IBI Faculty Advisory Board

Asim M. Ansari, William T. Dillard Professor of Marketing

Professor Ansari's research address customer relationship management, customization of marketing activities and product recommendations over the Internet, Social networks modeling and Bayesian modeling of consumer actions. Prior to joining Columbia in 1996, Ansari was with the university of British Columbia, Canada. He is the recipient of the Dean's Award for Teaching Excellence (2009).

Sheena Iyengar, S.T. Lee Professor of Business

Professor Iyengar has taught courses in leadership and entrepreneurial creativity. Her research addresses the implications of offering people, whether they be employees or consumers, choices. She has examined choice in a multitude of contexts ranging from employee motivation and performance in a global organization, Citigroup, to chocolate displays at Godiva, to the magazine aisles of supermarkets, and to mutual fund options in retirement benefit plans. Professor Iyengar received the Presidential Early Career Award for her ongoing work in examining cultural, individual, and situational factors that influence people's choice-making preferences and behaviors.

Gita Johar, Faculty Director, India Business Initiative; Meyer Feldberg Professor of Business, Marketing

Gita Johar (PhD: NYU; MBA: Indian Institute of Management) has been on the faculty of Columbia Business School since 1992 and is currently the Senior Vice Dean and Meyer Feldberg Professor of Business. Professor Johar's expertise lies in consumer psychology, focusing on how consumers react to marketing efforts, especially advertising, promotions and sponsorship. She also examines the influence of consumer self-control and perceptions of control on decision making and consumption. This research has implications for the design of effective communication strategies.

Bruce Kogut, Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. Professor of Leadership and Ethics

Teaching and research interest Bruce Kogut is the Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. Professor of Leadership and Ethics and Director of the Sanford C. Bernstein Center for Leadership and Ethics at Columbia Business School. He teaches the core courses in strategy and in governance and an elective on "The Future of Finance" for the MBAs and EMBA and has taught in executive programs in the US, Europe, and China. His current research focuses on governance and corporate compensation, social capital markets and social metrics , and the 'political color of boards,' financed by the National Science Foundation in the area of sociology and computational social science. In cooperation with IFMR in Chennai, colleagues and he are researching the contributions of prosocial attitudes of employees and incentives on the productivity of microfinance institutions.

Arvind Panagariya, Jagdish Bhagwati Professor of Indian Political Economy in the Department of International and Public Affairs and of Economics

Arvind Panagariya is a professor of economics & Jagdish Bhagwati Professor of Indian Political Economy at Columbia University and a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution.  In the past, he has been the Chief Economist of the Asian Development Bank and a Professor of Economics and Co-director, Center for International Economics, University of Maryland at College Park.  He has also worked for the World Bank, IMF, WTO, and UNCTAD in various capacities.  He holds a Ph.D. degree in Economics from Princeton University.

Panagariya has written or edited eleven books.  His latest book, Why Growth Matters: How Economic Growth in India Reduced Poverty and Lessons for Other Developing Countries (2013, Oxford University Press), won the George S. Eccles Prize for Excellence in Economic Writing. His previous book, India: The Emerging Giant, was described as the ‘definitive book on the Indian economy’ by Fareed Zakaria and ‘a tour de horizon and a tour de force’ by Jagdish Bhagwati.  Other books include The Economics of Preferential Trade Agreements, 1996, AEI Press (with Jagdish Bhagwati) and Lectures on International Trade, 1998, MIT Press (with J. Bhagwati and T.N. Srinivasan).

Panagariya is currently an editor of the India Policy Forum, a journal modeled on the Brookings Papers on Economic Activity and jointly published by the Brookings Institution, Washington DC and the National Council on Applied Economic Research, New Delhi.  His technical papers have appeared in the American Economic Review, Quarterly journal of Economics, Review of Economic Studies, Journal of International Economics, and International Economic Review while his policy papers have appeared in the Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, World Economy, Journal of International Affairs and Finance and Development.

Panagariya writes a monthly column in the Economic Times, India’s top financial daily.  He has also written guest columns in the Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, Hindu, India Today and Outlook.  He has appeared on numerous national and foreign television channels.

Medini R. Singh, Senior Lecturer in Discipline in Business; Decision, Risk, and Operations

Professor Singh comes to Columbia from the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth. At Tuck, Singh taught the MBA core course in operations management for the last six years. He has also taught MBA electives on time-based competition and simulation modeling. Singh has also taught in the Department of Industrial and Operations Engineering at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, where he won the 1991 Teacher of the Year Award. His research interests are in the areas of modeling, analysis and optimization of manufacturing and service systems. His current research focuses on the impact of demand and supply uncertainties on the performance of supply chains. Singh has published numerous articles on the impact of yield, demand and supply uncertainties on the performance of manufacturing systems. He has also consulted for several Fortune 500 companies.

Suresh Sundaresan, Robert W. Lear Professor of Finance and Economics

Past/Present Industry Positions: Senior Strategist, Lehman Brothers, Fixed Income Trading/Research (1987‐1988), Consultant to Morgan Stanley Fixed Income Asset Management (2000‐2001), Director of Research, Capula Investment Management, (a Hedge fund in fixed income area), London, (Year 2009). Currently serves as a board member of Capula Investment Management Company, London.

Past Policy Positions: Resident Scholar at the New York Fed, Member of Bond Markets Advisory Committee to the US Treasury, Visiting Scholar at the IMF, Member of Financial Markets Round Table at the New York Fed.

Publications: Journal of Finance, Journal of Financial Economics, Review of Financial Studies, Journal of Political Economy, American Economic Review, European Economic Review, etc.

Expert Witness: Testified at Enron trial in Houston. Testified on matters relating to credit default swaps, cerivatives, hedge books, corporate credit risk management, bankruptcies, etc.

Current Research: Repo auctions, liquidity provision by central banks, risk management of hedge funds, bank contingent capital, theories of capital structure, corporate cash/liquidity management, growth options, credit risk, and swaps.

Hitendra Wadhwa, Professor of Professional Practice, Marketing

Professor Wadhwa teaches MBA and Executive Education courses on Personal Leadership, Strategy Consulting Skills and Marketing Strategy. He also consults to corporations and does executive training on these topics. His recent clients include American Express, Best Buy, Estee Lauder, Godrej Group, JP Morgan Chase, and Pfizer. He is the founder of the Institute for Personal Leadership, which provides training on personal leadership to individuals and corporations. He is the Director of E-Learning at Columbia Business School, and has launched the school's first online programs for global audiences: Personal Leadership (Online) and Driving Strategic Impact: Mastering the Skills of Strategy Consulting (Online). Professor Wadhwa is the recipient of the 2012 Dean's Award for Teaching Excellence, the 2007 Lear Award for Distinguished Service to Students and the 2007 Most Engaging and Dynamic Professor Award by the Marketing Association of Columbia.

Shang-Jin Wei, N.T. Wang Professor of Chinese Business and Economy

Shang-Jin Wei has been Professor of Finance and Economics and N.T. Wang Chair in Chinese Business and Economy at Columbia University's Graduate School of Business since 2007. He is also Director for the National Bureau of Economic Research's Working Group on the Chinese Economy and a Research Fellow at the Center for Economic Policy Research (Europe). Before joining Columbia University, he had had the positions of Assistant Director, Chief of Trade and Investment Division, Chief of Mission to Myanmar (Burma) at the International Monetary Fund, the New Century Chair Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution, and Associate Professor at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government. He has undertaken consulting work for both private companies such as PricewaterhouseCoopers and government organizations such as the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, and the United Nations. Professor Wei has published extensively on topics on international finance, trade, and the Chinese economy in leading academic journals. His research has also been reported in Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, Economist, Business Week, Chicago Tribune, and other news media. Professor Wei received his MS in business administration (finance) and Ph.d in economics from University of California, Berkeley.