Freeman welcomes 10 to faculty for 2014-15

Dean Ira Solomon is pleased to announce the following appointments to the faculty of the A. B. Freeman School of Business at Tulane University.

C. Edward Fee joins the Freeman School as the Morton A. Aldrich Professor of Business and professor of finance. Fee, a visiting professor at the Freeman School in 2013-14, was previously the Philip J. May Endowed Professor of Finance at Michigan State University. His research interests are primarily in the areas of corporate finance and corporate governance, and include mergers and acquisitions, managerial labor markets, and the interaction of corporate financial policy with product market relationships. He has published in leading finance and accounting journals, including The Journal of Finance, Journal of Financial Economics, Review of Financial Studies, The Journal of Business, Journal of Accounting and Economics, and The Accounting Review. His article “Managers With and Without Style: Evidence using Exogenous Variation,” co-authored with Charles Hadlock and Joshua Pierce, won the 2014 Michael J. Brennan Award for the best paper in the Review of Financial Studies. Prior to beginning his academic career, Fee traded commodity options and futures. He has an MBA from Tulane University and received his PhD from the University of Florida.

Ganapathi (Gans) Narayanamoorthy, who joins the faculty as associate professor of accounting, comes to the Freeman School from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he served as an assistant professor of accountancy. He also served as an assistant professor at Yale School of Management. Narayanamoorthy’s research focuses on the capital markets area in accounting, with particular emphasis on market efficiency and litigation risk. He is also a bank accounting expert. Narayanamoorthy has published extensively in the top journals in accounting, including the Journal of Accounting Research, Journal of Accounting and Economics, Contemporary Accounting Research, and Review of Accounting Studies. Prior to entering academia, Narayanamoorthy was an investment banker managing public offerings of large corporations, including Fortune 500 companies. He received his bachelor’s degree from the Indian Institute of Technology in Kanpur, India, his MBA from the Indian Institute of Management in Ahmedabad, India, and his PhD from the University of Rochester.

Assistant Professor of Accounting Adrienna Huffman comes to the Freeman School from the University of Utah, where she recently completed her PhD. Huffman’s research focuses on capital markets, with an emphasis in valuation and financial reporting. Her dissertation explores the implications of asset measurement attributes for firm valuation. At Utah, Huffman’s dissertation was granted the competitively-awarded, university-wide Marriner S. Eccles Research Fellowship in Political Economy for originality, creativity and potential for research success. Prior to her academic career, Huffman worked for the U.S. Department of Commerce as a statistician at the Census Bureau. She earned her undergraduate degree with honors in economics from Washington University in St. Louis.

Nishad Kapadia, who joins the faculty as assistant professor of finance, comes to the Freeman School from the Jones Graduate School of Management at Rice University, where he served as an assistant professor of finance. Kapadia’s research is focused on empirical asset pricing and has appeared in the Journal of Financial Economics. Kapadia has also worked with KPMG Consulting in London and Bombay on projects that included business strategy, technology selection and risk management for financial services firms. He received his bachelor’s degree from St. Xavier’s College in Bombay, his MBA from the Indian Institute of Management in Bangalore, India, and his PhD from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Osman Kazan joins the Freeman School’s tenure-track faculty as an assistant professor of management science after serving as a visiting professor in 2013-14. Kazan received his PhD in 2013 from the University of Texas at Dallas, where he specialized in electricity pricing and retail power management. His research explores decision making associated with energy issues such as smart grids and renewables, and he often uses empirical methods to estimate power generation costs and map consumers’ demand patterns through behavioral experiments. Prior to beginning his academic career, Kazan worked as a senior management consultant for technology companies including Sabre and Hewlett-Packard. He holds a bachelor’s degree from Middle East Technical University in Ankara, Turkey, and a master’s degree in operations research from the State University of New York at Buffalo.

Assistant Professor of Finance Zeigham Khokher joins the tenure-track faculty after serving as a visiting professor in 2013-14. His research interests include energy finance, with an emphasis on reduced form and structural models. Prior to joining the Freeman School, he served as a visiting faculty member at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the Securities and Exchange Commission. As an assistant professor at Western University’s Ivey Business School, Khokher received numerous teaching awards. He is the co-author of “Exhaustible Resource Price Dynamics,” which was published in the Journal of Finance. Khokher earned a BBA (Finance), BA (Mathematics), MS (Mathematical Statistics) and PhD (Finance) from the University of Texas at Austin.

Joon Ro, assistant professor of marketing, received his PhD from the University of Texas at Austin in 2014. His research uses empirical models to evaluate the effectiveness of marketing strategies and make policy recommendations, especially in creative industries such as movies and video games. Ro’s dissertation focused on firms’ dynamic pricing strategies under the presence of used goods markets and consumers’ dynamic product adoption. He has a BA and MA in economics from Sogang University in Seoul, South Korea, and an MS in economics from the University of Texas at Austin.

Assistant Professor of Management Science Claire Senot comes to the Freeman School from the Fisher College of Business at Ohio State University, where she recently received her PhD. Senot’s research interests include health care operations, quality management and organizational learning. Her paper “Process Management Impact on Clinical and Experiential Quality: Managing Tensions between Safe and Patient-Centered Health Care,” published in the Manufacturing & Service Operations Management (M&SOM) journal, received the INFORMS 2012 Industry Studies Best Paper Award. Prior to beginning her academic career, Senot worked in operations management in Sydney and Chicago. She holds a master’s degree from Audencia Graduate School of Management in France and an MBA from Ohio State University.

Sherif Ebrahim joins the Freeman School as a lecturer in strategy and innovation and director of entrepreneurship and innovation education with the Levy Rosenblum Institute for Entrepreneurship. Ebrahim had served as an adjunct professor of strategy and innovation at the Freeman School for the past several years. Ebrahim is president & CEO of Strategic Management Group and managing partner of SMG Capital. He is a board certified health care executive, a Fellow of the American College of Healthcare Executives, an NAPH Managed Care Public Policy & Finance Fellow from New York University, and a Health Systems Management Fellow from Tulane University and the state of Louisiana.

Anu Varadharajan joins the Freeman School as a lecturer in accounting and associate director of the Master of Accounting program. She comes to the Freeman School from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where she served as a lecturer in accountancy and where she consistently appeared on the List of Teachers Ranked as Excellent. Prior to beginning her academic career, Varadharajan spent nine years with PricewaterhouseCoopers as a tax manager and as regional finance director for PwC’s Northeast Region. She holds a bachelor’s degree from the National University of Singapore, an MBA from the University of Rochester, and is a member of the Association of Certified Chartered Accountants (ACCA). Varadharajan is also an entrepreneur with her own line of natural, organic, handcrafted skin care products.

In addition to the tenured/tenure track and lecturer appointments, Dean Solomon also named three professors to one-year visiting appointments. Steven Wei Ho was appointed visiting assistant professor of finance, Srini Krishnamoorthy was appointed visiting assistant professor of management science, and Debjeet Pradhan was appointed visiting assistant professor of accounting.

“An outstanding faculty is the foundation of every great business school, and this group of scholars and educators is truly outstanding,” said Dean Solomon. “I’m very happy to welcome them to the Freeman School and Tulane University.”