- Marketing lecturer at Miami Herbert Business School
What lead you to become a professor?
I was a corporate executive working in international marketing for 20 years in the U.S. and abroad. While working at my last corporate job, I decided to pursue my lifelong love of teaching and became an adjunct professor. Even though I was also working a 60-hour week in the corporate sector, I realized that teaching was my true love and eventually I became a full-time lecturer. My corporate career was fascinating and took me to 60 countries around the world, but teaching is my passion.
What drives you as a professor?
There is a certain moment when students finally understand a complex concept. It’s as if the “light” turns on and it’s magical. That’s what drives me. I also love having seniors in my last-semester capstone course (which sums up four years of the marketing major) who were students in my first-semester introductory course. Seeing how much they’ve learned over the four years and how beautifully they attack marketing problems is thrilling and very moving for me.
What is your teaching philosophy?
Like all disciplines, marketing has its theories and abstract concepts. I work hard to find a balance between teaching those necessary theories and concepts on the one hand and providing students with practical tools on the other. My goal is for students of every course I teach to complete the course with a “toolkit” of solutions in their hands. This way, they will be well-equipped to solve problems they encounter in the business world.
How do you engage your students in the classroom?
My classes are highly interactive with lots of discussion and class participation. I use tons of real-life examples to illustrate the topics we are studying. I also have a very dry sense of humor and use that to keep things lively. (Big tip for my students: If you’re not sure if I’m kidding or not, I usually am.)
What are your goals as a professor?
My aim is to get students to see the big picture and not compartmentalize their acquired knowledge. I see marketing as one of those sets of transparencies teachers used to use in middle school to teach the different parts of the body: the nervous system, musculoskeletal system, veins, and arteries, etc. Each transparency is overlaid on the previous and, in the end, you have the complete picture of how all the systems work together. Studying marketing is just like that. It’s not about memorizing five ways to segment the market or seven ways to improve brand equity. It’s about putting all of that together and making a beautiful, executable plan.
What is the biggest piece of advice for someone thinking of going into this field of study?
Do it! Marketing touches every aspect of business and, with a degree in marketing, you can create a career path in international business, product development, data analysis, pricing, logistics – not just in advertising and promotion.
