Saturday Mornings
Angélica Gutiérrez learned from experience, at age eight, how stereotyping and prejudice can deprive ethniccminorities of educational opportunity. Her mother was summoned to the elementary school principal’s office one day to hear that her daughter had a learning disability and would be transferred to a special education program. Fortunately for Angélica, her mother instantly recognized this assessment for the…
Read MoreAnything in the World
The year was 1993, and the seeds that would become The PhD Project were just taking form as a new PhD went on the job market and interviewed for a management professor position. At many of the campuses she visited, Dr. dt ogilvie looked in vain for faculty members of color in the business school. Rarely did…
Read MoreInfluencing Research Nationally
Sitting in the crowded meeting hall among 265 other hand- selected participants at the first PhD Project conference in December 1994 was a soon-to-be former financial analyst and small business development consultant from Philadelphia. Quinetta Roberson would go on to become one of the first PhD Project participants to make the successful leap to academia,…
Read MoreFour Directions
Long ago, Native Americans were clever and proficient entrepreneurs. Interacting with European trappers and traders, they engaged successfully in businesses of many kinds with the new arrivals. And then everything changed. In modern America, few Native Americans—living on the reservation or in the mainstream—study business or pursue management careers. Even fewer teach business. One reason is that…
Read MoreInfluences
Growing up, Gail Dawson had never considered that there might be African-Americans teaching college. It was not until she enrolled at Florida A&M as an undergraduate that she learned otherwise. There, she encountered several faculty members who would influence her life. Starting a business career and earning an MBA, she recalls, “I was always looking…
Read MoreChosen
“I’m a role model as soon as I walk into the classroom,” says Professor Laquita Blockson. “When I enter the room and say ‘I’m Professor Blockson,’ I can hear them say, ‘Whoa!’” Dr. Blockson first began contemplating a career as an educator when she was an undergraduate at Florida A&M University. It was there she…
Read MoreAn Encounter in Church
Michael DeVaughn, a human resources executive in banking, lived in the same town where he had attended college. He belonged to the same church as one of his former professors. One August day six years after DeVaughn graduated, the professor approached him in desperation. Teaching a popular course, he unexpectedly found himself needing two more…
Read MoreBalancing – and Pitching
As a doctoral student in management at Duke University, Sharron Hunter-Rainey absorbed the same pool of knowledge her classmates did. She, however, was the only one also aiming to simultaneously achieve proficiency in camping and baseball. Juggling home and career for Dr. Hunter-Rainey required some exquisite balancing, because there were three homes. Before enrolling at…
Read MoreWedding Invitation
The contrasts between corporate life and an academic career were drawn starkly in the early 2000s for former business consulting executive Miles Davis, now a dean at Shenandoah University. Watching his friends and former colleagues endure the stress of a chilly economy, he realized, “I have a multi-year contract, which I never had before. I…
Read MoreYoung Motivators
For some prospective doctoral students, being the parent of young children is grounds to defer taking the plunge for a few years. But for Dr. Velvet Weems-Landingham, having a toddler and an infant was a powerful motivator—and a welcomed source of stress relief. “Having children pushed me to get through,” Dr. Weems-Landingham says. “I realized, ‘I…
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