PhD Programs
 Alumni

Fisher's PhD program develops business scholars into some of the most sought-after thought leaders and faculty members at top research universities. Throughout, faculty serve as mentors, advisors and inspirations to help candidates reach their academic and career goals. Below are just a few of our extraordinary PhD alumni going beyond at today’s leading institutions.

We invite you to become one of them.

John GriffinJohn Griffin
University of Texas
Finance

John Griffin received his PhD in finance from Fisher College of Business in 1997. He is currently a full professor of finance and holds a professorship at the University of Texas. Griffin is an expert in international finance, institutional investment and structured finance. He has written papers on topics including determinants of international returns and diversification, exchange rate exposure, pricing models, anomalies, co-movement, hedge fund performance, IPOs, investment banking, insider trading and CDOs. Griffin's recent research focuses on understanding the role that potential conflicts of interest in investment banking and structured finance credit rating agencies played in the financial crisis.

Sha YangSha Yang
University of Southern California
Marketing and Logistics

Sha Yang is a professor of marketing at Marshall School of Business at the University of Southern California. She earned a bachelor's degree in international economics from Renmin University of China; master's degrees in economics, statistics and marketing from Ohio State, and, in 2000, a PhD in marketing from Fisher College of Business. Yang's research focuses on developing models and making inferences on consumer purchase/ consumption behavior and interactions among consumers and firms. Her recent research interests include search engine advertising and social media.

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    Yang has published more than 20 articles and serves on the editorial board of Journal of Marketing Research, Marketing Science, Quantitative Marketing and Economics and Marketing Letters. She has also collaborated with various companies and organizations, including Visa, Miller Brewing Company, HP, PepsiCo, CBS, Nielsen Media Research, TNS, Kantar Group, epinions.com, Taobao.com and CCTV.

    Featured articles:

    "Modeling Interdependent Consumer Preferences"
    Journal of Marketing Research

    "Modeling the Intra-Household Behavioral Interaction"
    Journal of Marketing Research

    "Modeling Competition and Its Impact in Paid-Search Advertising"
    Marketing Science

    Q&A with Sha Yang

    What are some of your favorite memories of Fisher and its effect on your career?
    I am indebted to the faculty and the nurturing environment at Fisher and Ohio State, especially my adviser Greg Allenby, who gave me a lifetime influence.
    What advice would you give to incoming PhD students?
    Develop passion on research as soon as you enter the program — and it is becoming more important to build a strong interdisciplinary knowledge foundation during the PhD program.

Henock LouisHenock Louis
Penn State University
Accounting and MIS

Henock Louis is the KPMG Professor of Accounting at Penn State University, where he teaches financial accounting and financial statement analysis. Professor Louis holds a PhD in accounting from The Ohio State University, and a master in accounting and a PhD in finance from the University of Mississippi. He has published extensively in leading accounting, business and finance journals. His current research focuses primarily on earnings management, managerial financial reporting incentives, auditing and corporate finance.

Brian DineenBrian Dineen
Purdue University
Management and Human Resources

Brian Dineen is an associate professor of management at the Krannert School of Management at Purdue University, and received his PhD from Fisher College of Business in 2003. His research interests span issues related to recruitment, job search and employee retention. More specifically, Dineen investigates factors that influence the quality of initial applicant pools in organizations, including recruitment message orientation and mass customization, and effort expenditure and resume fraud among job seekers. He also studies employee retention issues related to human resource management inducements and investments as well as third party employment branding.

Neeraj AroraNeeraj Arora
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Marketing and Logistics

Neeraj Arora is the John P. Morgridge Chair in Business Administration at University of Wisconsin-Madison. He has an undergraduate degree in engineering from Delhi University, and an MBA and PhD from Fisher College of Business in 1995. Arora's research focuses on marketing problems that require statistical models of consumer choice. Most of this research relies on choice experiments or behavioral data and builds upon psychological/ microeconomic theories and Bayesian statistics. Arora's research has appeared in Journal of Marketing Research, Marketing Science, Journal of Marketing, Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Retailing, International Journal of Research in Marketing and Marketing Letters.

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    He currently serves on the editorial board of Journal of Marketing Research, Marketing Science, Quantitative Marketing and Economics (associate editor), Journal of Marketing, Journal of Retailing and Customer Needs and Solutions (senior editor). Arora also serves as chair of the marketing department and executive director of the A.C. Nielsen Center for Marketing Research at University of Wisconsin-Madison. His teaching interests include marketing research, brand analytics, mathematical models of consumer behavior and marketing strategy. He has served as a consultant in the areas of survey design, legal matters, marketing mix models, market segmentation and new product design using conjoint methodologies.

    Featured articles:

    "Non-Compensatory Dyadic Choices"
    Marketing Science

    "Predicting Joint Choice Using Individual Data"
    Marketing Science

    "Embedded Premium Promotion: Why It Works and How to Make It More Effective"
    Marketing Science

    "A Disaggregate Model of Primary and Secondary Demand"
    Marketing Science

    Q&A with Neeraj Arora

    What are some of your favorite memories of Fisher and its effect on your career?

    The professors: the academic standards at Ohio State are high and the faculty invested a lot of their time in me. I was able to work with my academic advisors on research projects early in the PhD program. This was hard work, but incredibly invaluable in the long run.

    My peers: we learned a great deal from each other. The academic diversity (psychology, economics, statistics) was personally invaluable for me and really helped shape my research interests.

    Base field education: I benefited a great deal from the classes I took outside the school of business. My economics, statistics and psychology professors were very smart people and I learned a great deal from them.

    What advice would you give to incoming PhD students?
    Congratulations — you have made a great choice. You will likely have a successful academic career if you are humble, open to advice, thoughtful about selecting your advisor, take tough classes, work on important research questions and work hard. Also, go to as many football and basketball games as possible. High Street bars should be an integral part of your weekend. I wish you the very best. O-H!

Rachna ShahRachna Shah
University of Minnesota
Management Sciences

Rachna Shah has been on the faculty at the Carlson School of Management at the University of Minnesota since she graduated with her PhD from Fisher College of Business in 2002. Prior to her PhD, she worked in the health care practice of a management consulting firm for more than four years. Shah is globally recognized for her research in lean operations both in manufacturing and service industries, and is widely published. In 2004, she received the prestigious Shingo Award for Excellence in Research for her paper "Lean Manufacturing: Context, Practice Bundles, and Performance," published in the Journal of Operations Management (JOM).

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    This and one other paper are among the journal's Top 10 Most Downloaded Papers since their publication online. In 2007, she received the "Wickham Skinner Early Career Research Accomplishments Award" from the Production and Operations Management Society. Shah is also a co-investigator on a research grant from the Medical Industry Leadership Institute to study one of the most effective heart attack treatment programs in the U.S. She has received grants from The McKnight Foundation and is a research fellow at the Center for Operational Excellence at Fisher. Shah has taught operations management, lean management and statistics courses at the undergraduate, graduate and PhD levels as well as in the degree and executive programs at Carlson and other schools, including INSEAD (France), IESE (Spain), and Ohio State. Additionally, Shah is involved in performing service in and outside the Carlson School. She is an associate editor for the Journal of Operations Management and Decision Sciences Journal, and is a senior editor for Production and Operations Management. She was selected to co-chair the 2010 Decision Sciences Institute Annual Meeting in San Diego. She is married to Jatin, a management consultant, and has two daughters in college. She enjoys reading, cooking and playing bridge and Sudoku in her free time.

    Featured articles:

    "Lean Manufacturing: Context, Practice Bundles, and Performance"
    Journal of Operations Management

    "Defining and Developing Measures of Lean Production"
    Journal of Operations Management

    "Plant Operations and Product Recalls in the Automotive Industry: An Empirical Investigation"

    "Explaining Anomalous High Performance in a Health Care Supply Chain"
    Decision Sciences

    Q&A with Rachna Shah

    What are some of your favorite memories of Fisher and its effect on your career?
    I have wonderful and indelible memories from my time in the PhD program at Fisher; I wouldn't trade that time with anything else. The PhD program at Fisher is among the best both in the domain and research methods coverage. It is a very rigorous and demanding program. I received amazing training. When one goes to the PhD program at Fisher, one becomes part of a huge family whose members are spread all across the world. The fellow students were (and still are) a close-knit group, the faculty was extremely supportive and the administration provided resources to help me succeed both during the program and after graduation.
    What advice would you give to incoming PhD students?
    There is no substitute for desire to learn, motivation to work hard and tenacity to go on day after day — these are minimum necessary conditions. I truly believe that "being involved and engaged" and "doing one's best" in whatever they do, are equally if not more important. Meaning, not just being physically present but mentally and cognitively present, and putting in your best effort to the best of your abilities. Finally, "having faith" helps.

Scott YonkerScott Yonker
Indiana University
Finance

Scott Yonker earned a PhD in business administration with a concentration in finance from Fisher College of Business in 2010 and now serves as an assistant professor in the finance department at Kelley School of Business at Indiana University. Yonker conducts research on corporate and investment managers in the field of financial economics. Specifically, his research focuses on how differences in managers' traits and characteristics influence the important economic decisions that they make. Yonker is also currently the president and founder of Frontier Asset Management, Inc., a small registered investment advisor.

Yaping GongYaping Gong
Hong Kong University of Science and TechnologyManagement and Human Resources

Yaping Gong is an Associate Professor of business and management at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST). He received his PhD from Fisher College of Business in 2002. His research interests include goal orientation, employee creativity, strategic human resource management, international human resource management and expatriate management. Dr. Gong served as co-chair for the Ph.D. program in the management department at HKUST. He is currently the Associate Director for the Hang Lung Center for Organizational Research, a Senior Editor for Asia Pacific Journal of Management, an incoming Senior Editor for Management and Organization Review, and a contributing editor for Journal of Applied Psychology.

Mark NelsonMark Nelson
Cornell University
Accounting and MIS

Mark W. Nelson, the Eleanora and George Landew Professor of Accounting at the Cornell University S. C. Johnson Graduate School of Management, received his PhD from Fisher College of Business in 1990. Nelson teaches intermediate financial accounting to MBA and undergraduate students, and has received several teaching awards at Cornell as well as the Coopers & Lybrand teaching award while a PhD student at The Ohio State University. He is a coauthor (with J. David Spiceland and James F. Sepe) of Intermediate Accounting. Nelson's research examines psychological and economic factors that influence how people make decisions; interpret and apply accounting, auditing and tax regulations; and trade in financial markets.

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    His research has been published in scholarly journals in accounting and psychology, and has been acknowledged with the American Accounting Association's Notable Contribution to Accounting Literature Award, the Wildman Medal, AJPT's inaugural Best Paper Award, and the Johnson School's Faculty Research Award. Nelson served for four years on the FASB's Financial Accounting Standards Advisory Council. He also served three terms as an area editor of the Accounting Review and is a member of the editorial boards of several accounting journals. Nelson served as the Johnson School's Associate Dean for Academic Affairs from 2007-2010, overseeing the tenure-track faculty and research functions.

    Featured articles:

    "A Model and Literature Review of Professional Skepticism in Auditing"
    AUDITING: A Journal of Practice & Theory

    "Evidence From Auditors About Managers' and Auditors' Earnings-Management Decisions"
    The Accounting Review

    "Auditors' Incentives and Their Application of Financial Accounting Standards"
    The Accounting Review

    Q&A with Mark Nelson

    What are some of your favorite memories of Fisher and its effect on your career?
    Favorite memories include the great friendships that I developed with my fellow students and my advisor, Andy Bailey; some of the great course work I experienced outside the business school, particularly in psychology and statistics; and parties at the houses of professors at the end of their PhD seminars.
    What advice would you give to incoming PhD students?
    Get involved in research as soon as possible and try to develop an eye for good research questions. Don't only focus on the details of research papers -- try to take a step back and think about what the paper is trying to contribute and what it actually contributes. The details are important, but so is the big picture. Work hard, but make time to have fun, get exercise and be healthy.

Stephanie EckerdStephanie Eckerd
University of Maryland
Management Sciences

Stephanie Eckerd received her PhD from Fisher College of Business in 2011. She is currently an assistant professor at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business where she teaches courses in supply chain management. Eckerd’s research uses survey and experiment methodologies to investigate how social and psychological variables affect buyer-supplier relationships. Her articles have appeared in the Journal of Operations Management, Journal of Supply Chain Management, and International Journal of Operations and Production Management.

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    In addition to research, Eckerd teaches in the undergraduate and PhD programs and is involved in service work for the business school. One activity she has particularly enjoyed has been serving as the faculty advisor to the Smith School's Biz Quiz team for the last two years. This annual competition, hosted by Fisher, gives her the opportunity to work closely with students from the Smith School's Honors Program as they intensely study The Wall Street Journal for six weeks leading up to the competition. Eckerd feels that serving as the team’s advisor has been an extremely rewarding experience for both her and the students on the team.

    Featured articles:

    "The Relative Impact of Attribute, Severity, and Timing of Psychological Contract Breach on Behavioral and Attitudinal Outcomes" Journal of Operations Management

    "The Effect of Unethical Behavior on Trust in a Buyer-Supplier Relationship: The Mediating Role of Psychological Contract Violation" Journal of Operations Management

    Q&A with Stephanie Eckerd

    What are some of your favorite memories of Fisher and its effect on your career?
    I appreciate that my experience with the Department of Management Sciences at Fisher has led to long-term friendships and collaborations. Not only do I maintain connections with many fellow PhD students from my time there, but events like our annual dinner at the Decision Sciences conference have provided me the opportunity to meet other alumni and current students of the program.
    What advice would you give to incoming PhD students?
    Seek out opportunities to be mentored by faculty. There is much to be learned in classes and seminars, but I also learned a tremendous amount about research, the publishing process and the norms of the field through my collaborative research activities with James Hill and Ken Boyer. They introduced me to many faculty from other schools, which allowed me to be more confident presenting at conferences and more at ease during the job search process.

Gopesh AnandGopesh Anand
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Management Sciences

Gopesh Anand received his MBA from Fisher College of Business in 1992, and managed a small manufacturing business in Mumbai, India, thereafter until 2001, when he returned to The Ohio State University for his doctoral studies. Anand completed his PhD at Fisher in 2006 and has since been teaching and researching at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His research interests are in operations management and focus on two of its elements: operations strategy and process improvement. In addition to teaching, Anand participates in administrative work at the University of Illinois. Outside the university, he reviews papers for journals and takes organizational responsibilities in academic conferences in the area of operations management.

Jonathan GloverJohnathan Glover
Carnegie Mellon University
Accounting and MIS

Jonathan Glover is the Richard M. Cyert Professor of Management and Economics and a professor of accounting at the Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon University. He received his PhD in accounting from Fisher College of Business in 1992, with minors in microeconomics and mathematical economics. Glover joined the faculty at Carnegie Mellon in 1992 and has served the university in numerous capacities, including as chair of the PhD Committee at the Tepper School from 2008-2011. He also held visiting positions at the University of California, Berkeley in the spring of 2000 and as academic fellow at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission from 2004-2005.

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    Glover has published more than forty papers in peer reviewed journals such as The Accounting Review, Contemporary Accounting Research, Journal of Accounting and Economics, Journal of Accounting Research, Journal of Economic Theory, Management Science, and Review of Accounting Studies. His research has been focused on expanding our understanding of the economics behind accounting practice. The topics Glover has studied include earnings management, financial accounting standard setting and regulation, accounting history, corporate governance, managerial accounting, capital budgeting, individual vs. team incentives, incentive theory and mechanism design. He has advised or co-advised six PhD students and has served on the dissertation committees of another 16 PhD students. Glover has served on eight editorial boards, including The Accounting Review and Review of Accounting Studies, and as an associate editor for Management Science and an ad-hoc editor for Contemporary Accounting Research. He is a member of the board of nominations of the Accounting Hall of Fame and has served as a trustee for the Academy of Accounting Historians. Glover has also served on a wide variety of American Accounting Association committees, including as the 2007 Doctoral Consortium Committee Chair, as a member of the Financial Accounting Standards Committee from 2009-2012, and as Chair of the Outstanding Accounting Educator Award Committee in 2014.

    Featured articles:

    "A Simpler Mechanism That Stops Agents from Cheating"
    Journal of Economic Theory

    "Teams, Repeated Tasks, and Implicit Incentives"
    Journal of Accounting and Economics

    "Earnings Management and the Revelation Principle"
    Review of Accounting Studies

    "A Multi-Period Foundation for Bonus Pools"

    Q&A with Jonathan Glover

    What are some of your favorite memories of Fisher and its effect on your career?
    Favorite memories include the fun of collaborating with Anil Arya, which is among the best professional experiences I’ve had in my career; Rick Young’s advice to look for interactions in problems rather than separability, which has served as a guide for much of my research; Dan Jensen’s constant support and wise guidance; Doug Schroeder’s ambitious view of teaching and research, and in particular, learning from him how quickly research can be brought into the classroom. I enjoyed the emphasis on interdisciplinary research -- the core of my dissertation (including the first two published papers from it) was developed during David Schmeidler’s courses in game theory and through initial discussions with him. I also have fond memories of the legendary way Tom Burns ran the workshop series, his classes, and in general, how he always made students his top priority. I also attended workshops in economics and met with many of the speakers.
    What advice would you give to incoming PhD students?
    Get the best training you can in foundational courses as early as possible. Start writing papers early -- it is good practice even if you do not publish the first ones. From the beginning of your studies, read the workshop papers and try to come up with at least one question to ask (the Tom Burns model), even if it is asking for an explanation of some point rather than a critique of the paper. Attend some non-accounting workshops on a regular basis, ask questions, and meet with the speakers when you are particularly interested in the topic. Think for yourself (including developing your own views on the purpose of research), but be a good listener, too.

Anil ShivdasaniAnil Shivdasani
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Finance

Anil Shivdasani received his PhD from Fisher College of Business in 1991. His research focuses on corporate valuation, capital structure, financing strategies, mergers and acquisitions and corporate governance. Shivdasani has published more than 25 articles in leading journals, including the Harvard Business Review, Journal of Finance, Journal of Financial Economics, Review of Financial Studies and Journal of Business. He was recently the recipient of the Bullard Research Award at the Kenan-Flagler Business School at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill for research that has had significant impact on business practices.

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    investment banking division at Citigroup and advised and assisted companies across the globe on strategic financial issues, including valuation, mergers and acquisitions, capital raising, capital structure, credit ratings, financial policy, liquidity management, acquisition financing and pensions. He has worked on several M&A and capital market financing transactions, including IBM’s acquisition of PwC Consulting, which received the Investment Dealer Digest Award for Best Technology Deal of the Year in 2002. Shivdasani was recently the exclusive financial advisor to the U.S. Navy in its evaluation of Northrop Grumman’s spin-off of Huntington Ingalls Industries.

    Featured articles:

    "CEO Involvement in the Selection of New Board Members"
    Journal of Finance

    "Are Busy Boards Effective Monitors?"
    Journal of Finance

    "Did Structured Credit Fuel the LBO Boom?"
    Journal of Finance

    Q&A with Anil Shivdasani

    What are some of your favorite memories of Fisher and its effect on your career?
    Probably the most fun part of my program was the Friday seminar series where distinguished speakers from other schools presented their work. Not only did we get to see the "who's who" in finance talk about their work, but the seminars were very active with lots of interesting question-and-answer sessions. I learned as much about doing research from the seminars as I did from the classes.
    What advice would you give to incoming PhD students?
    Get engaged in research as early as possible. Get to know the faculty and their research. Get involved. Work only on topics you are passionate about.

Douglas J. MillerDouglas J. Miller
Rutgers University
Management and Human Resources

Douglas J. Miller is an associate professor in the Department of Management & Global Business at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. He earned a PhD in business administration from Fisher College of Business in 2000. His research investigates the role of technological resources in corporate strategy decisions such as vertical integration, diversification, acquisitions and alliances. Miller has published papers in the Strategic Management Journal and the Academy of Management Journal.

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    He served as coordinator of the Strategy PhD program at the University of Illinois for three years, and has also served on curriculum and recruiting committees at Illinois and Tulane University. In the broader academic community, Miller has served as a member of the Research Committee of the BPS division of the Academy of Management as well as a representative-at-large in the Competitive Strategy and Corporate Strategy Interest Groups of the Strategic Management Society (SMS). He is the incoming associate program chair for the Corporate Strategy Interest Group of the SMS.

    Featured articles:

    "An Empirical Examination of the Transaction and Firm-Level Influences on the Vertical Boundaries of the Firm" Strategic Management Journal

    "The Use of Knowledge for Technological Innovation Within Diversified Firms"
    Journal of Finance

    "Firms' Technological Resources and the Performance Effects of Diversification: A Longitudinal Study" Academy of Management Journal

    "Technological Diversity, Related Diversification, and Firm Performance"
    Strategic Management Journal

    Q&A with Douglas J. MIller

    What are some of your favorite memories of Fisher and its effect on your career?
    I enjoyed the collegiality of students across PhD programs, whether inside the business administration department or across departments. We moved into the new buildings while I was there. I also recall teaching an evening section of the undergraduate capstone course, and that it was nice to have a mix of traditional and more mature students in the course. The strategy faculty was changing and growing at that time, so I relied greatly on Jay Barney and Michael Leiblein.
    What advice would you give to incoming PhD students?
    Keep reading. The field becomes more understandable the more you read. Read the classics; they are often quite simple statements of fundamental questions and theories. Read current papers; they often summarize the literature succinctly. Read the major management journals, and find out who is having the conversations you want to join. Read disciplinary journals:; you will realize that just because someone is a pure economist, sociologist or psychologist doesn't mean that you couldn’t do equivalent research. Find a time and place where you can read multiple articles in a sitting, and protect that time and place.

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