Business Transformation

Karan Girotra is the Charles H. Dyson Family Professor of Management and professor of operations, technology and innovation at Cornell Tech and the SC Johnson College of Business at Cornell University. Girotra’s recent research and teaching is focused on the promise and perils of technology—how technology can improve how we do things, enable new business models, favor new leadership styles, and at the same time lead to several excesses and unaccounted negative externalities. He has also studied new business models and economic institutions that help reduce carbon emissions, improve urban living, manage global supply chains, and make online-retail less loss-making.

Girotra was one of the founding faculty members of Cornell Tech and now leads its flagship studio-based education programs. He also leads the design and delivery of our executive education offerings and works closely with leaders in industry.

Girotra and his research collaborators have been recognized with multiple best paper awards, and his research contributions were recognized with the prestigious Wickham Skinner Early Career Research Award. His research on new business models (at the time) was summarized in the best-selling book, The Risk Driven Business Model. He has also won over 25 awards for his teaching on entrepreneurship and new business models and was featured in the Poets&Quants Best 40 under 40 business professors’ lists.

In addition to his academic work, Girotra 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. Prior to Cornell Tech, Girotra held the Paul Dubrule Sustainability Chair at INSEAD and earned a doctorate at the Wharton School and a bachelor’s degree from Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi.

Elizabeth Mannix’s research and teaching is focused on effective organizational performance and the factors that make individuals motivated, high-performing leaders and team members. Specific topics include authentic leadership, principled negotiation and influence, the role of emotional intelligence in business settings, organizational change, women in leadership, and diversity. She is certified in the MSCEIT emotional intelligence assessment. Professor Mannix is the author of over 50 peer-reviewed articles as well as the 15-volume book series “Research on Managing Groups and Teams.” Her work has been recognized by awards from organizations including the Academy of Management, Small Group Research, and the International Association for Conflict Management.

Professor Mannix teaches and consults with executives and organizations nationally and around the globe, with a special emphasis on the Middle East and Asia. She is a two-time Associate Editor of the Academy of Management Review as well as a Fellow of the American Psychological Society, the Society for Organizational Behavior, and the Academy of Management. Professor Mannix earned her Ph.D. degree in Social and Organizational Psychology from the University of Chicago. Prior to joining the faculty at Cornell, she was a faculty member at Columbia Business School and at the University of Chicago. Professor Mannix was also a visiting professor in the MBA program at the Sasin Graduate Institute of Business Administration at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok, Thailand.

Stephen Sauer’s research and teaching activities focus on issues of leadership, team processes, entrepreneurship, and status and diversity in management. His work has been published in a number of academic journals including Leadership Quarterly, Organization Science, Journal of Applied Psychology, and Human Resource Management. His research has also been featured in a variety of mainstream media outlets including The Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business Review, Forbes.com, and USA Today, among others.

His teaching experience includes courses in Leadership, Strategy, Negotiations, and Organizational Behavior at both the undergraduate and graduate levels, and he has extensive experience leading executive education workshops and seminars for a number of major corporations. He is also an Entrepreneur in Residence at Cornell’s Center for Regional Economic Advancement and Rev: Ithaca Startup Works and is a member of the teaching team for the NSF Innovation Corps national program.

Dr. Sauer graduated with a PhD in Management and Organizational Behavior from Cornell University, where he also earned an MBA and a Master’s in Business and Policy Administration. He also holds a Bachelor’s degree in Aeronautical Engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Prior to embarking on an academic career, he worked as an organizational change consultant and as a plant manager, after serving for seven years as an armored cavalry officer in the US Army.

Laura Georgianna is a senior lecturer in Management and Organizations, executive director of Leadership Programs and the director of the Roy H. Park Leadership Fellows program at Johnson. Through these roles, Laura oversees the articulation of Johnson’s perspective on leadership and our strategy for building the leadership capability of each student within our MBA community. She teaches a wide variety of our leadership development experiences for students and used her training as an executive coach to provide one on one support to students throughout the MBA development journey.

Laura has spent her career working with leaders and their organizations to empower them to deliver results, grow the business, and achieve long-term goals. Most recently, she worked for Cornell’s ILR school designing and teaching programs in intrapreneurial leadership for companies around the globe.

Before Cornell, Laura was senior director, organization capability and development at Welch Allyn, Inc., where she led talent management, leadership development, performance management, and organizational development for the firm. Prior to that, she held roles in executive education, transformational change, and organizational development at Merck & Co. Inc. She also spent a number of years with Thomson Financial (now Thomson Reuters) in Account Services leadership roles.

Laura received an MBA with distinction from Johnson, where she was a Roy H. Park Leadership Fellow, and an MILR from Cornell’s ILR School. She holds a BA from the University of Rochester, where she graduated Summa Cum Laude.

Michelle M. Duguid is Associate Dean of Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging, and an associate professor of management and organizations at the S.C. Johnson Graduate School of Management, Cornell University. Professor Duguid’s primary area of research investigates the interplay of social status, power, politics, influence, and diversity in organizations, with a particular focus on the effect of social status, power, and inter- and intra-group relations on perceptions and interactions. She also performs research examining individual and group processes that affect creativity and the quality of decision making. Professor Duguid serves on the editorial board of Organization Science, the Academy of Management Journal, the Academy of Management Review, and Personnel Psychology. She received her M.S. and Ph.D. in Organizational Behavior from Cornell University. 

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.

Neil Tarallo is a senior lecturer of entrepreneurship at the Cornell School of Hotel Administration. He currently serves as the director of the Cornell University Entrepreneurship Bootcamp for Disabled Veterans (EBV), which offers entrepreneurship education to post 9/11 veterans and as the director (interim) of the Leland C. and Mary M. Pillsbury Institute for Hospitality Entrepreneurship. He has also served as the curriculum lead and co-PI for the U.S. Small Business Administration, Office of Veteran Business Development’s boots2business program.

As an entrepreneur, Tarallo has owned and operated companies in the fields of photographic retail and quick printing. He has also purchased, rehabilitated, and sold numerous businesses. Tarallo currently has an active consulting practice as well a commercial real estate development and management company. He is also member of a venture capital partnership and an active angel investor.

A seasoned active entrepreneur, academic, and consultant with a proven track record of bringing real world experiences to students, veterans, and corporate/non-profit clients internationally in the classroom, online, and through seminars.

”I teach and have created a broad spectrum of entrepreneurship courses for delivery in the classroom and online with significant experience developing academic entrepreneurship programs, including centers and institutes, dating back to 1994. Teaching experiences in Djibouti (Africa), South Africa, Germany, Italy, South Korea, and Japan have given me the opportunity to observe entrepreneurship in cultures and economies outside of the United States. These experiences have broadened my entrepreneurial repertoire in the classroom and in consulting engagements.

These experiences have also helped me to understand the importance of aggregating theory and practice in the classroom. I have found that by designing a curriculum rich in experiential learning opportunities and engaging students in a real world application of knowledge, I am able to provide a more impactful learning experience that will also translate into their professional lives.

Along the way I have developed expertise in establishing entrepreneurial behavior, culture, mindset, and structure for existing corporations/organizations with over 20 years’ experience applying these skills in corporate and academic environments as an entrepreneur and consultant. When I am not teaching, I work with corporations and non-profits to help them create new markets through value proposition design, customer experience mapping, and business model evolution.”

Risa Mish is professor of practice of management at the Johnson Graduate School of Management. She designed and teaches the MBA Core course in Critical and Strategic Thinking, in addition to teaching courses in leadership and serving as faculty co-director of the Johnson Leadership Fellows program.

She has been the recipient of the MBA Core Faculty Teaching Award, selected by the residential program MBA class to honor the teacher who “best fosters learning through lecture, discussion and course work in the required core curriculum”; the Apple Award for Teaching Excellence, selected by the MBA graduating classes to honor a faculty member who “exemplifies outstanding leadership and enduring educational influence”; the “Best Teacher Award”, selected by the graduating class of the Cornell-Tsinghua dual degree MBA/FMBA program offered by Johnson at Cornell and the PBC School of Finance at Tsinghua University; the Stephen Russell Distinguished Teaching Award, selected by the five-year MBA reunion class to honor a faculty member whose “teaching and example have continued to influence graduates five years into their post-MBA careers”; and the Globe Award for Teaching Excellence, selected by the Executive MBA graduating class to honor a faculty member who “demonstrates a command of subject matter and also possesses the creativity, dedication, and enthusiasm essential to meet the unique challenges of an EMBA education.”

Mish serves as a keynote speaker and workshop leader at global, national, and regional conferences for corporations and trade associations in the consumer products, financial services, health care, high tech, media, and manufacturing industries, on a variety of topics, including critical thinking and problem solving, persuasion and influence, and motivating optimal employee performance. Before returning to Cornell, Mish was a partner in the New York City law firm of Collazo Carling & Mish LLP (now Collazo Florentino & Keil LLP), where she represented management clients on a wide range of labor and employment law matters, including defense of employment discrimination claims in federal and state courts and administrative agencies, and in labor arbitrations and negotiations under collective bargaining agreements. Prior to CC&M, Mish was a labor and employment law associate with Simpson Thacher & Bartlett in New York City, where she represented Fortune 500 clients in the financial services, consumer products, and manufacturing industries. She is admitted to practice before the U.S. Supreme Court and state and federal courts in New York and Massachusetts.

Mish is a member of the board of directors of SmithBucklin Corporation, the world’s largest trade association management company, headquartered in Chicago and TheraCare Corporation, headquartered in New York City. She formerly served as a Trustee of the Tompkins County Public Library, Vice Chair of the board of directors of the Community Foundation of Tompkins County, and member of the board of directors of the United Way of Tompkins County.

Vishal Gaur is the Anne and Elmer Lindseth Dean and Emerson Professor of Manufacturing Management at the Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management in the Cornell SC Johnson College of Business. Gaur earned his PhD from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania (2001), MBA from the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad (1995), and BTech in Computer Science and Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi (1993).

As associate dean for MBA programs from 2014 to 2019, Gaur launched the Digital Technology Immersion, in which MBA candidates and students earning their MPS in data science or applied statistics develop skills in coding, databases, and advanced analytics, and learn to leverage them to tackle challenges faced by leading companies.

He also created and served as the program director for the Master of Science in Business Analytics (MSBA) program offered through eCornell, which provides working professionals a hands-on opportunity to learn about data analytics tools essential to analyzing and optimizing business decisions.

Gaur’s research focuses on data-driven analysis of problems in supply chains, retailing, e-commerce, and marketplace operations, and his work was recognized with the Wickham Skinner Early Career Research Accomplishments Award from the Production and Operations Management Society in 2006. He served as a department editor for Management Science during 2014-2021, and his current projects involve the reduction of food waste and supply chain risk. He teaches graduate courses in operations management, digital business and retail operations, and data analysis.

Gaur is the 2022 recipient of the Class of 1992 Apple Award for Excellence in Teaching, the 2020 recipient of the Stephen Russell Distinguished Teaching Award, and a three-time winner of the Johnson School’s Core Faculty Award, the Cornell-Tsinghua Dual Degree MBA Gravitas Award in 2021, the Johnson Cornell Tech Core Faculty Award by the graduating class of 2017, and honorable mention in the George B. Dantzig Dissertation Award Competition in 2001.

Well-known among students for the care and attention he gives to his teaching, he currently teaches the Semester in Strategic Operations MBA immersion course, where students go on site visits and work on client projects in topics such as industry 4.0, traceability, and sales and operations planning.

Before joining Johnson, he was an assistant professor at the NYU Stern School of Business from 2001 to 2007 and a visiting associate professor at Harvard Business School from 2007 to 2008.