Speakers - UVA Conference on Leadership in Business, Data and Intelligence

Featured Speakers
 

SCOTT C. BEARDSLEY
Dean and Charles C. Abbott Professor of Business Administration
UVA Darden School of Business

A former senior executive, Dean Beardsley acts as CEO of the financially self-sufficient Darden enterprise (School and Foundation). Since 2015, as chief fundraiser, he has helped raise a record $500 million in gifts — including gifts of $100 million, $80 million and $50 million — and endowment to: launch initiatives in venture capital, real estate and AI, and an institute for lifelong learning; hire 50 faculty; build a Collaboratory with the School of Data Science; boost faculty research support 400%; deliver record global diversity; and achieve record student excellence and financial aid. He gained approval from UVA’s board for a new campus masterplan and led ─ from vision to completion ─ the opening of UVA Darden DC Metro, a Washington, D.C-area campus enabling new EMBA, MSBA and Part-Time MBA offerings; a $150 million Darden hotel and conference center with adjacent Tahija Arboretum and LaCross Botanical Gardens; and alumni hall.

During his tenure, Darden has achieved record MBA rankings, including top five overall in The Economist and Bloomberg Businessweek and No. 1 for: MBA in the U.S. (The Princeton Review, Bloomberg Businessweek (public)), faculty (The Princeton Review, The Economist), educational experience (The Economist, seven times) and general management (Financial Times, four times). Poets & Quants named Beardsley “Dean of the Year” in December 2020.

Until 2015, he was a senior partner and elected global board member at McKinsey & Co. During his 26 years with the firm ─ 24 based in Belgium ─ he was among the fastest to rise to senior partner. He held some of the firm’s most senior roles: leader of the strategy practice; the leader of all professionals’ global talent learning and leadership development; co-chair of the global committees that elect partners and senior partners; and leader of global initiatives in broadband technologies and emerging markets telecom. A global technology and telecom expert, he helped decision makers of large, complex organizations around the world innovate, grow and transform. An electrical engineer by training, he also worked in the semiconductor industry for AMD and Analog Devices and as a physics teaching assistant at Tufts.

Beardsley’s transition to higher education follows his passion for scholarship and for helping people and organizations achieve their full potential. He wrote about the rise of nontraditional leaders in academia in his 2017 book, Higher Calling (UVA Press). He was an editor of MIT Sloan Management Review, has published widely in publications such as Stanford Innovation Review, McKinsey Quarterly and WSJ, and presented at the World Economic Forum, Concordia, Financial Times and OECD. An expert in strategy, stakeholder management, regulation, and leadership development, he now researches and teaches on maximizing human potential; CEO leadership; and technology and AI regulation.

Beardsley holds a doctorate in Higher Education Management with distinction from The University of Pennsylvania, which awarded him the 2022 Distinguished Alumni Award. He earned an MBA from MIT’s Sloan School with highest honors as the Henry S. Dupont III Scholar and a B.S. in electrical engineering magna cum laude, Tau Beta Pi and Eta Kappa Nu from Tufts University as the Eastman Kodak Scholar. He is currently pursuing research toward a Master in Practical Ethics degree (part-time) in the Department of Philosophy at University of Oxford’s Pembroke College. He serves or has served on multiple boards, including McKinsey & Company; Focused Ultrasound Foundation; as lead director at Sands Capital (growth equity, PE/VC); a large private company; and as Chair of the American Chamber of Commerce in Belgium. A competitive tennis player, he supports the UVA Men’s Tennis national championship team in various capacities. Originally from a family of educators and dairy farmers, Beardsley was born in Maine and grew up in Vermont and Alaska. He is a French and U.S. citizen, is bilingual in English and French, and resides in Charlottesville on the Lawn at the center of the University of Virginia’s Academical Village, a UNESCO World Heritage site. He and his wife Claire Dufournet of Annecy, France, have three sons.

 

THOMAS H. DAVENPORT
Bodily Bicentennial Professor of Analytics 2024-25, UVA Darden School of Business

Tom Davenport is the President’s Distinguished Professor of Information Technology and Management at Babson College, a Fellow of the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy and a Senior Advisor to Deloitte’s Chief Data and Analytics Officer Program. Davenport pioneered the concept of “competing on analytics” with his best-selling 2006 Harvard Business Review article and his 2007 book by the same name. He has published 24 books and over 300 articles for Harvard Business Review, MIT Sloan Management Review, and many other publications. His most recent book is All In on AI, a Wall Street Journal bestseller, co-authored with Nitin Mittal. He writes columns for Forbes, MIT Sloan Management Review, and the Wall Street Journal. He has been named one of the world’s “Top 25 Consultants” by Consulting magazine, one of the top 3 business/technology analysts in the world by Optimize magazine, one of the 100 most influential people in the IT industry by Ziff-Davis magazines and one of the world’s top fifty business school professors by Fortune magazine. He’s also been noted a "LinkedIn Top Voice" for both the education and tech sectors.

 

YAEL GRUSHKA-COCKAYNE             
Altec Styslinger Foundation Bicentennial Chair in Business Administration, UVA Darden School of Business

Yael Grushka-Cockayne's research and teaching activities focus on data science, forecasting, project management and behavioral decision-making. Her research is published in numerous academic and professional journals, and she is a regular speaker at international conferences in the areas of decision analysis, project management and management science. Prof. Grushka-Cockayne is an award-winning teacher, winning the Darden Morton Leadership Faculty Award in 2011, the University of Virginia's Mead-Colley Award in 2012 and the Darden Outstanding Faculty Award in 2013 and 2022 and Faculty Diversity Award in 2013 and 2018. In 2015, she won the University of Virginia All University Teaching Award. Prof. Grushka-Cockayne teaches the core "Decision Analysis" course, an elective she designed on project management and an elective on data science. She has served as the leader of the open enrollment courses "Project Management for Executives" and "The Women's Leadership Program."

Before starting her academic career, she worked in San Francisco as a marketing director of an Israeli ERP company. As an expert in the areas of project management, Prof. Grushka-Cockayne has served as a consultant to international firms in the aerospace and pharma industries. She is a UVA Excellence in Diversity fellow and a member of INFORMS, the Decision Analysis Society, the Operational Research Society and the Project Management Institute (PMI). She is an associate editor at Management Science and Operation Research and the President-elect of the INFORMS Decision Analysis Society.

In 2014, Grushka-Cockayne was named one of "21 Thought-Leader Professors" in Data Science. Her recent "Fundamentals of Project Planning and Management" Coursera MOOC had over 100,000 enrolled, across 200 countries worldwide. Her "Data Science for Business" Harvard Online course, launched in 2021, has taught hundreds of learners around the world.

KIRSTEN MARTIN (MBA '99, Ph.D. '06)
William P. and Hazel B. White Professor of Technology Ethics and Professor of IT, Analytics, and Operations, Mendoza College of Business at the University of Notre Dame

Kirsten Martin researches privacy, technology ethics, and corporate responsibility. She has written about privacy and the ethics of technology in leading academic journals across disciplines (Journal of Business Ethics, BEQ, Harvard Journal of Law and Technology, Journal of Legal Studies, Washington University Law Review, Journal of Business Research, etc) as well as practitioner publications such as MISQ Executive.  She is the Technology and Business Ethics editor for the Journal of Business Ethics and the recipient of three NSF grants for her work on privacy, technology, and ethics.  Martin is also an affiliate of Northeastern University’s Center for Law, Innovation and Creativity and a member of the advisory board for the Future Privacy Forum. She was also the Director of the Notre Dame Technology Ethics Center (ND-TEC) from 2021-2023.

Martin is regularly asked to speak on privacy and the ethics of big data, including her Tedx talk.  In addition to academic invited talks, she has had invited talks or been an expert witness for government agencies such as the Federal Trade Commission (FTC); Government Accountability Office (GAO); U.S. Treasury Department; U.S. Census Bureau; National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine; National Academy of Engineering; National Academy of Education; German Federal Ministry for the Environment and Consumer Protection; U.S. Department of Justice.

She earned her B.S. Industrial and Operations Engineering from the University of Michigan and her MBA and Ph.D from the University of Virginia’s Darden Graduate School of Business

 

MARC RUGGIANO (MBA '96)
Special Advisor for AI Initiatives, UVA Darden School of Business

Marc Ruggiano’s research focuses on health and health care-related decision-making, and on the changing nature of organizational leadership in a data-saturated world.  

Before returning to Darden full-time to advise AI initiatives, Ruggiano served as director of the Darden-SDS Collaboratory for Applied Data Science (DCADS), an innovative collaboration that advanced research efforts at the intersection of data science and business.

Prior to joining the School of Data Science, Ruggiano served as Executive Director of Darden Executive Education and Lifelong Learning, where he led marketing and the creation of non-credit programs in Data Science and Analytical Leadership, partnering with more than a dozen faculty from Data Science, Darden and the McIntire School of Commerce.

Ruggiano spent more than two decades in the corporate sector working primarily in technology and health care. Most recently, he was head of Customer Relationship Marketing and Management at Humana, a leading U.S. health care company. While there, Ruggiano was responsible for managing a team of analytics, marketing, and technology experts that developed, delivered, and measured the impact of more than 1  billion health-related consumer interventions annually.

 

RAJ VENKATESAN              
Ronald Trzcinski Professor of Business Administration, UVA Darden School of Business

Rajkumar Venkatesan teaches "Marketing Technology Products," "Marketing Strategy" and Marketing Analytics at Darden. Venkatesan's research focuses on analytics as it relates to marketing return on investment, customer lifetime value, mobile marketing and the global political economy. His research has appeared in several journals, including The Review of Economics and Statistics, Journal of Marketing, Journal of Marketing Research, Marketing Science and Harvard Business Review. He is also a co-author of the book Cutting Edge Marketing Analytics.

Many of his research publications have been recognized with prestigious awards, such as the Don Lehmann Award for the best dissertation-based article, the MSI Alden G. Clayton and the ISBM Outstanding Dissertation Proposal awards, and the ISBM award for long-term contributions to business-to-business marketing. He was selected as one of the Top 20 rising young scholars in marketing by the Marketing Science Institute, one of the Top 40 professors under 40 by Poets & Quants, and recognized among the Top 5 percent of marketing strategy scholars by the Journal of Marketing Education.

Venkatesan has consulted with firms in the technology, retailing, media, industrial goods and pharmaceutical industries. He has developed custom executive education programs or data analytics software for Capital One, Explore Learning, General Electric, General Dynamics, HBO, IBM, Johnson & Johnson, MAS Holdings, Pitney Bowes, Porsche MHP, Rosetta Stone, SAP and Teradata. For his work with IBM, he was recognized as one of the finalists for the Informs Practice Prize Competition.

Before coming to Darden, Venkatesan taught graduate students at the University of Connecticut. There, he was the recipient of the MBA Teacher of the Year Award. He received his Ph.D. in marketing from the University of Houston and his B.E. in computer engineering from the University of Madras.

Additional Speakers
 

GABRIELLE (GABE) ADAMS
Associate Professor of Public Policy and Business Administration and, by Courtesy, Psychology (Social)
UVA Darden School of Business

Professor Adams studies the processes and dynamics that give rise to 'good' decisions, policies, and conditions in organizations. Her research focuses on psychological inefficiencies: the factors that cause friction and prevent people from understanding one another's viewpoints or making sound decisions. Her research has been published in journals such as Nature, Psychological Science; Journal of Experimental Psychology: General; Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (JPSP); and Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes (OBHDP). It has also been the subject of articles in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Financial Times, the Wall Street Journal, and Harvard Business Review, and has been featured on national public radio (NPR, BBC, CBC). In 2021, she won UVA's All-University Research Award. She is currently an Associate Editor at OBHDP. Adams teaches courses on leadership; interpersonal and group dynamics; diversity, equity, and inclusion; power, status, and influence; change; and negotiations. She has also taught many executive education programs for both public and private sector organizations. She received UVA's All-University Teaching Award in 2021 and the Excellence in Teaching Award from the Jefferson Scholars Foundation in 2022, and has also been named one of the 40 Best Business School Professors Under 40 by Poets & Quants. She currently serves as a non-executive director/advisor of DataEQ and VEL, and is an affiliate of ideas42. She received her B.A. from Colby College and her Ph.D. in Business Administration (Organizational Behavior) from the Stanford Graduate School of Business.


CHIRAG AGARWAL
Assistant Professor of Data Science
UVA School of Data Science

Professor Agarwal leads the Aikyam lab, which focuses on developing trustworthy machine learning frameworks that go beyond training models for specific downstream tasks and satisfy trustworthy properties, such as explainability, fairness and robustness. Before joining UVA, he was a postdoctoral research fellow at Harvard University and completed his Ph.D. at the University of Illinois at Chicago in electrical and computer engineering and bachelor's degree in electronics and communication. His Ph.D. thesis was on the "Robustness and Explainability of Deep Neural Networks," and he has developed a first-of-its-kind, large-scale, in-depth study to support systematic, reproducible, and efficient evaluations of post hoc explanation methods for (un)structured data to understand algorithmic decision-making on diverse tasks ranging from bail decisions to loan credit recommendations. Agarwal has published in top-tier machine learning and computer vision conferences (NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR, UAI, AISTATS, CVPR, SIGIR, ACCV) as well as in top journals in datasets (Nature Scientific Data) and health care (Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine and Cardiovascular Digital Health Journal). His research has received Spotlight and Oral presentations at NeurIPS, ICML, CVPR, and ICIP conferences, and industrial grants from Adobe, Microsoft, and Google to support work on trustworthy machine learning.

MICHAEL ALBERT
Assistant Professor, UVA Darden School of Business

Assistant Professor Michael Albert teaches Data Analytics and Decision Sciences courses in Darden’s MBA program, and he has courtesy appointments in Systems Engineering and Computer Science in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) at UVA. His research focuses on combining machine learning and algorithmic techniques to automate the design of markets. His work has appeared in leading artificial intelligence and machine learning venues such as the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) and the International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI) as well as leading operations research and business journals such as Operations Research (OR).

Prior to joining Darden in 2018, Albert received his Ph.D. in financial economics at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business. He has also worked as a visiting assistant professor of finance at the Ohio State University, as a postdoctoral researcher at the Learning Agents Research Group at the University of Texas at Austin under Peter Stone, and as a postdoctoral researcher in the artificial intelligence group headed by Vincent Conitzer at Duke University. 

 

YIORGOS ALLAYANNIS
Robert F. Bruner Distinguished Professor of Business Administration, UVA Darden School of Business

Yiorgos Allayannis is an expert in corporate finance, risk management, financial institutions and international finance. His work has examined the impact of derivatives on risk and firm value, corporate governance and its influence in a firm's use of derivatives for hedging, as well as firms' financial and operational hedging strategies. Other work has examined volatility and its implications for firm value distinguishing between earnings and cash flow volatility. His research has been published in leading finance journals, such as the Journal of Finance, the Journal of Financial Economics and the Review of Financial Studies. His case-writing activity focuses in the areas of financial institutions, fintech, capital markets and international finance.

Allayannis has taught the First Year (corporate) "Finance" course for the MBA and GEMBA programs and elective courses in "Portfolio," "Valuation," "Financial Institutions and Markets" and "Global Capital Markets," as well as for programs in Darden's Executive Education and Lifelong Learning, the CFA Institute and the World Bank. He was the recipient of the University of Virginia Alumni Association Distinguished Professor Award in 2011; the Outstanding Faculty Award six times; and was elected faculty marshal six times by the graduating MBA classes. He was also the recipient of The Case Center award in 2014 in the area of finance, accounting and control, for his case on global banking and the impact of Basel III regulation.

During 2005-07, Allayannis was a director in Citigroup's Global Financial Strategy Group in the Investment Banking Division. He worked extensively with clients in the financial institutions and industrial sectors advising on a broad range of issues such as capital structure, credit ratings, capital distribution policies, valuation and risk management.

MADHUR BEHL
Associate Professor of Computer Science and Systems and Information Engineering,
UVA School of Engineering and Applied Science

Madhur Behl is a member of the Cyber-Physical Systems Link Lab at the University of Virginia.  He conducts research at the confluence of Machine Learning, Predictive Control, and Artificial Intelligence with applications in Cyber-Physical Systems, Autonomous Systems, Robotics, and Smart Cities. Examples include: fully autonomous racing at the limits of control (Agile Autonomy), safety of autonomous vehicles (Safe Autonomy), building world models for robotics, data predictive control for flooding in coastal cities, and AI for building energy optimization.

He is the team principal of the University of Virginia's Cavalier Autonomous Racing team - racing full-scale, fully autonomous Indy cars. Behl is also the co-founder, organizer, and the race director for the F1/10 (F1tenth) International Autonomous Racing Competitions. He is an Associate Editor for the SAE Journal on Connected and Autonomous Vehicles, and a Guest Editor for the Journal of Field Robotics. He also serves on the on the Academic Advisory Council of the Partners for Automated Vehicle Education (PAVE) campaign, to help promote public understanding about autonomous vehicles and their potential benefits. Behl is an IEEE Senior Member and the recipient of the National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER Award (2021).

He received his Ph.D. and M.S. in Electrical and Systems Engineering, both from the University of Pennsylvania; and his bachelor's degree in ECE from PEC University of Technology in India.

ANEESH CHOPRA
Chief Strategy Officer, Arcadia

Aneesh Chopra is the Chief Strategy Officer of Arcadia, a data sharing and analytics platform for value-based care organizations, following the acquisition of CareJourney, a firm he founded following his public service. He served as the first U.S. CTO (2009-2012) and authored "Innovative State: How New Technologies Can Transform Government” (2014).

He serves on the Boards of IntegraConnect, Virginia Center for Health Innovation, and Chairs the George Mason Innovation Advisory Council. He earned his MPP from Harvard Kennedy School and B.A. from The Johns Hopkins University.

 

 

CHELSIE GARRIOTT
VP of Marketing at AvePoint

Chelsie Garriott is a technology leader with deep expertise in artificial intelligence, data science, and strategic growth. Currently she is the VP of Marketing at AvePoint, a leader in data security and governance. Previously, she led the public sector vertical at Qualtrics and founded the California Judicial Branch’s Digital Services Team. Chelsie holds a PhD in political science and has over a decade of experience teaching and publishing research on the application of AI and data science to solve complex challenges.

 

 

OMAR GARRIOTT
Executive Director, Batten Institute for Entrepreneurship, Innovation and Technology
UVA Darden School of Business

A successful corporate intrapreneur, venture founder and author with leadership experience in a variety of major technology firms, Garriott leads the Batten Institute in supporting Darden’s mission to improve the world by developing responsible leaders through unparalleled transformational learning experiences. Garriott has built his career at the intersecting pillars of business and education. After graduating from the UVA McIntire School of Commerce with distinction, he took a position in Washington, D.C., with Teach for America, teaching third grade in a public school in the city’s lowest-income community. The experience helped inform his outlook and career, which has included leadership roles with the education divisions at companies such as Adobe, Apple, LinkedIn and Salesforce. Most recently, Garriott served as global head of education at Qualtrics, helping to transform a legacy research business serving universities into a leading student experience platform. At each stop, Garriott worked closely with clients in both the K-12 and higher education spaces, and he is an expert on digital transformation and the rapidly shifting graduate business education landscape. He holds an MBA from the UC-Berkeley Haas School of Business with a certificate in entrepreneurship and has worked with thousands of job-seekers and career starters and MBA career services staff through his venture, The Job Insiders.

SEAN HARRISON
Chief Analytics Officer, Acentra Health

Sean Harrison is an experienced leader in AI and healthcare technology, currently serving as Chief Analytics Officer at Acentra Health. With over 30 years of experience in technology and product development, Sean drives initiatives in artificial intelligence, business intelligence, and advanced analytics, pushing forward innovation in health administration and care management. His focus on ethical AI and value-driven design aligns closely with the evolving needs of government-sponsored health programs, ensuring that AI solutions benefit patients and stakeholders with transparency and integrity. 

Since joining Acentra Health, Sean has led several transformative projects that are reshaping healthcare services for millions of beneficiaries. He spearheaded the development and implementation of MedScribe, one of the first generative AI tools approved by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) for Medicare Appeals. MedScribe significantly reduces the time required for drafting determination letters while maintaining clinical accuracy and empathetic communication. Sean also launched the ATOM (AI to Modernize) initiative, integrating AI across Acentra Health's products to streamline processes, enhance efficiency, and support healthcare professionals in delivering high-quality care. 

Sean’s commitment to responsible AI development is further exemplified through his leadership of the AI Council at Acentra Health. This cross-functional council establishes best practices for AI governance, aligning with the NIST AI Risk Management Framework to guide the ethical deployment of AI technologies. Under Sean's leadership, Acentra Health's AI programs have established a leading example for responsible and impactful AI adoption within the government healthcare sector. 

As a panelist at the UVA Conference on Leadership in Business, Data, and Intelligence, Sean will share insights on the future of AI in healthcare, focusing on balancing innovation, operational efficiency, and ethical responsibility. 

Sean holds an MBA from Duke University and a BS in Computer Science from the University of Maryland, College Park.

BECKY HEIRONOMUS
Director of Product Management and Head of Facebook Risk and Regulatory Readiness, Meta

Becky Heironimus joined Meta 2 years ago and is currently a Director of Product Management and Head of Facebook Risk and Regulatory Readiness.  She is responsible for regulatory compliance and risk mitigations across all risk areas, including Privacy, AI and Accessibility, for Meta’s flagship Facebook product.  Her team is responsible for creating and enforcing a cohesive strategy to support risk mitigation, privacy and data while enabling product teams across Facebook to proactively build sustainable risk mitigations into their products.   

Prior to Meta, Becky was the Head of Enterprise Data Governance and Privacy for 16 years at Capital One Financial Corporation.  Her robust career at Capital One bridged all lines of business.  She led Capital One’s innovative API transformation strategy driving an enterprise effort to deliver reusable, expandable products available both across the enterprise and externally to users. While working in the retail bank business, Becky led the customer experience and digital integration with ING Direct, a critical acquisition supporting the company’s vision to create a first-in-class digital banking experience.  A passionate advocate for Women In Tech initiatives, Becky has proudly served in multiple roles focused on creating a space where female associates and allies can find and provide support and advice while working together to continue the advancement of women. 

Before joining Capital One, Becky was a Management and Technology Consultant with Pwc, focusing on emerging technologies in leading energy and healthcare companies. Becky graduated from the University of Virginia with a BS in Systems Engineering and an MBA from UVA’s Darden School of Business.


TOM HARTVIGSEN
Assistant Professor, UVA School of Data Science

Tom Hartvigsen works to make machine learning trustworthy, robust, and socially responsible enough for deployment in high-stakes, dynamic settings.  Tom's research has been published at many major peer-reviewed venues in Machine Learning, Natural Language Processing, and Data Mining. He is active in the machine learning community, serving as the General Chair for the Machine Learning for Health Symposium in 2023, helping organize the 2023 Conference on Health, Informatics, and Learning, and co-chairing workshops on time series and generative AI at NeurIPS'22 and ICML'23.

Prior to joining UVA, Tom was a Postdoctoral Associate at MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. He holds a Ph.D. and M.S. in Data Science from Worcester Polytechnic Institute and a B.A. in Applied Math from SUNY Geneseo.

 

LEIDY KLOTZ
Professor, UVA School of Engineering and Applied Science 

Leidy Klotz is a professor of Civil Engineering and Architecture and Business Administration at UVA and an internationally recognized expert on behavioral science, design, and sustainability. He is the recipient of a CAREER award from the National Science Foundation and has received over $10 million dollars in competitive research funding. His most recent book Subtract was published in 2021.

 

 

 

SARAH LEBOVITZ
Assistant Professor, UVA McIntire School of Commerce

Sarah Lebovitz's research utilizes in-depth qualitative methods to investigate how new technologies transform the way people work and organize across contexts. In particular, her recent work examines how the development and use of advanced AI technologies changes how physicians make life-or-death diagnosis decisions. Lebovitz’s work has been published in leading academic journals and practitioner outlets and has been received several awards noting its quality and impact. She received a Ph.D. from New York University’s Stern School of Business.

 

 

MICHAEL LENOX
University Professor and
Tayloe Murphy Professor of Business Administration
UVA Darden School of Business

Professor Lenox teaches the core MBA strategy course and an MBA elective on "Strategy in the Digital Age", among other offerings. He serves as a Special Advisor to the Dean leading special projects.  In 2023, he was asked by UVA’s President to serve as the inaugural Donna & Richard Tadler University Chair of Entrepreneurship and to lead a new Pan-University Entrepreneurship Initiative as a Special Advisor to the Provost. In addition, he is a Senior Faculty Fellow for the UVA Miller Center where he is an Academic Director for the Program on Democracy and Capitalism. From 2016 to 2023, he served as the Senior Associate Dean and Chief Strategy Officer for the Darden School. From 2008 to 2016, he served as Associate Dean of Innovation Programs and Academic Director of Darden's Batten Institute for Entrepreneurship and Innovation. He helped found and served as the inaugural president of the multiple-university Alliance for Research on Corporate Sustainability.  

Prior to joining Darden in 2008, Professor Lenox was a tenured professor at Duke University's Fuqua School of Business, where he served as the area coordinator for Fuqua's Strategy Area and the faculty director and founder of Duke's Corporate Sustainability Initiative. He received his Ph.D. in Technology Management and Policy from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1999 and the degrees of Bachelor and Master of Science in Systems Engineering from the University of Virginia. Professor Lenox has served as an assistant professor at New York University's Stern School of Business and as a visiting professor at Stanford University, Harvard University, Oxford University and IMD.

Professor Lenox's research has appeared in over thirty refereed academic publications and has been cited in numerous media outlets including The New York Times, the Financial Times and The Economist. He has published five books including, “Strategy in the Digital Age” (2023), "The Decarbonization Imperative" (2021), and "Can Business Save the Earth" (2018) all from Stanford University Press, and “The Strategist’s Toolkit” (2013) from Darden Business Publishing.  In 2009, he was recognized as a Faculty Pioneer by the Aspen Institute and as the top strategy professor under 40 by the Strategic Management Society. In 2011, he was named one of the top 40 business professors under 40 by Poets & Quants.  

Professor Lenox's primary expertise is in the domain of technology strategy and policy. He is broadly interested in the role of innovation and entrepreneurship for economic growth and firm competitive success. In particular, he explores the business strategy and public policy drivers of the direction of innovative activity and technology transitions such as those being driven by digital transformation and decarbonization.  Professor Lenox has a long-standing interest in the interface between business strategy and public policy as it relates to the natural environment.

SAMUEL LEVY
Assistant Professor of Business Administration
UVA Darden School of Business

Professor Levy's research focuses on solving marketing problems using empirical methods, particularly in the areas of customer analytics, customer relationship management (CRM), data fusion, and privacy in marketing. He develops innovative methodologies such as digital marketing twins, leveraging probabilistic machine learning techniques to provide detailed, individual-level counterfactual insights regarding brand affinity and service performance from multiple data sources. Additionally, his work on privacy-preserving data fusion combines multiple datasets while ensuring user privacy, addressing the challenges of merging customer survey data with CRM databases in the US telecommunications industry. This approach enables marketers and researchers to understand customer satisfaction and run effective customer retention campaigns without compromising privacy. Professor Levy holds a B.S. in Economics from École Normale Supérieure Paris-Saclay in his native France, an M.S. in Marketing from Tilburg University, and a Ph.D. in Marketing from Carnegie Mellon University.

PANOS MARKOU
Assistant Professor, UVA Darden School of Business

Panos Markou's research is built on empirically understanding how firms may manage, and make better decisions, in the face of risks which threaten to disrupt critical organizational processes. More specifically, his research focuses on managing the uncertainty inherent in innovative processes and mitigating high-impact operational and financial risks. He is a strong believer in bridging academia and industry: producing research that is grounded in practice and has the potential for large impact and relevance. To this end, Panos has collaborated with companies in a variety of industries such as automotive, aviation, banking, and pharmaceuticals.

Prior to joining Darden, Panos taught at the MBA, EMBA, and Executive Education programs at the Cambridge Judge Business School in the UK and IE Business School in Spain. He also has several years’ experience working at BMW’s manufacturing facility in Spartanburg, SC and the Research & Innovation Center (Forschungs-und Innovationszentrum) in Munich, as well as at Delta TechOps in Atlanta, GA.

Panos holds a B.Sc. in Mechanical Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology and an M.Sc. and Ph.D. in Operations Management from IE Business School. He was previously a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Cambridge Judge Business School’s Entrepreneurship Centre.

REZA MOUSAVI
Assistant Professor, UVA McIntire School of Commerce

Reza Mousavi is expert in artificial intelligence (AI) and business analytics. His research explores the societal and economic impacts of AI, user-generated content, and healthcare information systems. Employing deep learning, natural language processing (NLP), and econometrics, he investigates quasi-experimental settings to uncover relationships among key constructs. His work has been published in Information Systems Research, Journal of Management Information Systems, and Journal of the Association for Information Systems.

In addition to his academic pursuits, Mousavi has collaborated with leading consulting firms on diverse data science projects and previously served as Lead Data Scientist at State Farm Insurance Co. More recently, he has served in the INFORMS AI Steering Committee and the University of Virginia's Generative AI Taskforce.

IAN O'KEEFE
Founder and CEO, iKona Analytics

Ian O’Keefe is a globally recognized People Analytics leader with over 20 years of experience in building and leading analytics teams in Human Resources at top organizations including Amazon, JP Morgan Chase, Google and American Express. He is the Founder and CEO of ikona Analytics, a firm that leverages AI-assisted tools to help HR organizations unlock the value of their people data at the intersection of operations, technology, product design and analytics.

O'Keefe is a CXO Network Member for A.Team, an HR Venture Advisor for SemperVirens Venture Capital, and a strategic advisor to start-ups, including Traversaal and Groov. Most recently, he served as Head of Talent Analytics at Amazon, leading a multidisciplinary team that provided data engineering, reporting, behavioral research and applied data science solutions for over 400,000 corporate employees.

O'Keefe began his career in management consulting with Deloitte Human Capital and boutique firms specializing in change management and organizational effectiveness. He holds a B.S. in Psychology from the University of Virginia, a Master’s in Data Science from Northwestern University, and has studied AI and LLM product development at Stanford University. Ian is a frequent speaker and has contributed to three books on people analytics.

DIRK PETERSEN
VP, North America at Insight222

With over two decades of experience in human resources and people analytics, Dirk Petersen is a recognized thought leader in the field. As the Vice President for North America at Insight222 since 2016, he has spearheaded numerous projects, providing advisory and consulting services across the breadth of people analytics challenges. A sought-after speaker at leading industry events such as Visier's Outsmart, the People Analytics & Future of Work conference, HackingHR, and DisruptHR, Dirk’s expertise spans strategy development and execution, establishing and growing people analytics functions, and creating business impact through data-driven insights.
 
Prior to his current role, he held senior positions at The World Bank and the Corporate Executive Board (now Gartner), where he led initiatives that significantly improved organizational performance. At The World Bank, he developed key talent strategies that drove business performance, including implementing a three-year strategic staffing plan and leading a restructuring that resulted in a 10% staff cost reduction while maintaining high engagement. His tenure at CEB saw him advising Chief Human Resources Officers in the US and across Europe and leading a team delivering top performance in revenue generation and client satisfaction. Dirk's extensive experience in both advisory and operational roles, built on a foundation of a Wharton undergraduate and MBA and MPP degrees from  Harvard University underscore his deep understanding of how to leverage people analytics for strategic business outcomes.

ROSHNI RAVEENDHRAN
Assistant Professor, UVA Darden School of Business

Roshni Raveendhran's research focuses on understanding the future of work. In particular, she examines how novel technologies influence organizational actors, and workplace practices. In doing so, she develops insights about how organizations can effectively leverage novel technologies to create positive impact on people, organizations, and society. Her work has been published in leading journals such as Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Academy of Management Annals, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, and Computers in Human Behavior, and top practitioner outlets such as the Harvard Business Review and MIT Sloan Management Review. It has also been featured in media outlets such as the The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Financial Times, CNN, Fortune, Business Insider, Forbes, Harvard Business Review, Virginia Public Radio, UVA Today and WNCU Public Radio. Roshni's research has received numerous awards including the Academy of Management's 2020 Outstanding Practitioner-Oriented Publication in Organizational Behavior and was recognized as a finalist in the INFORMS Best Dissertation competition in 2017.

Roshni teaches Darden's core course on “Leading Organizations” and an elective on Negotiations in the full-time MBA program. In 2021, she was named one of the "40 Best Business School Professors Under 40" by Poets & Quants. Roshni also received the Frederick S. Morton Leadership Award in 2020 and 2021, a recognition given each year to the Darden professor who "best fostered exceptional student leaders' leadership ability by stimulating the student leader to act upon ideas for evolution and improvement". In 2021, Roshni also received the Faculty Diversity Award for her "exceptional contributions to diversity, equity, and inclusion within the Darden community." She is a Faculty Fellow affiliated with the Batten Institute for Innovation and Entrepreneurship and received her Ph.D. in business administration (management) from the Marshall School of Business at the University of Southern California.

MONA SLOANE
Assistant Professor
UVA School of Data Science

Assistant Professor of Media Studies
UVA College of Arts and Sciences

As a sociologist, Mona Sloane studies the intersection of technology and society, specifically in the context of AI design, use and policy. She also convenes the Co-Opting AI series, a public speaker series focused on all aspects of AI technology and its application, ranging from security to food, games, and more, and serves as the Technology Editor for Public Books. The Women in AI Ethics (WAIE) global initiative added her to its “100 Brilliant Women in AI Ethics Hall of Fame” in 2020. A frequent public speaker and commentator, Sloane has written for The Guardian, MIT Technology Review, The Hill, Nature, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, OneZero Medium and other outlets.

Her work includes the development of new methods for AI auditing and AI transparency, innovating AI procurement, AI in hiring and talent acquisition, AI participation and public education, new AI tools for investigative journalism, global AI policy and local governance innovation on AI, and a range of different responsible AI topics. Sloane holds a Ph.D. from the London School of Economics and Political Science and has completed fellowships at the University of California at Berkeley, at the University of Cape Town and at the Weizenbaum Institute Berlin. Before joining UVA, Mona was a research assistant professor at NYU’s Tandon School of Engineering, a senior research scientist at the NYU Center for Responsible AI, and the founding director of the *This Is Not A Drill* program, which develops public pedagogy on art, equity, technology, and the climate emergency.

Since 2021, she has served on the board of the Artificial Intelligence & Equality Initiative of the Carnegie Council for Ethics and International Affairs. Sloane currently is a Fellow with the NYU Institute for Public Knowledge and The GovLab, and is affiliated with the Tübingen AI Center in Germany where she recently completed a 3-year federally funded research project on the operationalization of ethics in German AI startups.

At UVA, she runs the Sloane Lab which conducts empirical research on the implications of technology for the organization of social life. Its focus lies on AI as a social phenomenon that intersects with wider cultural, economic, material, and political conditions. The lab spearheads social science leadership in applied work and research on responsible AI, public scholarship, and technology policy.


ALAN SUSI
VP, Global Head of Organizational Analytics & People Insights, S&P Global

Since joining S&P in the summer of 2020, Alan has spent time as a People Partner and Global Head of Organizational Effectiveness supporting Enterprise value capture including organizational design enablement, workforce planning and redeployment as part of S&P Global’s merger with IHS Markit.  

Alan has led the Organizational Analytics & People Insights team since Fall 2022 when he combined the Organizational Effectiveness capabilities with People Analytics and People Reporting.  Today the OA&PI team partners with and enables transformation and outcome achievement across all People COEs, in deep collaboration with Corporate Finance and is responsible for the digital transformation and AI program agenda for the People function.  Prior to S&P Global, Alan spent nearly 10 years at Fannie Mae in a variety of HR leadership roles and was also Head, Organizational Effectiveness at CFA Institute, a global member organization for investment professionals.

MARTY WEINER
Former CTO, Reddit and Founding Engineer, Pinterest

Marty was a founding engineer at Pinterest and the first CTO at Reddit. He retired but somehow accidentally finds himself starting a new startup called VerifyYou, a chat app where everybody is vetted to make sure they are who they say they are. Marty loves advising startups that have hit traction and are growing so fast their founders’ heads are spinning.

 

 

 

 

ZHIHAO ZHANG
Assistant Professor, UVA Darden School of Business

Zhihao Zhang teaches the marketing core course for the full-time MBA program at Darden. Drawing from academic training and research experience from both consumer behavior and cognitive neuroscience, he pursues a diverse and interdisciplinary research agenda revolving around consumer decision-making. In particular, he focuses on understanding the cognitive, computational, and neuroscientific mechanisms by which memory and knowledge (e.g., of brands, products, services, or social interactions) shape decisions. He also has a keen interest in using neuroscience to inform real world problems at the intersection of marketing and law, for example trademark and copyright infringement. His work has appeared in leading academic journals such as Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Science Advances, Nature Communications, and Current Biology. Some of his past research has been covered by major media outlets such as BBC News, Los Angeles Times, Fortune, Fast Company, The Hill, The Times of India, The Conversation, and China National Radio, as well as practitioner-oriented outlets such as Ipsos Views, Law360, and World Trademark Review. His research has been supported by the National Institute on Aging. Before joining Darden, Zhihao was a postdoctoral scholar at the Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley. He received his undergraduate degree from Tsinghua University (with honors) and his Ph.D. from Yale University’s Interdepartmental Neuroscience Program. He is also an assistant professor by courtesy at the Department of Psychology at UVA.