Digital
LeadershipCornell

Certificate Program

Karan Girotra, Professor of Operations, Technology and Information Management (OTIM), is the recipient of the Charles H. Dyson Family Professor of Management chair, for a 5-year term. This chair was given by Rob Dyson, MBA ’74 to support a founding faculty position for Johnson instruction at Cornell Tech, in honor of his father, the founder of the Dyson-Kissner-Moran Corporation.

Karan Girotra is a Professor at Cornell Tech and in the Johnson School at Cornell University. Karan collaborates with companies building new business models in the areas of urban living, smart transportation and e-commerce, helping them build rigorous research based solutions.

Karan’s research team has been recognized by multiple awards including the prestigious Wickham Skinner Early Career Research Award and multiple best paper awards. He has also won teaching awards for his teaching on entrepreneurship and new business models and was featured in the Poets and Quant’s Best 40 under 40 business professors lists.

In addition to his academic work, Karan was one of the founders of Terrapass Inc., which the New York Times identified as one of the most noteworthy ideas of 2005. Since then, TerraPass has helped businesses and individuals reduce over hundred million tons of carbon dioxide emissions.

Karan holds PhD and AM degrees from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, and a Bachelor degree from the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi.

Mukti Khaire is Girish and Jaidev Reddy Professor of Practice at Cornell Tech and the Cornell SC Johnson College of Business. Dr. Khaire received a Ph.D. in Management in 2006 from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Business. Before that, she completed a Master’s in Management from Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) – Bombay, and a Master of Science in Environmental Science and a Bachelor of Science in Microbiology from the University of Pune, India. Prior to joining Cornell Tech in 2016, Dr. Khaire was on the faculty of Harvard Business School (Entrepreneurial Management Unit; 2005-2016) and spent a year as Visiting Faculty at Brown University (Sociology; 2015-2016).

Dr. Khaire’s research focuses on entrepreneurship in the creative industries, such as art, advertising, architecture and design, fashion, film, music, publishing, and theater. In particular, she is interested in understanding how entrepreneurs create markets for new categories of cultural goods by constructing their value, while also changing consumers’ beliefs about what attributes of cultural goods are appropriate and valuable. In this vein, Dr. Khaire studied the creation of a market for modern Indian art and the rise and establishment of the high-end fashion industry in India. Her work, which has been published in leading business and management journals, has shed light on the structure and functioning of creative industries as well as the business and societal implications of entrepreneurship in the cultural sector. Dr. Khaire has also authored 35 teaching cases on firms in the creative industries.

Ari Juels is a professor at the Jacobs Technion-Cornell Institute at Cornell Tech, a Computer Science faculty member at Cornell University, and Co-Director of the Initiative for CryptoCurrencies and Contracts (IC3). He was previously Chief Scientist at RSA, now a division of Dell.

His recent areas of interest include blockchains, cryptocurrency, and smart contracts, as well as applied cryptography, cloud security, user authentication, and privacy. He has published over one hundred highly cited research papers, including many on digital currency, cryptocurrency, and blockchains.

Prof. Juels received a BA in Latin Literature and Mathematics from Amherst College (1991) and a PhD in Computer Science from UC Berkeley (1996).

Rafael Pass is a Professor at Cornell Tech and in the Computer Science Department at Cornell University. He obtained his bachelor’s in Engineering Physics and a master’s in Computer Science, both from the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) in Sweden, and his Ph.D. in Computer Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.I.T.) in 2006. He has been on the faculty of Cornell University since 2006 and joined Cornell Tech in 2013. Professor Pass’ research interests are in the field of Cryptography and its interplay with Computational Complexity and Game Theory. Previously, Pass worked in the finance industry for J.P. Morgan and Price Waterhouse Coopers, and studied logic and philosophy at the Sorbonne in Paris. He is a recipient of the NSF Career Award, the AFOSR Young Investigator Award, the Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship, and the Microsoft Faculty Award.

General George W. Casey, Jr. enjoyed a 41-year career in the U.S. Army following his graduation from Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service in 1970. He is an accomplished soldier and an authority on strategic leadership. As the Army Chief of Staff, he led one of our largest and most complex organizations during one of the most extraordinary periods in our history. He is widely credited with restoring balance to a war-weary Army and leading the transformation to keep it relevant in the 21st Century. Prior to this, from July 2004 to February 2007, he commanded the Multi-National Force – Iraq, a coalition of more than 30 countries. He guided the Iraq mission through its toughest days and set the conditions for our long-term success.

Currently, he lectures internationally on leadership to the leaders of national and multinational corporations and at other business schools. He serves on several corporate boards and numerous boards of organizations that support our servicemen and women, our veterans, and their families. He also teaches international relations at the Korbel School in Denver.

He has published a book, Strategic Reflections, Operation Iraqi Freedom, July 2004-2007 (October 2012), about his experiences in Iraq, and two articles on leadership: “Leading in a VUCA World”, Fortune Magazine (March 20, 2014), and “Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous: Leadership Lessons from Iraq”, Chapter 1, Changing Mindsets to Transform Security, (December 2013).

He holds a Masters Degree in International Relations from Denver University, and served as a Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council of the United States, a foreign policy think-tank. He has broad international experience. Born in Japan, he served in operational assignments in Europe, the Balkans and the Middle East.

Derek Cabrera (Ph.D., Cornell) is a systems scientist, Professor, and social entrepreneur and is internationally known for his work in systems thinking, systems leadership, and systems modeling. He is currently a lecturer at Cornell University where he teaches systems thinking and organizational leadership and design. He is senior scientist at Cabrera Research Lab, and co-founder and Chief Science Officer of Plectica. He has given two TED Talks, written and produced a rap song, a children’s book on cognition, and authored numerous book chapters and peer-reviewed journal articles. His research has been profiled in peer-reviewed journals, trade magazines, and popular publications, and he is author of eight books including, Systems Thinking Made Simple: New Hope for Solving Wicked Problems (winner of the 2017 AECT outstanding book award), Thinking at Every Desk: Four Simple Skills to Transform Your Classroom, and Flock Not Clock: Align People, Processes, and Systems to Achieve your Vision. Credited with discovering the underlying rules of systems thinking, Cabrera is co-editor of the Routledge Handbook of Systems Thinking. His work in public schools was documented in the full-length documentary film, RE:Thinking. He was Research Fellow at the Santa Fe Institute (SFI) for the Study of Complex Systems and National Science Foundation IGERT Fellow in Nonlinear Systems in the Department of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics at Cornell University. As a National Science Foundation postdoctoral fellow, he developed new techniques to model systems approaches in the evaluation of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM). Cabrera was awarded the Association of American Colleges and Universities’ K. Patricia Cross Future Educational Leaders Award. He serves on the United States Military Academy at West Point’s Systems Engineering Advisory Board. His contributions to the field of systems thinking have been integrated into NSF, NIH, and USDA-NIFA programs, K-12, higher education, NGOs, federal agencies, corporations, and business schools. His systems models are used by many of Silicon Valley’s most innovative companies. Systems Thinking Made Simple is used as an introductory text for undergraduate and graduate students in numerous colleges and universities including Cornell University and West Point Military Academy. Cabrera has developed and patented a suite of systems thinking tools for use in academia, business, and beyond. Prior to becoming a scientist, Cabrera worked for fifteen years around the world as a mountain guide and experiential educator for Outward Bound and other organizations and has climbed many of the world’s highest mountains. He holds a Ph.D. from Cornell University and lives in Ithaca, NY, with his wife, Laura Cabrera, three children, and four dogs.

Laura is Plectica’s Chief Research Officer.

For over 15 years, Laura has conducted translational research to increase public understanding, application, and dissemination of systems science, including for USDA, the National Academy of Sciences Institute of Medicine, HHS, and the Dept. of Justice.

She is also a senior researcher at Cabrera Research Lab, has authored five books on systems thinking and its applications, and is a member of the United States Military Academy at West Point’s Systems Engineering Advisory Board.

Laura holds a PhD in Policy Analysis and Management, a Master’s in Public Administration, and a B.A., all from Cornell.

Her family is her favorite system…

Donna L. Haeger is a Professor of Practice in the Charles H. Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management at Cornell University. She teaches introductory and advanced spreadsheet modeling courses for applied decision making. These courses leverage Microsoft Excel as a business analytics tool. Prior to teaching at Cornell, Dr. Haeger taught courses in management theory, organizational behavior, and marketing. With over 20 years in industry, her corporate experience includes work in investments, banking, and corporate finance.

Dr. Haeger is the business analytics concentration coordinator and chaired the task force responsible for launching the concentration. Her research interests lie at the intersection of organizational behavior and digitization. Dr. Haeger explores technology in the workplace, leadership, teams, and management. Her contributions relate to influence and intergenerational exchanges in an effort to blend human systems. Dr. Haeger presents her research at the Academy of Management and other leadership associations. She also enjoys mentoring students interested in undergraduate research, especially when the products serve to better communities. Dr. Haeger currently sits on the board of directors for Consumer Credit Counseling Services of Rochester, which specializes in spreading financial literacy to communities.

Professor Schneider’s research has focused on various aspects of trustworthy systems — systems that will perform as expected, despite failures and attacks. His early work concerned formal methods to aid in the design and implementation of concurrent and distributed systems that satisfy their specifications. He is author of two texts on that subject: “On Concurrent Programming” and (co-authored with D. Gries) “A Logical Approach to Discrete Mathematics.” He and Bowen Alpern devised the now-standard formal definition of “liveness properties” and provided the proof that safety and liveness are a fundamental basis for all trace-properties; that work received the 2018 Edsger W. Dijkstra Prize in Distributed Computing. Professor Schneider is also known for his research in theory and algorithms for building fault-tolerant distributed systems. His paper on the “state machine approach” for managing replication received in 2007 an SOSP Hall of Fame award for seminal research, and his paper on fail-stop processors (with Richard Schlichting) received the Jean-Claude Laprie Award in Dependable Computing. More recently, his interests have turned to systems security. His work characterizing what policies can be enforced with various classes of defenses is widely cited, and it is seen as advancing the nascent science base for security. He is also engaged in research concerning legal and economic measures for improving system trustworthiness.

Professor Schneider is a frequent consultant to industry, believing this to be an efficient method of technology transfer and a good way to learn about the real problems. He provides technical expertise in fault-tolerance and computer security to a variety of other firms, including Intel, Lincoln Laboratories, NTREPID, and ZeroFox. In addition, Professor Schneider has testified about cybersecurity research at hearings of the U.S. House of Representatives Armed Services Committee (subcommittee on Terrorism, Unconventional Threats, and Capabilities) as well as the Committee on Science and Technology (subcommittee on Technology and Innovation and subcommittee on Research and Science Education.)

Sachin Gupta is Henrietta Johnson Louis Professor of Marketing at the SC Johnson Graduate School of Management. Professor Gupta’s research focuses on marketing research, healthcare, privacy of marketing data, nonprofits, and marketing analytics.

In 2020 Professor Gupta’s paper published in the Journal of Marketing Research received the AMA-EBSCO Annual Award for Responsible Research in Marketing. The award honors outstanding research that produces credible and useful knowledge that can be applied to benefit society. In 2014 his paper in the International Journal of Pharmaceutical and Healthcare Marketing received the Outstanding Paper award. In 2008 his paper published in the Journal of Marketing Research in 2003 received the O’Dell award of the American Marketing Association. This award is given to the authors of the best article published five years earlier. Professor Gupta also received the Paul Green award of the American Marketing Association in 2003. In 2007, he received the Cornell Hospitality Quarterly’s best paper award for his article on customer satisfaction in the restaurant industry. Five of his other published papers have been finalists for the O’Dell award, the Paul Green award, and the John D.C. Little award of INFORMS.

In 2020 Professor Gupta was appointed Editor in Chief of the Journal of Marketing Research, where he had been co-editor since 2016. From 2010 to 2013 Professor Gupta was Johnson’s Associate Dean for Academic Affairs. In that role he was responsible for recruitment and development of faculty, and for the school’s research function. From 2014 to 2018 he was director of Cornell’s PhD program in Management.

At Johnson, Gupta teaches a popular MBA elective course called Data Driven Marketing. He has previously taught MBA elective courses in Marketing Research and Pricing, and the Marketing Management core course in the MBA and EMBA programs. He teaches in a variety of non-degree executive education programs. In 2009, he received the Stephen Russell Distinguished Teaching Award, given by the Johnson class of 2004, at their fifth reunion. In 2007 the graduating MBA class selected him to receive the Apple Award for Teaching Excellence. Gupta is the author of eCornell’s Data Driven Marketing certificate. He previously taught at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, where he received the Sidney Levy Award for teaching excellence and was recognized in the Dean’s four-star list on multiple occasions.

Matthew Schneider develops data protection methodologies for real-world data sources to protect consumer privacy. He is a Visiting Scholar at Cornell University and an Assistant Professor of Business Analytics at Drexel University. He holds a Ph.D. and an MS in Statistics from Cornell University, an MS in Public Policy and Management from Carnegie Mellon University, and a BS in Quantitative Economics from the United States Naval Academy. Before finishing his Ph.D., he was employed at the RAND Corporation and served in the U.S. Navy as an Officer from 2003 to 2005.