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Faculty

Experienced and Student-Focused Faculty

RIT’s EMBA faculty boasts impressive academic credentials and accomplishments, which, combined with their professional experience, give you a robust educational experience. Recognized as thought leaders and immersed in their fields of expertise, RIT’s faculty bring an indispensable perspective to the classroom. As an RIT EMBA student, you have the opportunity to learn from real-world business consultants in the areas of international business, new product development, technology and innovation, and start-up companies.

Together, you, your peers and the faculty create a rich environment for high-level executive discussions and debates. The faculty’s insight and guidance provide a unique perspective on the complicated workings of today’s global marketplace. Learn more about RIT’s EMBA faculty who are passionate about educating the next generation of executives.

  • Robert Barbato

    Robert Barbato

    Professor
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    Robert Barbato

    Professor, ,

    Bob Barbato is a Professor of Management in the Saunders College of Business. His primary teaching and research interests are in the areas of business ethics, entrepreneurship and organizational behavior. In addition to his teaching responsibilities at RIT, Bob has taught or lectured in Kosovo, Dubai, Saudi Arabia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, South Korea, Ethiopia and England.

  • Robert Boehner

    Adjunct Professor
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    Robert Boehner

    Adjunct Professor, , Senior Lecturer

    Bob Boehner is a senior lecturer in SCB. He joined the SCB faculty in 1995 as an adjunct professor teaching in the executive MBA program. In 2000 he became a full-time SCB faculty member. Boehner teaches graduate level marketing and strategy courses.

    Boehner retired from Xerox in 1996 after a 30 year career. While at Xerox he held a variety of senior management positions in marketing, strategy,and field operations. After retiring he attended the School of Law at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, earning a JD degree in 1999. He earned a BA and MA degree in history from Siena College.

    Boehner was recognized by EMBA students as the most outstanding instructor in the program in 2008,2009, 2010, and 2011.

    Boehner combines his teaching experience with consulting for a variety of different clients. Over the last five years he has consulted and/or conducted training sessions for Getinge, Moog, JML Optical, Harris RF Communications, and Champlain College. Boehner also organized and taught a successful series of local WIRED seminars funded by the US Department of Labor.

    Boehner is Chairman of the Board of St. Johns Senior Service, a large Rochester-based non-profit that provides services to elders, including St. Johns Nursing Home and St. Johns Meadows.

    In his spare time Boehner enjoys golf, traveling to the UK to see his London-based family, and spending time with his Rochester and London grandchildren.

  • John Curran

    Lecturer
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    John Curran

    Lecturer, ,

    John Curran

  • Jeff Davis

    Program Director
    Executive Education
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    Jeff Davis

    Program Director, Executive Education, Adjunct Professor

    Jeff joined the Executive MBA program at the Saunders College of Business in October 2011. He has a variety of experiences to include 12+ years in the United States Air Force, 8 years in financial services, and 8 years in the New York Air National Guard. Between the Air Force and Financial Services, Jeff has strong experience in recruiting. He also previously worked with the Air Force ROTC at Boston University. Jeff is an Adjunct Professor at Medaille College and RIT, teaching Economics, Business Simulation, International Business and Executive Leadership. 

    Some of the places Jeff has worked or lived include the Republic of South Korea, Japan, Thailand, Philippines, China, Guam, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Bahrain. Jeff met his wife Maura while living in Boston and they have two children, Conor and Erin. The Davis family resides in Penfield. 

    Jeff earned his bachelor's degree from Medaille College and his MBA as a member of Class 17 of RIT's Executive MBA Program in 2010.

  • William Dresnack

    Associate Professor
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    William Dresnack

    Associate Professor, ,

    Bill Dresnack is a New York-licensed CPA and attorney, with advanced degrees from Binghamton University and the University at Buffalo. He currently teaches courses in financial accounting and reporting, and has previously taught auditing and individual and corporate tax, among other courses. Prior to returning to a faculty position in 2011 he served as senior associate dean of the Saunders College for three years, and was previously head of the Department of Business and Economics at SUNY Brockport. Before entering academia he was employed by Deloitte, KPMG, and a large savings & loan association. Bill has served on several boards, and is currently a member of the New York State Board for Public Accountancy. He has authored 15 research papers on such topics as accounting education, investment accounting, and derivatives policy management. He was also a founding member of the Rochester area chapter of Career Opportunities in the Accounting Profession, sponsored by the NY State Society of CPAs. He spends most of his spare time with his family, but also squeezes in time to play guitar, exercise for fun and fitness, play golf, and watch Marx Brothers and 1950's science fiction movies. He is also an avid baseball and rock and roll fan.

  • Laurie Dwyer

    Principal Lecturer, Marketing
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    Laurie Dwyer

    Principal Lecturer, Marketing, ,

    Laurie Dwyer is currently the President of Strategic Insite, LLC, a company that provides strategic marketing planning, branding and product commercialization consulting services. She serves as a full-time lecturer in the E. Philip Saunders College of Business teaching graduate and undergraduate marketing courses. Laurie was previously Vice President, Worldwide Marketing of Lightnin, SPX, a global leader in pharmaceutical mixing. Prior to SPX, Laurie served as Vice President, Marketing of Eastman Kodak Company, Health Imaging and Professional Imaging. Laurie currently serves on the Rochester American Marketing Association Board and was past President of the Board of the Rochester e-Business Association (2006-2007) and fund raiser for the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation. She received a BS from St. Lawrence University and an MBA from the Rochester Institute of Technology. 

  • John Ettlie

    Professor
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    John Ettlie

    Professor, , Professor

    John Ettlie is the Rosett Professor of Business in the Saunders College of Business, Rochester Institute of Technology. He earned his Ph.D. at Northwestern University in 1975 and has held appointments since then at the University of Illinois Chicago, De Paul University, the Industrial Technology Institute and the University of Michigan Business School.

    Dr. Ettlie has published over 60 refereed journal articles and has made over 100 professional presentations, world-wide, on the management of technological innovation. He has authored five books, including a textbook published by John Wiley & Sons (New York, 2000) titled Managing Technological Innovation.

    His current research projects include: 1) an investigation of the adoption of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems; 2) a study of technology, reliability and customization of manufacturing products with Professor Michael Johnson, University of Michigan Business School; and 3) the context of new product development (NPD) with Professor Mohan Subramaniam, Boston College and Professor Deborah Dougherty, Rutgers University.

    Current initiatives include the RIT New Product Development Forum and the Innovation Research Network. Both groups meet periodically to support the applied research agenda in the College of Business.

    Professor Ettlie has been the consultant to numerous corporations and government projects including the Saturn Corporation, Allied-Signal Corporation, Caterpillar Tractor, Inc., PACAR and Reynolds Metals. He is the associate editor of several professional journals including Decision Sciences and the Journal of Operations Management.

  • Neil Hair

    Neil Hair

    Associate Professor
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    Neil Hair

    Associate Professor, ,

    Dr Neil Hair is an Associate Professor of Marketing from the E. Philip Saunders College of Business at Rochester Institute of Technology, New York in the United States, and the Interim Executive Director of RIT's Innovative Learning Institute. He holds Chartered Marketer Status from the Chartered Institute of Marketing, a PhD from Cranfield as well as degrees from Sheffield and Cardiff Business Schools. His research and consulting activities include understanding perceptions of advertising and customer value in popular online social networks like facebook and Pinterest, personal branding in virtual space, virtual ethnography in popular worlds such as Second Life, and most recently a Cisco sponsored global study on social media use for collaboration and innovation looking at over 100 of the worlds thought leaders operating in this space. He is also passionate about his role as a facilitator having recently won RIT's highest teaching award for new faculty in 2006-07 and RIT's highest teaching award for online learning in 2007-08. Dr Hair was the 2012 recipient of RIT's highest teaching honor, The Eisenhart Award for Outstanding Teaching. Most recently his teaching interests involve developing the world's first programme on the commercialization of virtual worlds, massively open online courses and creating immersive online student learning experience.

  • Sean Hansen

    Associate Professor
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    Sean Hansen

    Associate Professor, , Zutes Fellow

    Sean Hansen is an Associate Professor of Management Information Systems at the E. Philip Saunders College of Business at Rochester Institute of Technology. He earned his Ph.D. and MBA from the Weatherhead School of Management at Case Western Reserve University. His research interests include requirements engineering, IT strategy, Web 2.0 technologies, and the application of contemporary cognitive theory to information systems development. His current research focuses on the emergence of new approaches to requirements engineering in response to advances in systems design and implementation. His research has been published in several scholarly journals, including MIS Quarterly, Information Systems Journal, Information & Organization, The Information Society, Business & Information Systems Engineering, and Artifact, as well as the edited volume, Design Requirements Engineering: A Ten-Year Perspective. He has presented his research at leading conferences, including the International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS), the Americas Conference on Information Systems (AMCIS), the INFORMS Annual Meeting, and the Annual Meeting of the Academy of Management (AoM).

  • Shal Khazanchi

    Professor
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    Shal Khazanchi

    Professor, ,

    Shal Khazanchi is an Associate Professor of Management. Her research interests include creativity and innovation, organizational justice, and work relationships. In particular, Professor Khazanchi's research has examined the contextual conditions and social processes that affect the generation and evaluation of creative ideas. She is also interested in exploring how employees develop relationships at work. Current research projects focus on environmental influence on work relationships, gender differences in creative performance, and calling among creative workers. Professor Khazanchi's work has been published in journals such as the Academy of Management Journal, Journal of Applied Psychology, Psychological Bulletin, Journal of organizational Behavior, Organization Studies, and Journal of Operations Management. Her expertise is in Organizational Behavior.

  • Marty Lawlor

    Senior Lecturer
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    Marty Lawlor

    Senior Lecturer, ,

    Marty Lawlor is a Senior Lecturer for EMBA Programs at Saunders College of Business at Rochester Institute of Technology. He has held senior management positions in corporate strategy, competitive intelligence, information research, and business development with leading telecommunications and wireless Internet firms including Nortel Networks and InfoSpace, Inc.

    Earlier, he spent more than a decade in entrepreneurial ventures, including starting up and managing a retail bookstore, and founding FYI, an early information brokerage firm. Marty has focused extensively on market and technology topics, and has conducted numerous analysis projects with a focus on actionable analysis to enable more effective decision-making. His work ranges from market assessments, competitive profiles, and business cases, to vision papers, and strategic plan recommendations. He is a member of the American Marketing Association, a board member of the International Resource Group, and was a founding member of the Innovation Roundtable hosted by Idea Connections. Current and recent projects include a market opportunity assessment for the Rochester Tooling and Machining Association, and a strategic analysis of business center survey and focus group data for the United States State Department. He has also conducted multiple strategic plan analyses under a New York State Department of Labor grant administered by the Center for Integrated Manufacturing Studies at Rochester Institute of Technology. A recent entrepreneurial venture is a pilot launch of a searchable web-based database of topical news-related media for business school faculty. Marty received his B.A. in Spanish from the University of Buffalo, and holds an M.L.S. from SUNY at Geneseo and an Executive M.B.A. from Rochester Institute of Technology.

  • Andrew Lawrence

    Lecturer
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    Andrew Lawrence

    Lecturer, ,

    Andrew Lawrence currently serves as an Adjunct Professor in the E. Philip Saunders College of Business leading Online Executive MBA teams on their 24-week management consulting Capstone projects. He joined the Online EMBA program in 2009 while serving as a Senior Management Consultant and Marketing Director at Eastman Kodak. Andrew brings more than 20 years‘ experience leading and enabling commercial businesses to achieve business goals and solve problems around the world. He is an expert in business and marketing strategy with technology strengths in imaging, content management and business process improvement. He has wealth of knowledge about multiple industries and in leading project implementations from start to finish. Andrew has a strong capability to resolve difficult issues and manage change in complex situations.

    Education

    Rochester Institute of Technology - Electrical Engineering 1994 Rochester Institute of Technology - Executive MBA 2007 

    Experience

    President, Rochester Consulting Services 2012-Present Adjunct Professor, Online EMBA Program 2009-Present Senior Management Consultant/Marketing Director 2008-2012 Solutions Business Manager 2004-2008 WW Marketing, Product Management, Solutions Architect Roles prior to 2004

    Expertise

    Management Consulting Business Research Business Strategy Product/Service/Software Commercialization Marketing Strategy Channels and Partner Development

  • Molly McGowan

    Molly McGowan

    Senior Lecturer
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    Molly McGowan

    Senior Lecturer, ,

    Molly McGowan

  • Justyna Oldziej

    Justyna Oldziej

    Adjunct Professor
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    Justyna Oldziej

    Adjunct Professor, ,

    Education

    • M.A. in from SUNY at Buffalo, 2004
  • Michael Palanski

    Associate Professor
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    Michael Palanski

    Associate Professor, , Zutes Fellow

    Michael Palanski is an Associate Professor in Management and Zutes Faculty Fellow, teaching Organizational Behavior, Leadership, and Business Ethics for undergraduate, graduate, and executive students. He is also the program director for Management and International Business. He holds a PhD in Organizational Behavior and Leadership from the State University of New York at Binghamton. He also holds a Master's Degree in Theological Studies from Covenant Theological Seminary and a B.S. in Business Economics from Grove City College. Palanski's research interests focus on leader development and the effects of leading in multiple domains: at work, in the community, and with friends and family. Prior to becoming a professor, he was a retail product manager and an online banking specialist. An avid sports fan, he enjoys interacting with students both in and out of the classroom.

  • Victor Perotti

    Victor Perotti

    Benjamin Forman Professor for Collaborative Research
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    Victor Perotti

    Benjamin Forman Professor for Collaborative Research, ,

    Education

    • Ph.D. in Cognitive and Experimental Psychology from Ohio State University, 1997
    • M.A. in Cognitive and Experimental Psychology from The Ohio State University, 1994
    • M.S. in Computer and Information Sciences from The Ohio State University, 1992
    • B.S. in Computer and Information Sciences from The Ohio State University, 1990
  • Bryan Reinicke

    Bryan Reinicke

    Associate Professor
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    Bryan Reinicke

    Associate Professor, ,

    Education

    • Ph.D. in Information System from Indiana University, 2007
    • M.B.A. in Information System from Kent State University, 1996
    • B.A. in Business Economics from College of Wooster, 1994
  • John Striebich

    Adjunct Professor
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    John Striebich

    Adjunct Professor, ,

    Alternate e-mail: striebic@mccvm.is.monroecc.edu

  • Gregory Van Laeken

    Adjunct Professor
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    Gregory Van Laeken

    Adjunct Professor, ,

    GREGORY VAN LAEKEN is a specialist in the area of international finance and derivative products, and an experienced executive in global banking and institutional investment advisement.

    Van Laeken began his career working in the New York Metropolitan area as an interbank dealer of interest rate and currency derivatives. In 2003 he moved to Zurich, Switzerland, as the vice president and global head of emerging markets trading for a prestigious private Swiss bank. In this role Van Laeken helped to develop and oversee rapid growth in the emerging market trading and sales operation for the bank's foreign exchange division.

    In 2005 Van Laeken left the financial services industry to become business manager and analyst for global operations at Rochester Institute of Technology. Van Laeken works directly with senior management across all divisions of RIT to provide leadership in the areas of business and financial planning as well as daily operations and risk management for RIT's overseas campuses.

    Additionally, Van Laeken oversees the management of RIT's short-term investment portfolio and advises senior management on the institute's debt portfolio and interest rate hedging strategies.

    Van Laeken earned a bachelor'ss degree in economics in 1994 and MBA in 2008 from RIT.

    He also serves as an adjunct faculty instructor for the E. Philip Saunders College of Business at RIT where he specializes in international finance and derivative products.