus on Experiential Learning Prepares Students for Career Success

The Master of Science in International Business (MSIB) consulting capstone provides integral skills-building opportunities for students to develop and apply their learning to tackle real-world international business challenges. The capstone course is taught by Professor Bonnie Pierce, who shares expertise and lessons learned from her diverse professional experience in international business. During the capstone, participants prepare for, source, and manage independent international business projects as an integral part of their degree program.

A recent survey of MSIB alumni found that the capstone was the most applicable class in preparing them for their current profession. Over the years, dozens of MSIB students have engaged capstone industry partners from around the globe, including the Department for Economic Development and Commerce of Puerto Rico, Universal Studios in Orlando, International Maritima in Brazil, Famly in Denmark, and Peergrowth in India.

This semester, MSIB student Rachael Rusnov is currently working on a project with Christoffer Connée, co-founder and head of business development at Stockholm-based Klimato. Reflecting on the experience thus far, Rachael shared, “My capstone project with Klimato has given me a deeper understanding of how firms operate in new markets. Through this project, I have firsthand experience of seeing what it takes for a start-up to go global. International business is changing, and I want to help firms succeed in this new unknown.”

Read More

To ensure students are prepared for a successful project-based learning engagement, Professor Pierce also teaches a cornerstone course at the very start of the program. This course focuses on students as individuals so they can discover their skills, interests, motivations, and potential career path. Leveraging GW’s career services, 300K+ alumni, influential location and global reputation, students are taught skills to build a strong network they can then leverage to secure a capstone project and potential employment upon graduation.

MSIB Faculty Director Rob Weiner was part of the team that developed the MSIB curriculum to truly prepare students for the marketplace. Of the program, he states, “The International Business cornerstone, consulting capstone, and required study abroad experience are at the heart of the MSIB program's experiential-learning approach to professional education and are designed to endow students with hands-on skills and a competitive advantage."

Image

Students Develop Strategic Marketing Plan for Beach Resort

MS in Tourism, Hospitality and Event Management students Jodie Abrahamsz, Thana Albalawi, Turki Alsheikh, Nora Alsomali, Yolanda Gonzalez, Sammy Neyman and Savi Sarmadi recently developed a strategic marketing plan for Beachcomber Resort in Avalon, New Jersey as part of their TSTD 6263 Destination Marketing class. Under the mentorship of Prof. Cevat Tosun, the team engaged Beachcomber Resort to determine the best strategy for increasing the occupancy rate of the 54-unit condominium property.

Read the article in GW Today

Image

GW Business Students Are on the Case (Competitions)

When GW School of Business Associate Professor Stuart Levy assigned a group project to his Event and Conference Management class, the athletes in the course naturally gravitated to one another.

Read the article in GW Today

Image

Graduating Senior Anna Shah Made Her Time at GW POP!

Anna Shah faced a fork in the road. The soon to be international business graduate of the George Washington University was the last remaining co-founder of POP!, a sustainable thrift shop she and three other women started from scratch in spring 2021, still in school. Her other co-founders, Stephanie Cheung, Rachel Cohen and Maya Lavine, had all graduated and were beginning careers in their respective fields.

Read the article in GW Today

"We Together Are a Part of Something Very Special"

President Ellen M. Granberg discussed her business background and leadership while guest appearing on an episode of George Talks Business.

Before answering higher education’s calling, resulting in a 20-plus-year journey culminating in the presidency of the George Washington University, Ellen M. Granberg worked for 11 years in the business sector at the Pacific Bell Telephone Company in California.

Speaking as the guest of honor at Wednesday’s George Talks Business episode, moderated by former GW School of Business Dean Anuj Mehrotra, Granberg told the an audience of GW Business students, faculty, staff, leadership and alumni at Jack Morton Auditorium that those business and communications skills she learned at a Fortune 500 company have been plenty transferable to her career arc in higher-ed leadership, whether that’s dealing with budgets, HR or collaborative problem solving.

“I got a chance to see some of those best practices,” said Granberg, who on Friday was formally inaugurated as the university’s 19^th president. “And that’s been extremely helpful.”

With that in mind, Granberg outlined for the GW community on Wednesday how the university can capitalize on its proximity in the nation’s capital, which she believes is the university’s most “unfair” advantage to other institutions.

She mentioned how GW’s proximity attracts faculty with professional qualifications that other universities would long for, and one of her goals as president is to foster more cross-collaborative research across the university, especially given that GW recently earned membership in the prestigious Association of American Universities (AAU).

“How do we stay there [AAU] and how do we get better? In terms of research, I see a couple of things. One is shoring up the infrastructure that supports faculty research so we can get more and larger grants out and do more ambitious projects,” Granberg said. “Part of what that involves is breaking down the silos between colleges. There’s so much interest and so much excitement and potential about working across colleges.”

Granberg has also prioritized more attention to measuring and quantifying the value of a GW education, highlighting the cutting-edge innovation leading to some bold experiments that meet society’s fast-moving trends.

“We have so much opportunity in that space,” she said.

Read the Article in GW Today

 

“We are a very, very special institution, part of what builds a sense of community is that shared sense of excellence and that shared understanding that we together are a part of something very special.”

Ellen M. Granberg
President, The George Washington University

 

GW Business Forum Delves into AI's Unstoppable Advance while Acknowledging Mistrust

Mistrust of artificial intelligence is unlikely to slow the pace at which it is developing in business, government, industry and society in general, but George Washington University’s Interim Dean of the School of Business Vanessa Perry told an audience in the Jack Morton Auditorium she has long since put aside old fears of machines taking over.

“We know that AI is here across industries globally, and we are here today to talk about its impact and how we might regulate this impact.”

Read the article in GW Today

 

Lecture Series Joins IITS’s Continuing Contributions to Indigenous Tourism

Indigenous tourism includes cultural interaction with Native Americans and their natural surroundings, and it is one of the fastest-emerging segments of the travel industry. The International Institute of Tourism Studies (IITS) at the GW School of Business, already at the leading edge of work in native and indigenous economic development, has ramped up its commitment to this travel segment.

The success of the IITS Distinguished Indigenous Leaders Lecture Series, which launched in December 2023, joins the institute’s research and consulting work with tourism initiatives in North and South America. IITS Director Seleni Matus said a new installment of the lecture series is also on the institute’s 2024 agenda, which includes state-level initiatives for tribal tourism in the Great Plains and work with the Indigenous Tourism Collaborative of the Americas (ITCA). 

Read More

The institute’s work focuses on economic development through indigenous tourism in the United States, Canada, Latin America and the Caribbean.

“When we think of the marginalization of indigenous people in the U.S. and beyond, we do see that there is headway with film and fashion and indigenous leaders stepping into spaces where they haven’t been visible before. There’s definitely more awareness of the 500-plus sovereign nations that exist within the United States,” said Matus, an adjunct professor of tourism. “But there is very impoverished attention given to their needs from an economic development context.”

She said opportunities offered through tourism can have a cascading effect, contributing to investment in education and public services, for example. 

“This is an area that is ripe for more support. The story gets very limited attention,” Matus added. “GW is bringing a spotlight to what is happening.”

The inaugural installment of the Distinguished Indigenous Leaders Lecture Series brought together experts to discuss the Native American Tourism & Improving Visitor Experience (NATIVE) Act and its federal funding for Native American tourism, including efforts by Indian tribes, tribal organizations and Native Hawaiian groups.

“We’re in Washington, D.C. and there is nothing that looks at the progress of this unique piece of legislation. That was a gap,” said Matus. “Given our location, being GW and seeing the work we have done with our federal partners since the NATIVE Act passed a few years ago, it made sense for us to organize this event. 

“We created this lecture series to be an annual event focused on economic development and led and guided by indigenous leaders,” she added.

The half-day lecture series leveraged the expertise of Ed Hall III, who joined IITS in late 2022 as its Indigenous Economic Development and Tourism Executive in Residence. The former official with the Bureau of Indian Affairs provided opening remarks at the gathering and moderated a panel featuring K. Denise Litz, chief of the Division of Economic Development at the Office of Indian Economic Development; Toby Bloom, national program manager for the U.S. Forest Service Travel, Tourism and Interpretation unit; and Curt Cottle, senior policy analyst with the International Trade Administration’s National Travel and Tourism Office.

The first portion of the event, co-sponsored by the U.S. Department of the Interior and the U.S. Department of Commerce, looked at federal agencies that fund programming under the NATIVE Act. Wizipan Garriott, the principal deputy assistant secretary for Indian Affairs at the Department of the Interior, joined Shawn Deschene, director of Native American Business Development at the Department of Commerce, and Milo Booth, director of tribal affairs in the Office of the Secretary of Transportation, in speaking to the audience about their agencies’ work.

The second component of the lecture series turned attention to beneficiaries of the federal legislation.

“We looked at three states in particular: South Dakota, North Dakota and Montana — in the Great Plains,” said Matus. “We had indigenous political leaders on that panel and one of the leaders who serves in South Dakota’s legislature.”

The panel included Jamie Azure, the chairman of Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians in North Dakota; South Dakota State Rep. Tamara St. John, who is a member of the Sisseton Wahpeton Sioux Tribe; and Jennifer Finley of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes and a member of the Montana Indigenous Tourism Alliance. The panel was moderated by Darian Morsette, president of the North Dakota Native Tourism Alliance and a member of the American Indian Alaska Native Tourism Association board.

“The Future of Indigenous Tourism Collaboration in the Americas” panel discussion addressed links among indigenous tourism operations in and outside the United States. Dawnielle Tehama, executive director of the Willamette Valley Visitors Association in Oregon, served as the panel moderator.  

“There are a lot of shared challenges that indigenous people face in developing tourism here in the U.S. and Canada and beyond,” Matus said. “We are trying to maximize the synergies of exchange and interaction.”

Matus noted that the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and the Organization of American States are working to replace the isolation of some native groups with networking that supports tourism, trade exchanges and even archaeological projects. Nikki Enerson, USAID Indigenous Peoples Team lead and development hub deputy director, and Jessa Rae Growing Thunder, indigenous exchange advisor at the Inter-American Foundation, joined Matus in a lively conversation to close out the event.

Largely comprising officials of federal agencies and tribal and community leaders from throughout the Americas, the series brought in more than 150 attendees, with simultaneous translation in Spanish provided throughout the presentations.

Image

Prestigious Award Recognizes MBA Alum’s Work on Behalf of Native Americans

The National Center for American Indian Economic Development named GW School of Business alumnus Quinton Uksi Carroll, MBA ’23, among its Native American 40 Under 40 Award recipients for 2024, recognizing him as an emerging national leader in the area of political advocacy.

The annual awards spotlight 40 individuals — from among the community of American Indians, Canadian First Nations, Alaska Natives and Native Hawaiians — whose initiative and dedication advance their communities. Carroll is executive director of the Native American Contractors Association based in Washington, DC.

Read More

“Recipients of the Native American 40 Under 40 awards are no longer just our future, they are leaders in their respective fields,” National Center for American Indian Economic Development President Chris James said in announcing the awards. “From the silver screen to the farm, 2024 awardees are deserving recipients who will continue to make Indian Country proud and our world a better place.”

Other award winners this year included actor Lily Gladstone, nominated for an Oscar for her role in the movie Killers of the Flower Moon; tribal government and business leaders; three attorneys; a journalist in Minneapolis, an assistant professor of educational leadership at Minnesota State University Moorhead; a program director at Conservation International; an advisor to the U.S. Department of Energy; and a senior program assistant at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

The award seems a natural next step for Carroll, who grew up in Alaska against a backdrop of community activism.  

His mother, Marie Qaqaun Adams Carroll, BA ’80, an alumna of the GW Graduate School of Education and Human Development, served as executive director of the Alaska Whaling Commission and long-time president and CEO of the Arctic Slope Native Association. In the latter role, she secured funding through Indian Health Services to construct a hospital in her Alaskan community of Utqiagvik more than a decade ago. Adams Carroll, an Iñupiaq Eskimo, was named to the Alaska Women’s Hall of Fame in 2019.

“My mother is a trailblazer for my community,” said Carroll, who earned his undergraduate degree in economics from the University of Hawaii. “The reason I wanted to go to GW was that my mother had graduated from there at a time when not many kids from our community were leaving for college.”

Carroll started his career in policy work in Alaska at Arctic Slope Regional Corporation. In 2018, he joined the Washington, DC staff of U.S. Sen. Dan Sullivan of Alaska. A year later, he enrolled in the graduate certificate program in business foundations at GW Business. 

“I had been working in policy for a number of years. My main focus for returning to school was to sharpen up on my numbers,” Carroll said. 

After completing the certificate, he enrolled in the MBA program. By that time, he was employed by the Congressional and Legislative Affairs unit in Indian Affairs at the U.S. Department of the Interior. He continued to work full-time while pursuing the graduate degree.

After graduating from GW, Carroll was selected to head the Native American Contractors Association, which was created to advocate on behalf of tribally owned businesses, Native Hawaiian organizations and Alaska Native corporations. Federal contracts are the second biggest economic driver for native communities after gaming. In 2023, tribal enterprises won more than $23 billion in federal contracting awards, marking an eighth consecutive year of growth, according to an analysis by Tribal Business News.

Carroll said his job requires interaction with Congress “and a lot of running around the Hill.” The contractors association also hosts an annual event that features two days of presentations by government agencies and lawmakers, as well as a day of one-on-one meetings with congressmembers. 

Carroll said that at GW he was “excited about the network I could build with students and young professionals from all over the world.” He noted that he now also has become part of the informal network made up of the roughly 600 past recipients of the Native American 40 Under 40 awards.

2024 Commencement Speakers Underscore the Impact New Graduates Can Make

The GW Business Class of 2024 graduated into a world marked by climate upheaval, volatile financial markets and new frontiers in technology, including Artificial Intelligence. Speakers at the school’s Commencement ceremonies urged graduates to leverage opportunities within those challenges while building a better world.

Read More

At the May 16, 2024, graduation program for undergraduates, during which 371 bachelor’s degrees were conferred, John Roberts (BBA ’89) noted in his keynote address that he, too, graduated at a time of unexpected crosscurrents.

“When I was a student, there were many parallels to today: a wicked stock market crash in 1987 when I happened to be taking a portfolio management class here, kind of like the stock market crash that you all have experienced in 2020 and 2022. Unemployment was low but rising as I was entering the workforce, just as you all are experiencing. And there were worldwide concerns about a country that was dominating global business and out-competing companies in Europe and the Americas,” said Roberts, who serves on the Advisory Board of the GW Investment Institute.  

“In 1989, Japan was so ascendant that people started calling the country Japan Incorporated, and popular wisdom dictated that Japan would dominate global business for the foreseeable future,” he continued. “The reality of what happened is much more sobering. The Nikkei 225 Japanese stock index just recently regained its 1989 high mark. It started off as Japan’s ‘lost decade’ and turned into three-and-a-half lost decades.”

Roberts, who is a partner and senior portfolio manager at investment advisory firm Corient, has a bachelor’s degree in finance from GW and a juris doctor from the University of Denver College of Law. He has worked in the finance and investment industry for more than three decades, including at PaineWebber and what is now TD Waterhouse. 

Roberts encouraged students to think outside the box, share their success with those who supported their journey, find mentors early in their careers and give back by opening doors for others. 

Student speaker Anna Shah, who received a Bachelor of Science in International Business with minors in sustainability and German, reminded her classmates that they have the power to change the world. 

“I know this sounds daunting, but the truth is when we graduate, we inherit a world of problems. Climate change, global conflicts, an economic recession, to list a few,” said Shah, the founder of the socially conscious thrift store POP!, which focuses on sustainable and affordable fashion. “But as business students, we don’t see a world of problems, we see a world of opportunities through ESG [environmental, social and governance frameworks], trade agreements and economic reforms that advance equity. 

“As fresh-faced college graduates, we enter the world deeply motivated, passionate and driven. My biggest takeaway from GWSB education is that we are not too young to make an impact… We are already the Revolutionaries for the change we wish to see in our areas of the business world,” she added. 

A day later, at the ceremony for students receiving master’s and doctoral degrees, keynote speaker and U.S. Navy veteran Greg Wong, MBA ’96, advised the graduates to pursue careers they found interesting and fulfilling.

“It was here at GW that I found my love of finance. Before coming here, I didn’t even know what an investment banker was. I didn’t know anything about finance,” said Wong, who manages investments as a trustee of the Wong Family Office after a long career that included investment banking and leadership roles at Web.com, a website hosting, development, and digital marketing company. Last year, he joined the advisory board for the GW Investment Institute and serves as a guest lecturer for courses at the institute.

He told members of the Class of 2024 to pursue work they are passionate about.

“If you don’t like numbers, don’t be an accountant. If you don’t like technology, don’t be a computer programmer. If you don’t like people, don’t work in HR,” he said. “You’ll be surprised how many people don’t like what they do. Find something you really like and do that.”

He also told the graduates that they should have a career plan—but also be prepared to pivot when opportunities arise.  

“Be bold. Take calculated risks. Make your life epic,” said Wong.

Hawa Kamara, the student speaker at the graduate ceremonies, received a Global MBA with a concentration in management and joined JP Morgan Chase upon graduation. At GW Business, she served as the graduate president of the DC chapter of the National Black MBA Association while also volunteering as a student success coach for undergraduates.     

Kamara, who grew up in Sierra Leone and is a first-generation college student, started her career as a teacher before the desire to start a business pushed her to pursue a GW Business degree. She talked about the diversity she found at GW, including classmates from Puerto Rico, Indonesia, India and elsewhere who became her friends.

“I never imagined that as much as I’ve moved throughout the U.S. that some of my closest friends in my Global MBA program would have originated from some of the farthest places,” she said. “Despite how different we were in our race, gender, social economic status and overall interest, the one thing that united us was our desire to pursue our own idea of success and create better opportunities for our lives.”

The graduate ceremonies also honored Carlos Christian, a member of the Class of 2024 who died in a car accident in January 2023. His family was present at the Commencement.

In addition to the in-person events, GW Business held a virtual graduation celebration at which Matthew Haney, a medical doctor enrolled in the online MBA program, served as student speaker and David Halliday, a teaching associate professor of Strategic Management and Public Policy gave the keynote address.

Dean Vanessa Perry noted that members of the Class of 2024 distinguished themselves for continuing with their studies despite the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Unlike any graduating class of recent memory, it is your resilience, your ability to handle change, that sets you apart. Across all of higher education, colleges and universities, an environment in which students have for centuries learned together and built community was suddenly shifted in 2020,” the dean said. “Despite the very different circumstances that served as the backdrop for much of your first year, you persisted in remarkable fashion.”

The GW Business graduates joined the university’s global network of 320,000 alumni in more than 150 countries.

Image

More than 250 GWSB Donors Stepped Forward on Giving Day

The GW Investment Institute brought in more than $40,000 on Giving Day 2024, ensuring that students can continue to access data and analysis platform FactSet, a leading financial industry tool. The funds were part of the nearly $126,000 raised by the school during the 24-hour gift-giving event.

Read More

Some 256 alumni, staff and faculty members, students, and families and friends of GW Business donated to scholarships, programming and other school priorities during the annual fundraiser that kicked off at noon on April 3. Christine Brown-Quinn, MBA ’92, and her husband Tom, encouraged other GW Business donors by offering $15,000 in matching funds. Quinn-Brown serves on the School of Business Board of Advisors.

Interim Dean Vanessa Perry also provided funds for a Giving Day match.

University-wide, Giving Day 2024 raised nearly $1.9 million from 3,499 donors. The funding exceeded the fundraiser’s goal by 16 percent.

 

Image

New Faculty Roster Includes Familiar Faces

Students in the Social Media Influencer Marketing course, which debuted in the George Washington University School of Business (GWSB) in fall 2023, as well those enrolled in the new spring semester course on marketing sustainable businesses, are getting a taste of what new faculty is bringing to the school.

Read More

David Brown, who has joined GWSB as a visiting instructor of marketing, designed the courses in response to student interest. Slots for the electives, which are open to undergraduate and graduate students, were snapped up quickly and both ended with long waiting lists.

Brown, an academician and practitioner who has spent 15 years working in partnership marketing for the cybersecurity firm ReversingLabs, said the new courses aim to keep students competitive when they enter the job market.

“The Social Media Influencer Marketing course is about how to be a social media marketing manager,” explained Brown. “Unlike other areas of marketing where it’s a one-way street, the use of social media can bring a big benefit for a company, from a customer service aspect and from a sentiment aspect. Social media is also great for product launches and getting feedback on what your customers would like to see.”

Brown said the course makes students view social media from a business perspective, determining the right social media content and tools for companies, the optimal way to use social media influencers, and how business can adapt to new social media trends to add impact to their messaging.

Brown is one of five new faculty members at GWSB. Other new full-time faculty are two professors in decision sciences, Yuan Guo and Patrick Hall; Visiting Assistant Professor of International Business Anoma Kulathunga; and Research Professor of Real Estate Stephen O’Connor, who also leads the Center for Real Estate Studies (CRES).

“These scholars are poised to add new dimensions to the research and teaching within their fields and have already impressed us with their contributions to pressing and contemporary issues related to artificial intelligence, consumers, global business, housing and marketing,” said former Dean of GWSB, Anuj Mehrotra.

Three of the new faculty members have long-time ties to GWSB, through their own educations, work as adjuncts, or both. Brown has two GW degrees: an undergraduate degree in international affairs and a Master of Science in Tourism Administration (now known as a Master of Science in Tourism, Hospitality and Event Management). He also was co-instructor of the first online Introduction to Marketing course and, a year and a half ago, began teaching its in-person iteration.

Another familiar face is Kulathunga, a senior finance sector consultant with the World Bank, a former central bank regulator in South Asia, and co-author of nine books that address financial sector stability and risk-sharing innovation. She earned her Master of Science in Finance and PhD in international finance and development economics at GWSB and, for 14 years when her World Bank travel schedule allowed, taught international business as an adjunct.

Kulathunga, who is from Sri Lanka, is credited with developing economic indicators that more accurately reflect the finance soundness of countries in development.

“The World Bank had this one set of indicators to evaluate all the countries in the world. I argued that you need to look at small countries through a different lens because they do not have developed financial markets,” Kulathunga explained. “I started looking at things like financial inclusion and saving payment systems. I worked on that project for five years, collecting data and establishing financial indicators.”

Hall, assistant teaching professor of decision sciences and an expert in the fast-evolving field of artificial intelligence (AI), also taught previously at the school as an adjunct. Like Brown and Kulathonga, he comes to the classroom with experience as a practitioner, notably through his work with the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). He is currently involved with the NIST Professional Research Program (PREP), which provides research opportunities to faculty, students and graduates at GW and other universities.

As an educator, his goal is to make students AI literate.

“AI, like all technologies, has pros and cons, and to get the most out of it you want to maximize the pros and minimize the cons,” Hall said. “Most people think about ChatGPT to write email but there are some who are thinking about it to build better biological weapons. Another real AI risk is child pornography. And there’s the issue of generating mis- and dis-information at larger scales. We’ve seen the effect that can have on politics and our democratic institutions.”

Hall makes students use generative AI in his Writing in the Discipline course so they can understand “these kinds of tools … to be competitive in the coming decades.” He also teaches using examples from the nonprofit AI Incident Database, which catalogs AI failures or harm with a goal of averting recurrences.

Guo, the other new faculty member of the Department of Decision Sciences, is focused on operations management. Her scholarship includes research that looks at subscription box services, impulse buying in connection with social media, and fashion retailers’ use of online platforms to sell second-hand goods. 

As the new chair of CRES, O’Connor said he hopes to position the School of Business as an influencer in national affordable housing discussions. Although CRES concentrates on commercial real estate, he is pushing to add coursework that examines the national challenge of affordable housing.

“We can distinguish ourselves with that kind of research,” he said. 

Image

Cutting-edge AI Research and Use Cases at the Frontline of Real Estate

The annual GW Business & Policy Forum drives public conversation on issues that carry global impact while spotlighting the university’s strength as a research institution. The 2024 forum, focused on “Imagining the Future with AI,” turned attention on real estate thought leadership at GW School of Business.

During a forum “fireside chat,” Interim Dean Vanessa Perry tapped her expertise on racial bias and home ownership while speaking with Bright MLS President and CEO Brian Donnellan, M.B.A. ’02, about AI’s potential impact on the real estate industry. 

Read More

Perry is known for her high-profile research on the homeownership race gap — only 43 percent of Black households live in a home they own — and how it impacts wealth accumulation. White households in the United States have a median net worth at least 10 times that of Black households, according to a 2020 report Perry co-authored for the National Association of Real Estate Brokers. Donnellan, meanwhile, leads a multi-listing service used by real estate professionals in six states and the District of Columbia. It is reportedly home to real estate’s most popular property-tour website.

Donnellan and Perry spent much of their discussion looking at whether AI could address one of the biggest challenges for the sector: the lack of reliable data. Public records inform the field, meaning the information has to be loaded into real estate databases by hand. “If you go further away from a city, you probably need six months to get that info and get it in a format that is consistent,” Donnellan said. 

Perry said that means the data is “old by the time it gets collected... so all the analysis is old. It’s not telling us much about the future.” Donnellan agreed that the dearth of timely reports on real estate sales hinders efforts to design national housing policy.

Can AI help solve some of the data disjointedness? Donnellan said a lack of uniform standards for reporting information is also challenge. Individual real estate professionals do not use the same terms when describing property amenities, for example. Also, in noting that historical data on home values is embedded with racial bias, he said AI only has the potential to correct appraisal flaws if it can first detect bias.

Even more, he said real estate is a “very, very fractured” industry, largely self-regulated and driven more by emotion than by data, making it difficult to predict how artificial intelligence could reshape it.

“It’s the most unusual industry. We represent big cities. We represent mountains and farms,” Donnellan said. “These professionals are different from anyone. Bright MLS is used by 100,000 independent contractors acting in 100,000 different ways.”

Donnellan said AI is integral to real estate searches but noted that it is just one piece of a broader landscape that also includes inspections, repairs, financing and massive amounts of paperwork. He also acknowledged that many real estate agents are afraid they will lose their jobs to AI, just as travel agents did — nearly overnight — once people had the ability to compare and book their own airline tickets online.  

In discussing the future role of real estate agents, Perry suggested that real estate professionals may find themselves taking a larger financial advisory role. Donnellan agreed, adding that AI could help agents more effectively use the leads that come in and better serve first-time homebuyers. However, he did not expect dramatic AI-related changes in the sector for at least seven to 10 years.

Perry, like many GW faculty members, brings a practitioner’s eye to her research. Before joining academia, she worked for mortgage giant Freddie Mac, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

The availability of reliable real estate data and predictions about AI’s impact on the sector were also discussed during a forum panel that examined emerging AI policy issues in housing and financial services and a closing keynote address by Jeremy Wacksman, chief operating officer of the tech real estate marketplace Zillow.

The discussion on housing and financial services was moderated by John Carlson, vice president of cybersecurity regulation and resilience at the American Bankers Association. Panelists were Stefano Pasquali of BlackRock and Nicholas Schmidt of SolasAI. Pasquali uses AI for mathematical modeling in the investment arena. At SolasAI, Schmidt specializes in algorithmic fairness. SolasAI provides companies with software that tests fairness.

The panel participants pointed out that AI has been used in financial modeling for housing for some time. 

“AI makes [financial modeling] cheaper and allows them to use more data and allows them to use larger models,” Pasquali said. “Ten years ago, it wasn’t scalable. Now it is.” He also said the user experience has improved with AI; users can interact with platforms more efficiently. 

Schmidt, meanwhile, noted that computer power has improved and there is more data and analytics to support decision making. It is possible to add additional complexities to make the model even higher performing, but this is where governance needs to be addressed, he said.

“This stuff has been around for a long time but now it’s really gathering steam,” Schmidt said. “I see these algorithms being used in pretty much every part of financial services, starting with marketing then pricing and underwriting of loans. And now machine learning could go to service, which is the area that feels the most dangerous.”

Schmidt recommended that companies roll out AI use in a limited way, perhaps for product-use enhancements such as building out marketing content. He said companies also need to be wary of third-party vendors who may build models that may not include what is promised.

“Don’t adopt these things quickly, adopt them smartly,” Schmidt cautioned.

Carlson discussed how regulatory requirements for financial services and, to a lesser degree, housing could also have unintended consequences for AI. Schmidt countered that these guardrails may help manage the risk presented by AI. He added there may be no need to employ complicated mathematical models to achieve desired results.

“The practices and regulations that the financial industry have are actually very good. One question is whether people need to use such complicated models,” Schmidt said. “Maybe they can use just machine-learning models. That sort of work is really valuable.”

Echoing concerns raised in the discussion with Perry and Donnellson, Carlson asked the panelists what can be done to mitigate data drift or lack of data.

“Data is more important than ever,” Pasquali said. “The problem of data quality is that the quality cannot be ignored.” He also said the challenge with data migration is that it is sometimes done by third parties.

Schmidt said new data streams can provide information about customers who were closed out of credit markets, such as people without FICO scores who may be creditworthy. “But the question is whether that’s valuable or not,” he said. “You may be bringing more people into the system … but missing data doesn’t usually help people.” He said the more important thing is to understand how racial discrimination enters the model. 

“Are minorities sufficiently represented in the data?” he asked, noting inaccuracies in current data. “The error rate for identifying the gender of women of color is 35 times more than that of white men. 

“Data based just on minorities will incorporate all the inequities. Understanding this data is essential,” he added. 

The panelists said speed alone should not propel AI usage, and they agreed that fairness, accountability and transparency are not at odds with innovation. They also maintained that legislation affecting AI needs to advance a principle-based approached and offer strong guidance on how regulation can be enacted.”  

Pasquali called on academia to help develop governance tools.

In closing the forum, Zillow’s Wacksman discussed how AI is reshaping the behavior and power of consumers within the real estate market. In 2006, the company launched “Zestimate,” a machine-learning model to help people understand the value of their homes and put the company at the forefront of innovation. Wacksman believes AI could add additional streamlining to the complicated home-buying process.

“It takes months to buy a house, thousands of documents and it costs tens of thousands of dollars,” Wacksman said. “People describe buying a house as more stressful than planning a wedding or getting a job.” He said Zillow wants to bring all the disparate parts of a house sale transaction together. 

Wacksman said Zillow looks at AI with three goals in mind: to give customers what they want, to embrace business opportunities and to innovate responsibly. In particular, he said innovation could bring more accountability to a sector that has a long history of inequality and racial inequities.

According to Wacksman, Zillow has spent years personalizing the home-buying experience. The company started by enabling customers and realtors to understand the value of a home, and now it is working “to personalize the finance experience,” Wacksman explained. Zillow is also experimenting with technology, including virtual reality walk-throughs of properties for sale, a process that is currently too expensive to launch mainstream.

The Zillow executive said generative AI has the power to transform the real estate industry, helping both customers and real estate agents. The challenge will be ensuring that everyone is comfortable using the same technology. 

“It’s daunting and exciting to see the pace of new change. It is measured in days and weeks, not months and years,” he said. “We think it could be as significant as the Industrial Revolution.”

Image

Toward the Future: GWSB and Trustworthy AI

Trustworthy AI will be shaped by high-performance algorithms, effective governance, and the input of people from different cultural backgrounds, according to the high-profile participants at the 2024 GW Business & Policy Forum. It will also involve the expertise of academics and researchers who value an interdisciplinary approach to understanding the world’s challenges.

In other words, it will come from the vision and principles that already underpin the mission of the GW School of Business, where several faculty members are engaged in research and teaching that looks at AI. 

Read More

The April 2 GW Business & Policy Forum marked the second year in a row that the School of Business spearheaded the organization of the event. This year’s theme, Imaging the Future with AI, underscored the university’s leading-edge role in shaping policy that addresses consequential issues, and an area in which the School of Business has deepening expertise.

Among GW Business faculty, Patrick Hall, assistant professor of decision sciences, conducts research in support of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) AI Risk Management Framework, sits on the advisory board of the AI Incident Database, and teaches graduate and undergraduate courses that examine responsible AI. Donna Hoffman, the Louis Rosenfeld Distinguished Scholar, and Thomas Novak, Denit Trust Distinguished Scholar, co-direct the school’s Center for the Connected Consumer and are engaged in research that looks at consumer interaction with AI. 

The school offers a Graduate Certificate in Artificial Intelligence while courses in several disciplines — among them marketing and information systems and technology management — examine the role of AI. The GW Center for International Business Education and Research (GW-CIBER) has included AI in its podcast discussions on global careers, and Microsoft’s chief Responsible AI officer has taken part in the George Talks Business interview series. Internally, an ad hoc group of faculty members tracks the use of AI in the classroom.

Responding to AI’s Impact

During the GW Business & Policy Forum, Erwin Gianchandani, assistant director in the Directorate for Technology Innovation and Partnerships at the National Science Foundation (NSF), described AI as “one of the most, if not the most, interdisciplinary spaces that we work in at this time.” As moderator of a discussion on Trustworthy AI, he tapped the insights of panelists Jill Crisman, the vice president and executive director of the Digital Safety Research Institute at UL Research Institutes; Andy Henson, the senior vice president of the Digital Innovation Factory at SAIC; and Elham Tabassi, the chief technology officer at the U.S. AI Safety Institute and NIST’s chief AI advisor.

Gianchandani engaged the panelists on issues related to the trustworthiness of AI technologies and the perceived positives and negatives of generative AI.

Much like it was with the development and use of electricity, Crisman said, trust is a crucial component of the AI evolution. Tabassi noted that NIST looks at trustworthy AI and responsible AI as related but separate concepts.

“Responsible [AI] takes in the human elements. Trustworthy is the systems. How private is private, how safe is safe, how secure is secure depends on the context,” Tabassi said. She also said the development of measurement standards, part of NIST’s role as a nonregulatory research agency under the U.S. Department of Commerce, is vital to the advancement of U.S. innovation and industrial competitiveness. “If you cannot measure it, you cannot improve it,” Tabassi explained, referring to AI’s impact.

SAIC’s Henson said AI’s influence will be felt across people’s lives, from how and what their children are taught in school to the jobs they hold.

“How do I wrap my arms around this? In companies that are struggling, do I ban it? Do I not ban it? Do I allow my data to be used? I think that the interdisciplinary sprawl is huge,” he said. “We’re hyper-focused on how you use the technology to solve problems. [But] it’s got to work for the person, it’s got to solve their problem."

Elevating Trust Amid Rapid Innovation

The panelists agreed that the community that develops trustworthy AI must extend beyond computer scientists, mathematicians and technology experts to include psychologists, sociologists and even English majors and philosophers.

“AI is a foundational technology that other types of domains can be built on top of — finance, health care,” Tabassi said. “It is a vertical approach... that AI risk managers need to work with. It is messy and complex but also wonderful.”

She said many perspectives must be built into AI work to ensure that diverse voices are included. For his part, Gianchandani predicted that AI will become more understandable, and doubts about it will lessen, if a broader cross section of interests and disciplines works on its evolution. He advocated bringing more public and private stakeholders together, including in academic settings like the forum, to deepen the national conversation.

Henson agreed, pointing out that generative AI has dramatically stepped up the pace at which the AI space is developing. “It’s happening so much faster than we realized,” he said. “We on the operational side have to bring the real-world problems to researchers [now].”

Tabassi, too, said the rapid pace is challenging professionals engaged with AI.

“We don’t know how to evaluate AI. We’re trying to do all these thing in a space where the speed and change of technology, and the time from which the item comes to market for widespread adoption, are shorter and shorter,” she said. “We have to find out how to do the cycle of operational research. Every component, from the community… to those using technology, to regular citizens have to come together.”

Gianchandani recognized that a new pilot program at the National Artificial Intelligence Research Resource (NAIRR) seeks a shared research infrastructure for innovation in AI. The undertaking is led by the NSF in partnership with 10 other federal agencies and 25 nongovernmental partners. The pilot program, which launched on Jan. 24, 2024, and will run for two years, broadly supports fundamental, translational and use-inspired AI-related research with a particular emphasis on societal challenges. Priority topics include safe, secure and trustworthy AI; human health; and environment and infrastructure. The pilot supports educators in training students on responsible use and development of AI technologies.

Broadening AI’s Stakeholders

AI forum panelists shared their ideas for elevating trust in generative AI. 

“AI has made creativity, software program, all kinds of things available to everyone. As you play with these new technologies... think, ‘How could I use AI more responsibly?’ Crisman said. “Get it to help you on things you already know about before you start exploring areas where you have less input.”

Henson agreed, noting that many AI applications — such as riding-sharing services and restaurant reservation systems — are already viewed as helpful and trusted. Tabassi said the dissemination of more science-based data could also help maximize an understanding of AI’s benefits while helping to minimize its risks. The panelists also discussed the need to train and educate everyone about AI.

“Who decides the positive and failures of AI systems? Who decides about the impacts? I think everyone has to decide,” Crisman said. “What if there was an AI model that could look at treatment for rare diseases, but flipping a switch could make it one of the worst solutions? 

“We have to really think about what we want as a society,” she added.

Tabassi characterized the same challenge in a different way: “We need to change the conversation from ‘can be’ to ‘must be.’”

GW used the daylong forum as an opportunity to announce the launch of the GW Trustworthy AI Initiative, an umbrella entity for The Institute for Trustworthy AI in Law & Society (TRAILS) and the Co-Design of Trustworthy AI in Systems (GW DETAIS) program, which is an NSF program focused on PhD students.

TRAILS is designed to transform AI from a practice powered by technological innovation to one that is also driven by ethics, human rights and the input of previously marginalized communities. It is funded by a $20 million award from the NSF and NIST and is the first organization to integrate artificial intelligence participation, technology and governance during the design, development, deployment and oversight of AI systems. 

The initiative operates as a collaboration among GW, the University of Maryland and Morgan State University. Its first nonacademic partner is SAIC.

GW DTAIS, meanwhile, is a research traineeship program that also offers a Graduate Certificate in Trustworthy AI for Decision-Making Systems, giving professionals and graduate students the skills to address challenges in the AI space and to lead initiatives at their organizations. 

 

GWSB in the Community: D.C. High School Students Join Business Case Challenge

“It would have taken eight to 10 true business meetings to pull off what they did in two hours."

GW Business partnered with a Washington, D.C. high school and SuitUp, a program featuring best-in-class experiential education, to provide day of hands-on on-campus activities anchored by a business case challenge.

Thirty-seven students from Washington Leadership Academy, a public charter school focused on science and technology, took part in the April challenge to design new products and services for Coca-Cola. The assignment was coordinated by staff at the F. David Fowler Career Center. Volunteers from four GW student organizations — Fowler Career Center Coordinators, the GW Undergraduate Consulting Group, Alpha Kappa Psi professional business fraternity, and the Sports Business Association — coached the students on issues related to marketing, design, financing and other elements of the case challenge.

“The students loved it,” said Washington Leadership Academy teacher T’Alfra Holmes, who coordinates all the extracurricular activities at the high school. “The group we had was very competitive. They wanted to show a different side of Coca-Cola, to bring something different to the table. They also wanted bragging rights for the school."

Read More

Holmes said most of the participants were ninth, 10th and 11th graders. Holmes, who teaches two 12th grade research classes, said she made an effort to select students who may not ordinarily have an experience outside of the school building. In addition to the experiential learning aspect of the day, the one high school senior taking part received community service credit for participating.

SuitUp is designed to give students exposure to the responsibilities of the corporate world and foster interest in careers in business, especially among students from groups that are traditionally underrepresented in the corporate world. SuitUp’s goals dovetail with the School of Business’s commitment to narrowing race and gender gaps in corporate leadership.

“A lot of these kids want to go to college but they also have an entrepreneurial mindset,” Holmes explained. Jolie Brown, a senior career consultant with the F. David Fowler Career Center, led the logistics for the daylong activities, which she described as “high energy.” She said it was impressive and inspiring to see the young students’ business acumen.

“It would have taken eight to 10 true business meetings to pull off what they did in two hours."

They already know things like key performance indicators,” Brown said. “I thought it was just so great to see students who might not otherwise be exposed to business... to see what they learned come alive and crystalize into actionable business plans.”

Holmes said the high school students were thrilled to learn that one of the four judges at the event was a Coca-Cola executive.

“That was the biggest surprise — an actual person from the company — and it brought the entrepreneurship to life, to have someone from the company giving good feedback,” she said.

The winners of the challenge received gift cards. After the competition, students took an hour-long tour of the School of Business “in case they want to apply one day and now might see a future for themselves in business,” Brown said. 

Back at the Washington Leadership Academy, during an all-school town hall-style meeting, the students discussed their GWSB experience, and getting more students to get involved next year. 

Image

 

The GW School of Business was ranked #4 worldwide for the 2024-2025 academic year in the U.S. News & World Report Best Business Schools ranking. 

Study Abroad in London Marks 20^th Annual Trip

"Experiential education is more effective than textbooks and case studies in a rapidly evolving environment."

Image

“Business and the State,” the longest-running study abroad program in the School of Business, has taken its 20^th student group to London. The annual program taught by Professor of International Business Robert Weiner exemplifies the school’s commitment to experiential learning.

The 10-week-long summer program brings together graduate students from multiple GW schools to examine the interplay between the public and private sectors in both the United States and the United Kingdom.

“It is the ultimate experiential learning experience,” said Weiner, who is also a professor of public policy, public administration, and international affairs, as well as the director of GW’s Master of Science in International Business program. “The program allows students to take what they have learned on campus and combine that knowledge with what they learn from our meetings in London.”

Business and the State is the only GW summer program that the School of Business cross-lists with another school at the university. Students in master’s degree programs at the School of Business, the Trachtenberg School of Public Policy and Public Administration, and other GW schools get a first-hand look at how public- and private-sector stakeholders manage challenges at home and abroad.

Read More

Students post their takeaways on the program web page. Many describe the experience as transformational.

Master of Accountancy graduate Sydney Smith (’23) enrolled at GW Business with 10 years of experience in the public and nonprofit sectors, specializing in outreach and advocacy in the environmental field. She signed up for the study away program to better understand the regulatory mechanisms that harness innovation in private industry.

“The program not only revealed surprising viewpoints but also highlighted the power of incremental progress throughout the years — a notion that resonated deeply with me,” she wrote after the experience. “The passion speakers conveyed about quintessentially British programs like the NHS [National Health Service] demonstrated deep national pride and a willingness to bring in unexpected viewpoints. I gained appreciation for how policy change can occur incrementally over years through coalition building.

“I look forward to applying the nuanced understanding of public-private partnerships I developed to my future career in public service. I am grateful for the inspiring examples of collaboration, persistence, and pragmatic optimism this course provided,” she added.

Olivia Lacny (MBA ’23), who also attended the program last year, valued its cross-disciplinary component.

“This experience wouldn’t have altered my perspective had it been a class of 20 like-minded MBA students,” Lacny noted. “One of the most invaluable attributes of this course is that I was surrounded by people who chartered a different path in academia. I learned almost as much from the questions that others asked as I learned from the keynote speakers. The smaller, informal interactions with my peers proved to be as meaningful and informative as our formal interactions.”

Since its launch in 2001, some 300 students have traveled to London with the program, including 15 in the summer of 2024. (During the COVID-19 pandemic, the study abroad component was supplanted by Zoom presentations with business and government leaders in the United Kingdom.) Weiner noted that one of this year’s presenters in London was a GW alumnus who, as a student, took part in the Business and the State program. That 2011 graduate now works on public-private partnerships in banking.

“If you’re going to work in Washington, you’ll likely be working in businesses working with the government, or for the government itself. Jobs our students get when they graduate are likely government contractors and involve interacting with regulators. This is a chance for them to get first-hand insight from speakers as well as fellow students in GW schools focusing on public management,” Weiner said of the program.

The program is well-placed in light of the larger role the state plays in business worldwide in the wake of COVID-19 and the context of geopolitical tension.

“Experiential education is more effective than textbooks and case studies in a rapidly evolving environment,” Weiner said.

New Frontiers for Sustainable Growth in Africa

The role that African banks can play in driving emerging financial technologies dominated discussion at a high-level conference that brought an estimated 150 corporate executives, economists, U.S. Congress members, digital technology leaders, academics and global development experts to George Washington University.

Participants at “The Future of Finance & Trade in Africa: Harnessing Emerging Technologies and Financial Innovation for Inclusive Growth” examined challenges facing the continent, as well as policies and initiatives that could underpin sustainable growth. The April event was organized by the GW School of Business, The Growth Dialogue, the GW Institute for International Economic Policy at the Elliott School of International Affairs and diaspora organization Believe in Africa.  

“The conference served as a platform for GW to actively contribute to global economic prosperity by addressing critical issues, such as climate challenges, through financial innovation and promoting the role of technology in economic growth and financial inclusion,” said Kafuti Talahumbu, GW’s associate director of corporate partnerships and an organizer of the event.

Read More

“With a focus on engaging the GW community and advocating for increased involvement in future events, the conference emphasized Africa's pivotal role in shaping the world's future economy, aligning with projections that indicate the continent’s significant demographic influence by 2050,” he added.

Professor of Practice of International Business Danny Leipziger, who directs The Growth Dialogue, a GW Business think tank that focuses on sustainable global development, said the gathering “showcased that the School of Business has an intense interest in Sub-Saharan Africa, particularly as the region holds so much promise for innovation and technology development if private initiative can be paired with smart economic policies and effective investments in human capital.”

The topic of financial innovation sparked the liveliest discussion at the conference, underscored by optimism about African fintech’s potential to transform economies and extend access to credit beyond the reach of traditional banks. 

The search for new drivers of sustainable and equitable economic growth was also at the core of many of the sessions throughout the day. During a fireside conversation moderated by Leipziger, Rwanda’s Central Bank Governor, John Rwangombwa, noted that financial services are positioned to drive tremendous growth, but access to financial services needs to be “equitable, fair and affordable.” 

Speakers also gave their perspectives on the Africa Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), which regulates the entry of goods, tariff free, into the United States. The act is up for renewal in 2025. Numerous experts see large potential gains through its extension. 

“Up until now, the trade has been primarily in commodities, but the challenge is to move beyond minerals and commodities and into more processed goods and services, including financial services,” said Leipziger. He noted that digital technologies have the potential to eliminate many of the geographic obstacles to trade. 

In a panel session that examined climate finance, Diep Nguyen-van Houtte, senior manager for climate business at the IFC, the private sector arm of the World Bank Group, highlighted that her organization has made investment in climate a priority. Artificial intelligence (AI) and the role that African entrepreneurs can play in fostering growth in Africa were also explored during the event.

Ian Campbell, who sits on the Maryland Commission on Africa, said work is underway to build business-to-business and state-to-state links that would open avenues for African businesses interested in investing in the United States and U.S. businesses seeking relationships in Africa.  

Following the conference, Talahumbu said, there was corridor talk about the creation of an African Technology Business Center at GW. Additionally, partnerships for joint research projects were put in motion with corporate entities. Talahumbu said ongoing discussions between the School of Business and private sector leaders promised “enriching contributions to the GW community.”

The conference is envisioned as a recurring event, perhaps annually or biannually in conjunction with the annual meetings of the World Bank and the IMF. Participants were impressed with the experts who shared their insights and enthusiastic about the networking opportunities afforded to entrepreneurs who are active in Africa.

Fulbright Award Allows GWSB Professor to Assist Business School in Timor-Leste

Herbert Davis, professor of strategic management and international affairs, has spent much of his academic career involved in strategic management, in both the public and private sectors, with a particular focus on Asia. He extended that engagement thanks to a Fulbright Specialist award that sent him to the island of Timor-Leste, one of the newest nations in Southeast Asia, to help a fledging business school map its future.

The Fulbright funding comes nearly four decades after Davis became the first GW School of Business faculty member named to a Fulbright professorship. At that time, he taught for four months at the University of Dhaka in Bangladesh.

Read More

The Fulbright Specialist program was created by the U.S. Department of State in 2002 to provide a pipeline for carrying the knowledge of experts in the United States to institutions abroad. Specialists deliver lectures and seminars, develop training and educational materials, provide consulting and strategic planning support and engage in other knowledge-sharing activities. Davis’ latest Fulbright funding is focused on Timor-Leste’s 8-year-old Joao Saldanha University. 

“Initially, it was me sitting down with the president of the Joao Saldanha University and two or three of his senior people to ask what I could do for them,” Davis said. The private school is the first English-speaking business school in the country, and it was seeking a strategic plan that would meet the requirements of the country’s Ministry of Higher Education, earn accreditation from the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) and position the school for partnerships with high-profile U.S. business schools.

“The people who make up this university’s administration had been trained in the U.S. or Australia, and the curriculum is rigorous. They had already done very good work,” Davis said. “They wanted to make sure they had the right organizational structure and they wanted suggestions for going forward.

“My consulting — to help them write their long-term strategic plan — means the GW School of Business has been able to play a key role in the development of a new private university in a place that previously had nothing comparable,” Davis said.

Davis said Timor-Leste’s demographics make a university that teaches in the English language — the language of international business — especially attractive. Most schools in the country teach their courses in Portuguese. Since the median age in the country is only 20, with roughly 40 percent of the population under age 15, the demand for educational opportunities is rising rapidly.

Timor-Leste’s government is keen to see the Joao Saldanha University advance and, even though it is a private institution, is funding 50 scholarships annually. 

“This is the most important university when it comes to the professional study of business and economics and English in this country. This university will produce the country’s business leaders and government officials,” Davis said. “Within 10 years, the students in this university are going to hold pivotal jobs.”

Timor-Leste, a former Portuguese colony just north of Darwin, Australia, gained its independence in 1975 but the Indonesian military immediately annexed the territory. In 1999, Timor-Leste’s citizens voted for independence. The declaration of its independence was in 2000 and, in May 2002, it became a new sovereign state. 

Davis’ career has centered around institutional development in resource-challenged, conflict and post-conflict countries. He said Timor-Leste has strategic importance for the United States and there is a strong possibility it will be included in the Biden administration’s Indo-Pacific Economic Framework, an initiative aimed at advancing peace and development within the region.

In conjunction with his Fulbright work, Davis is helping to plan a 2025 international conference to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Timor-Leste’s independence and examine what the new country has accomplished and what it needs to do going forward. He said the Harvard University Asia Center and the Australian National University have invited GW to join as an organizer of the conference. The World Bank and USAID may also take part. Davis expects to be on the conference agenda representing the GW School of Business.

As part of the Fulbright grant. Davis also prepared a lengthy report on Joao Saldanha University for the Fulbright Commission. In it, he noted that the education sector is becoming one of the top priorities of the government, in large part because low levels of education have impeded workforce development in Timor-Leste, one of the poorest nations in Southeast Asia. He also underscored the need for the university to step up its enrollment and to more closely engage with the private sector to ensure that business education offerings match employers’ needs.

 

Image

The George Washington University School of Business (GWSB) has been ranked No. 1 in the world for having the highest percentage of women enrolled full-time in a Global MBA program in the Financial Times Global MBA Ranking for 2024.

Women make up more than 65% of the school’s 2025 enrollment, making GWSB one of only three MBA programs in the world — and the only one in the United States — to surpass the 60% mark.

Vanessa Perry, GW Business interim dean and professor of marketing and public policy, said this high ranking is a culmination of years of work by the school to foster an environment where diverse perspectives thrive.

“Our students come to GW Business to make an impact,” Perry said. “With women holding fewer executive positions in business, government and society, representation matters in the classroom. Everyone has a say. We're modeling the future boardrooms, and our students are thriving within these experiences.”

GW Business has taken steps to achieve this success including encouraging opportunities for women across faculty, staff and student organizations to hold visible and impactful leadership roles.

The school also supports initiatives like GW Women in Business, a program that helps prepare undergraduate students for professional careers and connects rising leaders with GW alumnae.

“So while we've achieved parity now across our enrollment at the undergraduate and graduate level, it's both the success of the last few years, where prospective students see that they can be part of a business school class that has a strong community and which also has the initiatives and strong leadership from women — faculty, students, staff and alumni — over time,” Perry said.

This is not the first time the school has been recognized for paving the way for gender equity in higher education. Over the past four years, GW Business has achieved a majority of women enrollment in its Global MBA full-time classes, with women making up 57% of the class of 2022, 56% in the class of 2023 and 59% in the class of 2024. 

Read the article in GW Today

 

GW Business Hosts Discussion with Fannie Mae Senior VP on Creating Inclusive Structures for Homeownership

The impact of systemic racial bias in the home appraisal industry has received heightened attention in recent years as growing research found that properties of Black homeowners are often under-valued, and homes in Black neighborhoods are also appraised lower compared to white neighborhoods.

As Black homeowners have shared their stories of receiving widely different valuations before and after staging their homes to remove traces of race, government officials have vowed to address the problem.

The issue of appraisal bias being a factor in worsening the wealth gap for Black Americans was one of many topics covered at the latest George Talks Business segment, hosted by the George Washington University School of Business (GWSB).

Read the article in GW Today

 

Image

Image

GWSB Interim Dean Speaks at Senate Housing Hearing

Vanessa G. Perry, interim dean and professor of marketing and of strategic management and public policy at the GW School of Business, provided expert testimony at a U.S. Senate hearing.

The U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Subcommittee on Housing, Transportation and Community Development hosted the hearing "Artificial Intelligence and Housing: Exploring Promise and Peril" on January 3. During her testimony, Perry addressed concerns about AI’s impact on access to the housing finance system for underrepresented or marginalized communities and practical issues that should be considered in the development and implementation of AI.

Image

Diversity and Allyship Week Draws Alumni, Students and Recruiters

More than 200 people took part in the GW School of Business Diversity and Allyship Week 2024, which included a workshop in partnership with the Trevor Project exploring facets of gender identity, gender expression and sexual orientation.  

The Trevor Project is a suicide-prevention organization focused on LGBTQ+ and young people.

“What we learned in this session was eye-opening from many aspects. When we take the time to understand these important concepts, and use the correct pronouns for others, we create an environment where everyone feels valued and accepted,” said GWSB Chief Diversity Officer Şenay Ağca. “Using correct pronouns reduces risk of depression and suicide by 50 percent.

Read More

“It was very helpful to have this workshop as part of Diversity and Allyship Week,” she added.

Diversity and Allyship Week, which ran from Feb. 5-9 this year, opened with a Diversity Roundtable Breakfast attended by representatives of companies and organizations with strong diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) commitments. They discussed their workplace culture and recruitment programs.

In a special episode of George Talks Business, Interim Dean Vanessa Perry interviewed Sharifa Anderson, senior vice president and chief diversity and inclusion officer at Fannie Mae. They discussed Fannie Mae’s role in the housing market, as well as equity in homeownership and housing finance. Meanwhile, a Career Town Hall and networking event brought together alumni, employee resource group leaders, employers, recruiters and students to talk about strategies for building diverse professional networks. Personal stories and advice anchored the town hall discussion.

The Women in Global Careers Roundtable, which focused on the tech industry, took place just four days before the Financial Times released new rankings, with the GW School of Business as No. 1 globally for the percentage of women enrolled in its full-time MBA program. Women account for more than 65 percent of the school’s 2025 enrollment, making GWSB one of only three MBA programs around the world and the only one in the United States to surpass the 60 percent mark.

It is the fourth year in a row that the GW School of Business has led U.S. colleges and universities in full-time MBA enrollment of women.

The Women in Global Careers Roundtable was organized by the GW Center for International Business Education and Research (GW-CIBER), and the GW Women in Business (GWWIB), GW Women's MBA Association (WMBAA) and GW Forté Fellows student organizations.

Diversity and Allyship Week closed with an Employee Resource Groups Panel moderated by Christina Cherry, Global MBA ’25. Cherry is vice president of external affairs for the Black Master’s of Business Administration (MBA) Association and a Forté Fellow.

Ağca, a professor of finance and chair of the school’s Dean’s Diversity Council, said recurring themes during the week of events included:

• Diverse networks and affinity groups can provide lasting social and professional value.
• Inclusive environments and workplaces can contribute to career growth, domestically and internationally.
• Employee resource groups can bolster workplace inclusivity and innovation by offering networks for sharing experiences and encouraging professional development.

Diversity and Allyship Week is an annual event hosted by the Dean’s Diversity Council and the F. David Fowler Career Center.

Image

National Hispanic Heritage Month Events Spotlight Immigrant Experiences

A discussion about two best-selling books focused on Central American immigrants to the United States were the anchor for School of Business diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) events during National Hispanic Heritage Month.

In a related activity in late September, students joined Interim Chief Diversity Officer Leo Moersen, an associate professor of accountancy and business law, for a guided tour of the “Presente!” exhibit at the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Latino. Pending construction of a brick-and-mortar museum, its exhibits are housed in a gallery at the National Museum of American History on the National Mall.

“We have several goals,” Moersen explained. “There’s always the goal of building community when we get together to talk, but there’s also the goal to learn more about the experiences of people who come from different cultures. It helps to build understanding.”

Read More

The Oct. 18 book discussion highlighted Isabel Allende’s novel, "The Wind Knows My Name," and Javier Zamora’s nonfiction book, "Solito." The in-person event at the School of Business also featured food from El Salvador and a video clip of Zamora interviewing Allende. It was open to faculty, staff and students.

“The books look at the experience of immigration as well as the people who work to help refugees assimilate,” Moersen said. “Through these books, you also learn a lot about the psychological effect of being an immigrant in the United States.”

Allende’s novel tracks the lives of two immigrant children, one forced to leave Europe in 1938 and another fleeing violence in Central America in 2019. Zamora’s memoir — his debut book and a New York Times bestseller — follows his nine-week journey from El Salvador, across Guatemala and Mexico, to the United States as a five-year-old.

As for the Sept. 29 visit to the Smithsonian museum exhibit, Moersen said the GWSB students who took part “were very engaged and asked a lot of questions.” The exhibit documents the stories of immigrants from Latin America over centuries of history, and how they have shaped the United States. “Some immigrants are fleeing war and violence; others are motivated by economic hardships. Many decide to immigrate to access education and a better quality of life for future generations,” the online version of the exhibit explains.

“The exhibit also documents how immigrants arrive at our shores, the dangers they take and their contributions to our culture,” Moersen said.  

Moersen said the Dean’s Diversity Council is continuing its strategy to plan events in conjunction with heritage months. “Two Novembers ago, we focused on Native American Heritage month. A professor who is an expert on Native American history talked about the origins of Thanksgiving and the Indigenous people who took part in that fictionalized event,” he said. He noted that School of Business events are designed to complement DEI-themed activities held across the GW campus.  

Learn more about the GW School of Business Dean’s Diversity Council.