Speakers

Janet Borgerson

Visiting Scholar
College of Liberal Arts
Adjunct Professor
Saunders College of Business
Rochester Institute of Technology

Jonathan Schroeder

William A. Kern Professor of Communications
Rochester Institute of Technology

Matt Statler

Richman Family Director of Business Ethics and Social Impact Programming,
New York University

Matt Statler joined New York University Stern School of Business as a Clinical Assistant Professor of Management and Organizations in July 2009. He serves as the Richman Family Director of Business Ethics and Social Impact Programming for Stern's Undergraduate College, leading and coordinating the four-course Social Impact Core Curriculum as well as a range of co-curricular and extra-curricular activities. Professor Statler's research has appeared in a number of academic journals and edited volumes including the Oxford Handbook of Organizational Decision Making. His most recent book is entitled, Everyday Strategic Preparedness: The Role of Practical Wisdom in Organizations. Written with support from the Mellon Foundation, his dissertation examined the role of repetition in education, focusing specifically on the philosopher's allegorical return to the cave. Before joining NYU, he served as Director of Research at the Imagination Lab, a nonprofit Swiss foundation. In that role, he designed and facilitated strategy processes for major corporate, non-governmental and educational organizations, while guiding a multidisciplinary research team that produced dozens of academic publications. Previously, he worked in A.T. Kearney's nonprofit practice, and served as managing director at Weberize, an Internet consulting firm. Professor Statler earned his B.A. in Philosophy and Spanish Literature from the University of Missouri at Columbia and his Ph.D. in Philosophy from Vanderbilt University. He spent one year at the University of Heidelberg as a Fulbright Scholar.

Pierre Guillet de Monthoux

Department of Management, Politics and Philosophy
Copenhagen Business School

Pierre Guillet de Monthoux is Professor and Head of the Department of Management, Politics and Philosophy at Copenhagen Business School. Pierre’s proposition for both research and teaching goes: Art is a way to come closer to creativity in organizations and aesthetics is the philosophical approach best suited to articulate how it works! His main research focus areas include management philosophy, art and aesthetics. His books include The Art Firm: Aesthetic Management and Metaphysical Marketing from Wagner to Wilson (Stanford Business School Press).

Michèle Stanners

Fellow,
Arts and Leadership Initiative,
Cultural Agents at Harvard University

Michèle is the Director of Collaborative Enterprises at the Alberta College of Art and Design, where she is responsible for the design and implementation of a new Centre for Creativity and Entrepreneurship. Her expertise in this field derives from a rewarding career as a lawyer, leader and cultural strategist in the non-profit sector in visioning, design, branding and development. She founded the Honens International Piano Competition Pro-Am, was the Director of Alberta Ballet, crafted the province’s first ever cultural policy, and was the architect of Artsvote Calgary. She holds an MBA/LLB combined degree from the University of Alberta and is a recent graduate of the Harvard Divinity School with a Masters in Theological Studies.

While at Harvard University, she was a Fellow with the Weatherhead Centre for International Affairs (2008-2009) and is currently the Arts and Leadership Fellow with the Faculty of Arts and Sciences’ Cultural Agents Initiative. She seeks to enrich the world by reconnecting the arts and the creative process to leadership development, practice and process.

An active member with the International Women’s Forum, she is spearheading a national initiative on Advancing Womens Leadership. She is a pianist and meditator, has climbed Mount Kilimanjaro and most recently participated in a one month pilgrimage through the Himalayas with Tibetan Lama Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche.

Pushkala Prasad

Zankel Chair Professor of Management and Liberal Arts,
Skidmore College

Pushkala Prasad is the Zankel Chair Professor of Management and Liberal Arts at Skidmore College in New York. where she teaches courses on workplace diversity, international business and faces of capitalism. Her scholarly work on culture, resistance and technological change has been published in Organization Science, the Academy of Management Journal and Human Relations. She is also a co-editor of Managing the Melting Pot (Sage Publications, 1997) and the Handbook of Workplace Diversity (Sage Publications, 2006). Dr. Prasad has also written widely on research methods for organization studies and is the author of Crafting Qualitative Research: Working in the Post-Positivist Traditions (M.E. Sharpe, 2005).

Dr. Prasad is currently working on a comparative study of patterns of diversity and discrimination in Sweden and the USA and her work in this area has been supported by grants from the Swedish Quality of Worklife Foundation and by the Foundation of the Bank of Commerce of Sweden. Prior to coming to Skidmore College she held full-time appointments at Clarkson University (USA), the University of Calgary (Canada), the Helsinki School of Economics (Finland) and Lund University (Sweden).

Mollie Painter-Morland

Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy and Associate Director of the Institute for Business and Professional Ethics,
DePaul University; Academic Director of The Academy of Business in Society

is a tenured Associate Professor in Business Ethics at De Paul University in Chicago and Associate Director of DePaul’s Institute for Business and Professional Ethics. Currently, she serves as the Academic Director of EABIS (The Academy of Business in Society). She also serves as Editor-in-Chief of the Business and Professional Ethics Journal and as co-editor of Springer’s Issues in Business Ethics series. Mollie is the author and co-editor of a number of books, namely: "Business Ethics as Practice: Ethics as the Everyday Business of Business "(Cambridge University Press, 2008), "Cutting-edge Issues in Business Ethics: Continental Challenges to Theory and Practice", co-edited with Patricia Werhane (Springer, 2008), "Small and Medium-sized Enterprises: A Global Perspective", co-edited with Laura Spence (Springer 2010); "Leadership, Gender and Organization", co-edited with Patricia Werhane (Springer, 2011) and a textbook on "Business Ethics and Continental Philosophy" co-edited with René ten Bos (Cambridge University Press, 2011). She has also published many peer reviewed articles in prominent journals, and has often been part of teams of researchers delivering corporate and government commissioned research reports.

Jeffrey Durgee

Associate Professor of Marketing
Lally School of Management & Technology,
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

Jeffrey Durgee was recently the Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and is currently Associate Professor of Marketing at the Lally School of Management and Technology at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. He teaches Marketing, Consumer Behavior, Branding, Marketing Research and New Product Development and does research on qualitative methods for identifying needs for new products and new brand positionings.

He has taught in the Lally School’s Executive MBA, and taught Marketing to General Motors engineers for over 12 years as part of the Rensselaer Master of Science in Management and Technology. His research has been published in the Journal of Advertising Research, Psychology and Marketing, Advances in Consumer Research, the Journal of Product Innovation Management, the Design Management Journal, The Design Management Review, the Journal of Consumer Marketing and the MSI Working Paper Series. He recently published a book on consumer needs research and idea generation titled "Creative Insight: Finding Hidden Needs for New Products and New Brand Positioning". He is also the co-author of a new book on entrepreneurship in North Africa, "Entrepreneurship and Innovation in the Maghreb".

He has consulted on new product development and brand imagery projects for many companies including Procter & Gamble, Kodak, Coleman Camping Products, Hannaford Brothers, Meineke Car Care, O. M. Scott, Enterprise Rental Cars, Allied Demecq Spirits and Wine, and Autozone. He also conducts workshops and seminars for executives on Branding and Consumer Behavior, most recently for the Helsinki School of Economics. He worked in the Creative Research Department at Young and Rubicam in New York City. His Ph.D. is in Sociology from the University of Pittsburgh. His undergraduate degrees are from the University of Pennsylvania and the American University in Paris.

Hector Flores

Dean,
Graduate School,
Rochester Institute of Technology

Dr. Hector E. Flores is a plant biologist specializing in the biochemistry and physiology of plant roots and storage organs and in the biology and culture of plant-people interactions. Dr. Flores was born and raised in Lima, Peru, where he obtained a B.S.in Biology from the Universidad Nacional de San Marcos, the oldest university in the Americas. Dr. Flores earned a M.S. in Horticulture from the University of Puerto Rico (Mayaguez, 1978) and a Ph.D. in Biology from Yale University (1983).

Dr. Flores is nationally and internationally recognized for his work in plant biochemistry and root biology, having published about 100 technical papers, edited five books, and received over $5 M in funding for his research from Federal agencies and private foundations. At Penn State, Dr. Flores was the principal investigator for eleven years of a graduate training grant funded by NSF/USDA/DOE, and PI for five years of an international training grant funded by the McKnight Foundation. He has trained numerous undergraduate students and been graduate advisor of 14 M.S. and Ph.D. students. He is also recipient of an award from the Health Science Foundation of Japan. Dr. Flores is an honorary professor of Biology at the Universidad Nacional de San Marcos in Lima, Peru, his alma mater. Dr. Flores joined the Rochester Institute of Technology on September 1, 2011, as Dean of Graduate Studies.

Jamie Winebrake

Dean,
College of Liberal Arts,
Rochester Institute of Technology

James Winebrake currently serves as the dean of the College of Liberal Arts at RIT. He works with the administration as well as the college’s faculty, staff and students to advance education and scholarship in the arts, humanities and social sciences while also promoting interdisciplinary initiatives across RIT’s nine colleges. Winebrake previously served as chair of RIT’s Department of Science, Technology and Society/Public Policy and has earned international recognition for his research on issues related transportation and energy policy. He currently serves on the U.S. Department of Energy’s Transportation Energy Futures Steering Committee. Prior to joining RIT, Winebrake served as an associate professor of public policy at James Madison University. He received a bachelor’s in physics from Lafayette College, a master’s in technology and policy from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a Ph.D. in energy management and policy from the University of Pennsylvania.

Andrea Hickerson

Assistant Professor,
Communication,
Rochester Institute of Technology

Andrea Hickerson has a B.A. in Journalism and International Relations from Syracuse University; a M.A. in Journalism and an M.A. in Middle Eastern Studies from the University of Texas at Austin; and Ph.D. in Communication from the University of Washington. Professor Hickerson conducts research on journalism routines and political communication, specifically as they relate to immigrant and transnational communities. She is currently working on a project called “The Immigrant Journalist in the Digital Age,” which explores the role of media in immigrant communities in the U.S. In 2011 Professor Hickerson and Professor Vic Perotti in RIT’s Saunders College of Business received a Presidential Grant of $155,000 from the Knight Foundation to create and pilot a new interactive model for journalistic event coverage using mobile technology. The project, “Rise Above the Crowd” (rise.rit.edu) premiered at RIT’s Imagine Festival in May 2011. She remains active in journalism, writing the column “The Fair-Weather Runner” for the Democrat & Chronicle (http://blogs.democratandchronicle.com/fair-weather-runner/).

Victor Perotti

Associate Professor,
Saunders College of Business,
Rochester Institute of Technology

Victor Perotti is an Associate Professor and consultant on the business implications of new technologies including: digital business, digital entrepreneurship, Web 2.0, ecommerce, Web business models and mobile work. His most recent research examines social networks (especially Facebook.com), social computing, Clean Slate Internet approaches, mobile collaboration, digital entrepreneurship, electronic communities and video game business models. He currently leads the Digital Business initiative at RIT. Perotti is an accomplished communicator and educator, and was awarded RIT's highest honors for teaching: the Richard and Virginia Eisenhart Provost's Award for Excellence in Teaching (2000) and the Eisenhart Award for Outstanding Teaching (2004). His professional speaking engagements include academic conferences, small group meetings and large auditorium lectures. Before joining RIT, Perotti completed Masters Degrees in Computer Science (1990) and Cognitive Psychology (1994) as well as a Ph.D. in Cognitive Psychology (1997), all at Ohio State University. His doctoral thesis examined the visual perception of 3-D structure from motion information. Perotti's consulting work has ranged from conducting advanced business simulation experiences at Harris R.F. to business plan development for pre-seed video game companies to creating multimedia software for David Bowie's "Jump" CD-ROM

Patrick Scanlon

Chair,
Department of Communication,
Rochester Institute of Technology

Professor Scanlon has been with the RIT Department of Communication since 1988. He has published on English Renaissance literature, fiction, literacy, technical writing, technical communication education, technical graphics, plagiarism, and the teaching of writing in distance learning programs. Most recently, the focus of his research and publications has been on plagiarism and self-plagiarism. He is currently at work on a book, What Matter Who’s Writing, about marginal forms of authorship such as self-plagiarism and ghostwriting. Dr. Scanlon is the 2012 recipient of the Provost's Excellence in Faculty Mentoring Award.