Freeman welcomes nine to faculty for 2015-16

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

Assistant Professor of Accounting Hila Fogel-Yaari joins the Freeman School from the University of Toronto, where she is nearing the completion of her PhD in accounting. Her research focuses on corporate disclosure quality and its economic consequences, with an emphasis on the relation between disclosure quality and innovation. Prior to beginning her doctoral studies, Fogel-Yaari earned an MS in finance and accounting from Tel-Aviv University while working full time in market risk management. She also has degrees in financial engineering, physics, electrical engineering and law.

Assistant Professor of Finance Oleg Gredil comes to the Freeman School from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he received both his PhD and MBA with concentration in finance. His research focuses on financial intermediation, with an emphasis on private equity, venture capital and hedge funds, and he currently has articles under review at Journal of Finance and Review of Financial Studies. Prior to pursuing graduate studies, Gredil worked for six years as an investment banking professional and portfolio manager.

Assistant Professor of Finance William Grieser recently completed his PhD in finance at Michigan State University. His research focuses on corporate finance, with an emphasis on intangible investments, financial constraints and corporate credit ratings. Prior to joining the Freeman School, Grieser spent two years as a visiting PhD student at the University of Texas at Austin. He received bachelor’s degrees from Texas State University in applied mathematics and finance.

Assistant Professor of Marketing John Healey received his PhD from the University of Maryland and his BA, MS and MBA from the University of Florida. His research uses econometric methods to analyze how marketing affects firm performance. Specifically, he researches the reaction of financial markets to firm marketing communications, including firm social media content and sponsorship agreements. He is also interested in platform markets. Healey’s research on how the characteristics of an installed base of consumers impact content sales within the video game market has been accepted for publication by the International Journal of Research in Marketing.

Assistant Professor of Finance Amanda Heitz comes to the Freeman School from the University of Minnesota’s Carlson School of Management, where she earned her PhD in finance. Her research focuses on credit markets, banking and financial intermediation, with a particular focus in international finance. Heitz’s dissertation explores the way varying types of lender rights across countries affect borrower decision-making. She has a BS in finance, an MS in applied mathematics and an MS in statistics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Assistant Professor of Finance Candace Jens joins the Freeman School’s tenure-track faculty as an assistant professor after having served as a visiting assistant professor from 2013 to 2015. She received her PhD from the University of Rochester in 2013. Jens’ research focuses on the intersection of politics, finance and equity issuances, and her dissertation explores how firms alter their investment behavior due to uncertainty created by elections. She has a bachelor’s degree in political science from Niagara University.

Assistant Professor of Management Rajat Khanna received his PhD from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and his undergraduate degree from the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi. Khanna’s research focuses on dynamic processes in complex networks. Specifically, he explores how various topological properties of networks influence strategic outcomes such as productivity, innovation and knowledge creation. His dissertation examines relatedness of failures in firms’ knowledge base and how failures of varying degree of relatedness can lead to heterogeneous learning outcomes. Prior to beginning his doctoral studies, Khanna spent five years working in business analytics and consulting.

Assistant Professor of Management Shuhua Sun comes to the Freeman School from Maastricht University School of Business and Economics, where he supervised doctoral and master’s thesis students. His research interests include organizational behavior and the psychology of entrepreneurship, and his current research focuses on motivational self-regulation, proactive behavior and work-family conflict. Sun’s research has appeared in leading management journals, including the Journal of Applied Psychology and Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes. He received his PhD from National University of Singapore.

Assistant Professor of Management Science Yinliang (Ricky) Tan joins the Freeman School from the University of Florida, where he recently received his PhD in business administration. He also holds a master’s degree in industrial engineering from the University of Florida and a bachelor’s degree from Tongji University in China. His research interests include management of technology, the interface between operations and information systems, and business analytics. His paper “The Agency Model in the Electronic Publishing Industry” was selected as best student paper at the 2014 Annual Meeting of the Decision Sciences Institute.

In addition to the nine tenure-track faculty members, the Freeman School also welcomed 15 visiting assistant professors. Joining the Freeman School are Charan Bagga, marketing; Scott Cederburg, finance; Moumita Das, marketing; Robert Grasser, accounting; Mazhar Islam, management; Charles Kang, marketing; Kyeong Hun "Kyle" Lee, finance; Serena Loftus, accounting; Yunfang Lu; accounting; Shaohua Lu, management; Seoyeon "Katie" Moon, finance; Aleksandra Rebeka, management; Sakya Sarkar, finance, Rama Subramaniam, marketing; and Gwinyai Utete, finance.

“Since we began our faculty enhancement initiative in 2012, we’ve grown our tenure-system faculty by almost 60 percent, a remarkable accomplishment given the highly competitive employment market in business education,” said Dean Solomon. “These outstanding scholars and educators will contribute greatly to our efforts to build a world-class business school, and I couldn’t be happier to welcome them to the Freeman School.”