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Living The Dream
A New Generation of Minority Business School Professors
These inspiring stories are of some of our PhD Project participants who came to The PhD Project Annual Conference in Chicago in previous years – many who overcame significant obstacles in pursuit of their dream of becoming a professor.
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The Clock Told Him
Cruising down the MBA track at Howard University, Leyland Lucas was startled when a professor pulled him aside and asked if he had ever considered an academic career. “I said, ‘That’s not where I want …
Eleventh Hour Stand-in
Most people go to business networking events for the same reason: you never know what might happen. All John Warren hoped to accomplish when he attended a Chicago area networking breakfast was to hand out…
Never Give Up
Taking stock of his life, Frank Bryant had to admit that things could hardly look worse. Earning his MBA during the recession of the early 1990s, he returned to his economically depressed hometown, Buffalo, to…
Hard Choice, Easy Decision
Francisco Roman had just earned his Master’s degree in economics, and the future looked bright. But a tough choice loomed ahead for the young financial analyst: on one side of his desk sat two exciting…
Catalyst
As a promising doctoral student on the job market, Patricia Martinez was seeking a home at a strong, Hispanic-serving college when she visited informally at the University of Texas, San Antonio. Interviewing with the head of…
Camel Boy
No one has traveled a longer route to a Ph.D. than Yusuf Nur, born in Somalia into a family of nomadic, impoverished goat and camel tenders. As a young boy, he was expected to grow…
Postcard from Nowhere
Graduation Day loomed at the University of Maryland business school, but unfortunately for new MBA Pamela Carter, employment did not. With a brilliant track record in her studies, she had performed admirably in a co-op…
A Moment of Clarity
Terry Esper, logistics manager for Hallmark Cards, ended one lengthy corporate conference day with the social ritual of joining a colleague for a post-session beer. He was totally unaware the relaxing moment was about to…
You Mean More
The mailings finally got to him. Danny Lanier, public accountant, had reached that point in life and career where he was starting to wonder where true fulfillment might lie. It was then that he began…
Cross the Ocean
María Cabán-García, already a college professor, lacked three things in her life: the letters Ph.D. and all they stood for. To earn them, she uprooted her life and family, left her native home in Puerto…
Introvert or Extrovert?
At first the idea of Michael Kimbrough, rising star at a leading accounting firm, becoming a business school professor seemed just about half right to him. Conducting research and delving into analyses of business issues…
“I’ll Get Involved in Your Life”
Sammie Robinson was a child of the 1950s. “I come from a background,” she explains, “where the most optimistic dream was that I would attend a small Black college and maybe become a teacher.” But…
Something That Lasts
Millicent Nelson, born to a family full of academics and students, recalls that “teaching was a gift from God to me; I was always the one teaching people how to do things.” But she restricted…
Urban Entrepreneur to Academic
In a career that started on the streets and has now turned to academia, Jeff Brice, Jr. has run his own film production company, headed a construction business, and worked on job-development with ex-convicts and…
A Waiting Room Epiphany
Five kids call Leila Borders “Grandma.” Hundreds of young adults now call her “Professor.” In a quarter-century corporate career, Leila Borders had never entertained a thought of teaching until she sat in a doctor’s waiting…
Banking On A New Career
As a retail branch manager and vice president for one of the world’s premier banking companies, Patricia Hewlin often found herself at the front of a training classroom, instructing employees in job skills. Before long,…
Programmed to Succeed
From high school days in his native Ethiopia on, Amanuel Tekleab yearned to become a professor. Spurred by parents who lacked formal schooling but placed great value on education, he set out after his dream….
A Well-timed Invitation
Dan Stewart, back in his undergraduate days, paid more attention to his professors than did most of his classmates. He was sizing them up as potential role models. “I liked watching my professors, and I…
To MBA or Not to MBA?
For Angela Andrews changing jobs in the corporate world had become a depressing routine. “You’re in a different cubicle, but it’s the same job.” Despite a string of successful stints in financial accounting at top…
To MBA or Not to MBA, II?
Once Dr. Brett Gilbert decided to pursue an advanced degree in business, she cut right to the chase. She bypassed earning an MBA, focusing sharply on her ultimate goal. She enrolled directly in a Ph.D….
The Mathematics of Life
The reminders would arrive in Helen Brown’s mailbox, like clockwork, every year. The wrong time of year, as far as she was concerned. “Those PhD Project mailings would always come at bonus time,” recalls the…
Fulfilling
The dollars—offers of them, that is—were flying at Constance Porter. Comfortably situated in a prominent management consulting firm, she found herself the object of an unsolicited, escalating bidding war by two companies seeking to recruit…
“Out-of-body” Experience Yields Deal of Lifetime
Wall Street investment banker Byron Hollowell, working ninety hours a week during the go-go 90’s on some of the planet’s hottest deals, sometimes paused to wonder about the long-term benefits of the mergers and acquisitions…
Other-mindedness
The booming 1990s were a heady, exciting time to be an advertising executive for Fortune 500 companies and top agencies. But for Andrea Scott, there was an unsettling undercurrent to those go-go years. She subscribed to…
When Five Becomes Eight
The Berlin Wall was falling, and Nichole Castater was right there. An undergraduate studying German abroad for a semester, she had chosen Berlin, and found herself witnessing history unfolding. The excitement in the air was…
When a Big Salary Isn’t Enough
As he contemplated shifting gears in his life plan radically—from highpowered, hefty-salaried corporate executive to the professorial podium of academia—Melvin Smith made a big mistake. He assumed that becoming a management professor would slash his…
The Investment
Through more than five intense years as a doctoral student, Kendra Harris could not help but notice that her old friends in corporate life were driving newer cars, and living in bigger houses than she…
His Own Path
In eight years as an operations and finance manager in Fortune 500 companies, Ronald Ramirez saw his employers invest vast sums of money in new information technologies. Despite the benefits generated from using the technology,…
“The Landlord”
Ricardo Valerdi was the only doctoral student in his program—and probably the state—who spent evenings repairing broken plumbing pipes and fixing faulty electrical wiring. The unusual nocturnal activities were the result of a creative, if…
More Than Money
Seeking out a new career path upon retiring from the Navy, Ulysses Brown taught middle school for a while, then enrolled in advanced graduate studies in psychology. Along the way, he began assisting a faculty…
“Dr. Mommy”
Enjoying a successful career at some of America’s best- known companies, Darlene Motley paused to reflect upon getting married. “I knew I wanted children, and I was traveling a lot. I did not want both…
Date Nights
The e-mail message was one of the longest and most detailed Dr. Ariana Pinello had ever received from a student. It recited countless facts and information bits from a class Dr. Pinello had taught, including…
Young 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…
One City
One city. How hard could it be?, IBM executive Harriette Bettis-Outland wondered. Riding the wave of a successful, ten-year sales and marketing career in computer software, she had begun considering other options when her baby…
Wedding 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…
Balancing – 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…
An 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…
Committee Decision
Accepted by nine universities that were bidding competitively for her, Dr. Lynette Wood put the difficult choice of which offer to accept into the hands of a committee. A family committee. “My husband and children were…
Balancing
At dinnertime as a child, Maria Sanchez took it for granted that her mother and father would join her around the table virtually every evening to share the day’s experiences. Most summers, one or both…
“If She Can…”
As an undergraduate at the University of Virginia, Kimberly Dillon Grantham admits she “had no clue what a Ph.D. was—or what I could do with it.” What she did know was that attending her favorite…
Chosen
“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…
Influences
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…
Notes in a Drawer
Dr. Ashleigh Rosette keeps the handwritten notes and e-mails stuffed into a drawer at home, and there are now many of them. Typically, they start by recounting how much the writer enjoyed taking Dr. Rosette’s…
Eleventh Hour Challenge
Professor Nicole Thorne Jenkins doesn’t just help her students write their own success stories. She then puts them to work—for her. Dr. Jenkins invested her own time, energy, and commitment into a student who was…
“Dr. Double”
As early as age sixteen in her hometown of Kansas City, Missouri, Alisha Malloy knew she wanted to get her Ph. D. She discovered her desire to teach when she taught a computer class at…
Two A.M. Phone Call
Yancy Edwards knew when he began his Ph.D. studies that he’d soon be working into the early morning hours frequently. What he didn’t anticipate was the 2:00 a.m. phone calls from an undergraduate struggling to…
Moment of Truth
“It’s a paper she can’t finish, or else she’s on overload from juggling her job and school,” thought newly-appointed accounting professor Dr. Veronda Willis when the young Hispanic woman hesitantly requested a private conference after…
Following His Heart
In 1983, Dr. J. Alberto Espinosa decided to get his Ph.D. in finance from Texas Tech University. After a year in the program, he realized that he was more interested in information systems than in…
Instant Family
Dr. Jones started on the road to his Ph.D. in 1993, after leaving his controller position at a prominent bank. At the first PhD Project Accounting Doctoral Students Association (DSA) meeting the next year, “I…
They Saw it in Him
Ex-Marine, now Colorado State University freshman, Andy Garcia looked in the mirror and saw a student. But when the academicians looked at him, they saw a future peer. “I was sitting in my counselor’s office,…
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