Executive Online MBA Academics

Prior to joining the Goizueta Business School faculty, Professor Thomas held positions at the University of Illinois, the Graduate School of Business at Columbia University, and the Stern School of Business at NYU. His research focuses on how technological and social forces create and sustain the competitive advantage of firms. He has published three books, with the most recent one examining the failure of Japanese industrial policy for pharmaceuticals. His articles have appeared in the Rand Journal of Economics, the Journal of Law and Economics, the Strategic Journal of Management, Management Science, and the Quarterly Journal of Economics.

Professor Sacks focuses on strategic leadership, aligning the leadership skills of employees with an organization’s culture in order to best execute strategy. As such, his teaching spreads across topics such as leadership development, organizational management, and strategic thinking. Some of Professor Sacks’s current and previous clients include Microsoft, Intercontinental Hotels Group (IHG), Toyota, Delta Air Lines, Turner Broadcasting Services (TBS), UPS, the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, the American Bankers Association, Alston & Bird, King & Spalding, Mailchimp, and Spanx.

Prior to joining the faculty at Emory in 2015, Professor Rackliffe held a full-time faculty position at Georgia State University, and served as Chief Financial Officer for the Board of Regents of the University System of Georgia. Along with her JD, she has a degree in journalism, an undergraduate degree in business, and an MBA. She is a Certified Public Accountant and a member of the bar.

Professor Rodríguez-Vilá is currently leading research into how brands communicate societal benefits in social media and into the marketplace practices of antiracist brands. He also studies how firms are evolving their marketing capabilities in order to compete in technology led market environments. His more recent work entitled “Is Your Marketing Organization Ready for What’s Next?” was published in the December 2020 edition of Harvard Business Review. Prior to his career in academia, Rodríguez-Vilá held leadership positions in marketing at The Coca‐Cola Company, including serving as the Global Vice-President of Integrated Marketing Communications and Integrated Marketing Director for Coca-Cola China. He has been selected as Core Professor of the Year six times during his eight years teaching.

Professor Mian offers expertise in the areas of corporate finance, investments and international finance, corporate control, and risk management. His current research focuses on choice of financial reporting methods, examination of corporate trade credit policy, market for corporate control, and corporate use of derivatives. His work has been published in Financial Management, Journal of Accounting and Economics, Journal of Financial Engineering, Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Journal of Financial Research, Journal of Corporate Finance, Journal of Applied Corporate Finance, and Journal of Finance.

Professor Stuk has had a long history of managing teams in applying diverse techniques to the analysis of a wide range of business and technical situations. His early work at the Georgia Tech Research Institute involved innovative application of evolving technology with state of the art spectral analysis of extensive data for use in pattern detection. This led to the work in his PhD dissertation on man-in-the-loop decision support systems. Stuk's research interests are focused around the application of innovative modeling techniques to real world problems. Recent activity has been application of Synthetic Neural Network to predict consumer behavior. When he joined Goizueta, he was tasked with building a program for the next century, including the incorporation of the study and use of technology in the classroom and in business, and he has done just that.

Professor Stuk has had a long history of managing teams in applying diverse techniques to the analysis of a wide range of business and technical situations. His early work at the Georgia Tech Research Institute involved innovative application of evolving technology with state of the art spectral analysis of extensive data for use in pattern detection. This led to the work in his PhD dissertation on man-in-the-loop decision support systems. Stuk's research interests are focused around the application of innovative modeling techniques to real world problems. Recent activity has been application of Synthetic Neural Network to predict consumer behavior. When he joined Goizueta, he was tasked with building a program for the next century, including the incorporation of the study and use of technology in the classroom and in business, and he has done just that.

Professor Smith is considered a specialist in the areas of labor economics, pricing, film finance, sports economics and finance, and the economics of the entertainment and health care industries. Described as a “jack of all trades and master of them all,” he’s one of Goizueta Business School’s most sought-after experts. Smith brings his research on micro- and macro-economics into the classroom; considered timely and insightful, his perspective has been published by local outlets and international publications alike, including Time. He regularly appears as a financial expert on television and radio—CNN, NPR, and The Huffington Post to name a few—and is frequently quoted in the press regarding trends in unemployment, inflation, trade, and economics-driven topics. An energetic and enthusiastic professor, Smith eschews narrow definitions of leadership. Through forging genuine connections with participants, Smith helps them expand their thinking and develop a more holistic approach to business that, in turn, enhances their leadership acumen and results in greater success.

Professor Kuhnert teaches leadership, organizational change and professional ethics, his research focusing on how leaders cognitively, interpersonally, and emotionally develop over the course of their lives. His most recent work includes using artificial intelligence to scale expert decision making. He has been recognized with numerous awards for teaching and research—as well as having earned the Hammer Award from Vice President Al Gore for outstanding contributions to the federal government—and has served as a consultant and executive educator with many notable organizations, including the U.S. Department of Treasury, Siemens, the Jet Propulsion Lab, the Federal Reserve, Carnival Cruise Line, and the American Cancer Society. His latest book is titled “The Map: Finding Your Path to Effectiveness in Leadership, Life, and Legacy”.

After 15 years with Accenture, where she served as Director of Talent and Organization Offering Development, Professor Segall joined Goizueta Business School in 2015 as the Associate Dean for Goizueta IMPACT, the experiential learning program in which student teams provide consulting services to a real-life client. She delivers expertise in the areas of business strategy, talent strategy, professional development, and management practice. She earned her undergraduate degree from Northwestern University and her MBA from Goizueta.

Drawing on 38 years in the United States military—11 of which were spent in countries as far-flung as Egypt, Haiti, Germany, and Pakistan—Lieutenant General (Ret) P.K. (Ken) Keen manages Goizueta’s school-wide leadership development program for the MBA programs, which includes teaching crisis leadership, developing high performing teams, implementing a Coaching Fellows Program, and coaching in the Advanced Leadership Academy. Keen also serves as the President of PKKEEN Consulting, where he has been an executive coach for over 100 senior military and business executives. His career has given him extensive leadership experience of conventional and special operations units as well as the interagency environment, all of which he brings to bear in his role at Goizueta.