School Notes: School of Management
May/June 2013

Professor recognized for contributions to consumer psychology

The Society for Consumer Psychology has awarded Ravi Dhar, the George Rogers Clark Professor of Management and Marketing and director of the Center for Customer Insights at Yale SOM, its Distinguished Scientific Accomplishment Award, which is given annually to a scholar who has made “outstanding lifelong research contributions to the field of consumer psychology.” Dhar joined the Yale SOM faculty in 1992 and has been instrumental in establishing the Center for Customer Insights, a research center that facilitates interaction between marketing executives and academic scholars who share an underlying interest in understanding customer behavior and marketplace dynamics.

MBA students in San Francisco

More than 100 MBA students participated in Yale SOM’s annual San Francisco Job Trek over the holiday break. Student clubs coordinated visits to 42 companies spanning ten industries during the weeklong excursion, including Google, IDEO, Tesla, Visa, eBay, Plug and Play Tech Center, DBL Investors, and the Edible Schoolyard. 

An alumni event panel forum titled “Globalization and Career” capped the week. Panelists included Yale SOM alumni Laszlo Bock ’99MBA, senior vice president for people operations at Google; Tolan Steele ’97MES, ’97MPPM, head of risk management for the Asia Pacific, Central and Eastern Europe, Middle East, and Africa regions at Visa; Heather Corcoran ’94MBA, consultant and executive coach at Next Step Partners; and Sudeshna Basu ’98MBA, director of development at Electronic Arts.

Webinar features SOM alumni

Yale SOM hosted a live webinar on February 27 titled “Does the Past Help Us Predict the Future of Financial Markets?” Roger Ibbotson, professor in the practice of finance, moderated the discussion and was joined by Karl Essig ’80MBA, a partner at the financial advisory and asset management firm AgFe, and Andrew Golden ’89MPPM, president of the Princeton University Investment Company. Discussion centered on whether the financial crisis of 2008 has changed the markets for good. Speakers examined the increasing complexity of financial instruments and the growing globalization of markets. Questions included whether there will be major shifts in the long-term returns and volatility of different asset classes and what kind of long-term consequences will result from automated trading, globalization, and other macro-trends.