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Scoring Fellows
Beyond Grey Pinstripes PhD Scoring Fellows
For in-depth review of data submitted by schools participating in the Beyond Grey Pinstripes survey, the Aspen Institute uses a team of PhD Scoring Fellows, selected in a competitive process, from leading institutions around the world. Scoring Fellows are carefully trained on survey protocol and scoring. In any review by Scoring Fellows, scoring is done “blindly” (to the extent possible, without school or faculty names associated with the data) and in pairs. This is done to maintain scoring consistency and minimize possible biases. For more information about the methodology of Beyond Grey Pinstripes, visit our methodology page.
2010-2011 Scoring Fellow Team:
"Being able to see what different schools around the world are teaching and to see how pervasive the social value creation curriculum is at some institutions was very eye opening. I really enjoyed interacting and having discussions with my working partner. We see the world quite differently and discussing the various social impact syllabi was very rewarding."
Scott Benjamin
Scott Benjamin is currently finishing his third year in the Strategy/Entrepreneurship doctoral program at the University of Maryland. His dissertation will be on the effects of non-market externalities on the adoption of wind energy in the United States. Scott's research on wind adoption has been presented at major management conferences in Rome, Chicago, Washington DC, New York City, Atlanta and Miami. Before returning to academia, Scott was most recently a Principal at Signature Properties, a multifamily residential development company in Washington, DC. Signature Properties designed and entitled the first urban redeveloped LEED certified Silver 200-unit apartment project in Baltimore City. Scott also championed the design and building of a series of energy efficient green housing residential developments. Prior to launching this venture, Scott was the CEO of Health & Radiological Seminars, Inc. He earned a Masters of Business Administration at the University of Maryland in 2001 and has a Bachelor in Business Administration from the University of Miami.
"I am amazed and encouraged at not only the sheer volume of MBA work on social and environmental impact being done across the world, but also the quality of this work. There are some amazingly innovative courses offered out there, driving a central message that business is a positive source for change."
Jonathan Bundy
Jonathan Bundy is a second year Ph.D. student in strategic management at the University of Georgia. He completed an MBA in public policy and planning from the University of New Mexico, where he also earned a BA in political science. Jonathan's research focuses on strategic implications of social issues in management, with emphasis on three related areas: (i) corporate governance, (ii) corporate communication, social evaluations, and cognition, and (iii) corporate political activity and external stakeholder engagement. His research has been presented at the annual meetings of the Academy of Management and Strategic Management Society. Jonathan currently teaches business ethics, and has also been instructor of record for courses on leadership and organizational change and development.
"It was a great learning experience to score the coursework and research because I learned about what all these different schools are doing and I was part of a methodology that arrived at a ranking based on certain criteria. As someone going into teaching, seeing these different approaches to my topics of study was very interesting."
Elise Perrault Crawford
Elise Perrault Crawford is a PhD candidate in Business Strategy and Social Issues in Management at Bentley University. Her research interests center on stakeholder management, more specifically in the ways in which firms respond to stakeholder demands from a contingency approach, and the communication strategies that firms use to manage their relationships with stakeholders on the issue of the natural environment. She currently teaches Strategic Management, and Organizations and the Environment. Elise also holds an MBA from McGill University.
"The interesting courses to me were those that took a systems perspective and looked at the whole picture from a business perspective. I think the "new ways" involve bringing the issues into core courses, rather than having a course that isn't required that really gets into the issues. Having them in core courses allows students to be exposed to these important issues repeatedly and in smaller doses, so that those who wouldn't take an elective still have exposure to the issues."
Jessica Dillabough
Jessica is a fourth year PhD candidate at the University of Calgary's Haskayne School of Business. Her PhD is in Strategy with a concentration in Energy Management and Sustainable Development. She earned her BA from Mercyhurst College in Erie, Pennsylvania and her MBA from Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. She then spent time working in the oil and gas industry in Alberta before pursuing her PhD. Her dissertation research focuses on how industry, regulators, industry groups, and non-government organizations interact and work to create change in environmental practices and regulations in Alberta's oil sands industry. Her broader research interests lie in environmental management and strategy.
"The most rewarding part of being a Scoring Fellow is the network and fellowship that you gain by being together with the other fellows. The most exciting surprise in the data was that CSR has gained so much relevance across business studies. From biology to healthcare, classical economy to communication - CSR is everywhere."
Linne Lauesen
Linne Lausen is a PhD-Fellow at Copenhagen Business School (CBS), Dep. of Intercultural Communication and Management, Centre for Corporate Social Responsibility. Her research interests lie within CSR in scientific, technical business areas combined with the political aspects of CSR. Her PhD project revolves around how public policies on CSR activities affect the organization and work in municipality-owned utilities in water and wastewater (and partly also waste). Her focus is mainly on public companies use CSR in technical works (pipeline rehabilitations or replacements). Using quantitative (questionnaire survey data collection from case studies) and qualitative methods (interviews and observations in companies and case studies), Linne examines how the relationships between public policy and publicly owned companies influence CSR in the municipally owned utilities. Her case studies include approx. 10 construction works of pipelines in Denmark, Norway and Sweden and their impacts on climate, environment, safety and other societal impacts. This project, comparing traditional open-cut works and trenchless (No-Dig) construction methods, involves a quantitative survey of 650 Scandinavian managers from water- and wastewater utilities, entrepreneurs and consulting companies in the matter of involvement of CSR and opportunities and barriers within their work and livelihood.
"It was interesting to see the trends in the Beyond Grey Pinstripes data. I was excited to see the extent to which some universities adopted the importance of BGP themes, and would love to do a follow-up research project on Base of the Pyramid courses."
Moriah Meyskens
Moriah Meyskens is a Visiting Professor at the University of San Diego and a visiting scholar at Babson College. She recently completed post-doctoral research at Babson College where she worked with the United States Global Entrepreneurship Monitor team. Her areas of interest lie in Entrepreneurship, Strategy and International Business with a particular focus on social entrepreneurship, bottom of the pyramid, corporate social responsibility, green-techs, business planning and partnership research. Moriah has presented her work at numerous conferences including the Academy of Management, Babson, and USASBE. She has also co-organized several annual professional development workshops at AOM on Content Analysis and Poverty Alleviation Research. Moriah has published peer-reviewed articles in Entrepreneurship Theory & Practice, Entrepreneurship & Regional Development, International Journal of Human Resource Management, Small Business Economics and the Journal of Business Ethics. Moriah teaches both Management & Entrepreneurship courses and also has over eight years of professional experience in finance and microfinance. Moriah holds a PhD from the Department of Management & International Business at Florida International University. Her dissertation was on the role of partnerships in nascent social ventures. Moriah completed her bachelor's degree in Economics & Latin American Studies at UCLA and her MBA in Management & Entrepreneurship at NYU. She also speaks Spanish and Portuguese fluently.
"It's inspiring to see the innovative ways that sustainability issues are being taught both inside and outside of the classroom through real-world experiences. For scoring fellows, these examples can become the source of a lot of ideas for improving our own courses in the future."
Matthew Murphy
Matthew Murphy is a third-year PhD student studying in the Social Innovation Institute at ESADE Business School in Barcelona, Spain. His research focuses on cross-sector collaborations in emerging economies; where alliances between firms and civil-society organizations form to address complex sustainability issues. Matthew has over ten years of experience in international business and is a co-founder and board member of Value Added in Africa – a non-profit social enterprise that promotes quality job creation in Africa by working with African processing companies and manufacturers to market their products in Europe.
"Reviewing papers and syllabi as a Beyond Grey Pinstripes Scoring Fellow was very informative. The review of research gave me an idea of the state of the field, and some interesting articles to read, some of which I looked at for my own research."
Akwasi Opoku-Dakwa
Akwasi Opoku-Dakwa is a first year doctoral student in Organization Management at the Rutgers Business School in Newark, New Jersey. His interests include Culture and Organizations, Motivation Theory, and developing countries. Akwasi hails from Ghana, has an MBA from IMD in Switzerland and spent 5 years working as a brand manager with Procter & Gamble in South Africa. His current research projects involve looking at how culture influences the impressions people seek to create in competitive situations, and investigating how corporate social responsibility impacts employees.
"It is my hope that students, academics, and businesses use the BGP survey findings to address various sustainability and social responsibility concerns that pertain to them in their particular realms (e.g. in case of companies finding professionals from most sustainability-oriented programs, or students seeking out such programs for further study). I found it rewarding to contribute to a meaningful project that focused on the issues I care about."
Yasanthi Perera
Yasanthi Perera is a PhD Candidate at New Mexico State University. Originally from Sri Lanka, she was educated in Kenya and Malawi and came to the US to pursue an undergraduate degree at Iowa State University. Prior to embarking on a doctorate in Management, she earned a Master of Science at North Carolina State University and an MBA at New Mexico State University. Yasanthi's broad research interests encompass individual and organizational-level social responsibility and how business can be a force for positive social impact beyond providing jobs, goods, and services. Her dissertation examines how the different ways in which for-profit social enterprises integrate their social and economic components affect the total value creation process. Yasanthi's other research includes work on sustainability education, assessing value co-creation, and the influence of social media on consumer activism and firms' practices. Her work has been presented at numerous conferences and published in journals.
"The Beyond Grey Pinstripes survey gave me a wonderful overview of state-of-the-art course content and teaching methods pertaining to subject areas of my interest. The most rewarding part of scoring was the collaboration with my scoring partner and discussing the implications of the course work and research material."
Raja Singaram
Raja Singaram is a doctoral candidate in Entrepreneurship and Innovation from Nikos, School of Management and Governance of the University of Twente in the Netherlands. He also works as a researcher at VentureLab Twente, an incubator/business accelerator run by Nikos. His research focus is on entrepreneurial co-creation and decision making in clean technology based start-up companies. The first part of his research will focus on electric vehicles and the commercialization of charging spots for them in different geographies. Raja holds a MS degree in management from the University of Texas at Dallas. He is also involved in the clean technology initiatives from the Twente region of the Netherlands.
"BGP scoring is a unique opportunity to explore how sustainability is interwoven among different disciplines. Scoring has made me interested in exploring more about the trends I noticed for my own research topic."
Ravi Subramanian
Ravi Subramaniam is a PhD student at Maharishi University of Management, Fairfield, Iowa. He was born and raised in India, currently residing in Toronto, Canada. He carries more than a decade of international teaching experience. He is specialized in accounting and business ethics subjects. Currently pursuing his doctoral research in the field of professional ethics education and its trend, he has keen interest in exploring professionals like auditor's and accountant's ethical behavior. He has coauthored chapters and articles with his supervisor on business ethics topics.
"Most of the courses have embedded sustainability and social impact into the main content of the course, and I think that is the right way to teach these courses."
Shakir Ullah
Shakir Ullah is currently a part-time lecturer and PhD scholar in the field of banking and finance at the University of Southampton, UK. He is also associated with the Institute of Management Sciences, Pakistan, as a lecturer. He earned his Master's in Finance and Strategic Management from the KDI School of Public Policy and Management, South Korea, in addition to his MBA in Human Resources and BA in Mathematics from the University of Peshawar, Pakistan. Shakir previously worked with Euromonitor International, London and Singapore, where he worked on market research projects for a number of companies including, Microsoft, Honda, Walt Disney, MasterCard etc. He also worked as a lecturer at Preston University, Pakistan.
"As a doctorate student, it's been an amazing experience to review the courses and research articles by outstanding professors from all over the world. Now I am able to help Universities to design their Green MBA, MBA in sustainability or Bachelor degree in the same area."
Leila Zolfaghari
Leila Zolfaghari is in the Doctorate program at Marshal Goldsmith School of Management in San Diego, where her research focuses on Risk Management and Sustainability in the Bio-Tech Industry. Her background in Biomedical Engineering, Industrial Engineering and Mathematics encouraged her to choose this topic for her dissertation. Before starting the Doctorate, Leila was working in management consulting companies in her country and did several strategic planning and risk assessments for big manufacturers. She also worked for the Green team on her campus and did many sustainable and green projects besides teaching in the same area and finance.
Beyond Grey Pinstripes 2011-2012 Global Report
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