Innovation, the Driehaus Way: A Message from Dean Sulin Ba

Sulin Ba College News, Notes from the Dean, Student Stories

A Message from Dean Sulin Ba

Dear Driehaus alumni, supporters, and community members:

Welcome to the fall 2024 issue of Business Exchange. Read on to learn about how our faculty are advancing knowledge, how our students are building careers, and perhaps most importantly, how our alumni are forging change in their fields.

A group of smiling students poses with donuts, accompanied by Dean Ba in a bright blue, business formal dress
Driehaus Dean Sulin Ba, at left, serves donuts to students to welcome in the fall quarter.

The latest from the college

First, though, a few pieces of good news.

For the second year in a row, Driehaus was ranked a top school for entrepreneurship by the Princeton Review! Driehaus was ranked #12 among undergraduate programs and #15 among graduate programs. The rankings testify to the vibrant entrepreneurial community we’ve built in Chicago and around the world and to the entrepreneurial spirit of Driehaus grads.

You can read more about the news here.

I am proud and grateful to share that, thanks to a generous $2.6 million gift from Dr. Curtis and Mrs. Gina Crawford, DePaul is launching a Business Technology Leadership Institute. Housed right here in the Driehaus College of Business, the institute will facilitate collaboration with technology experts in DePaul’s Jarvis College of Computing and Digital Media.

Side-by-side portraits of a smiling, elderly couple in formalwear and stylish glasses
Dr. Curtis J. and Mrs. Gina Crawford (Photos courtesy of the Crawford Family)

Like so many of our faculty, students, and alumni, the Crawfords recognize that cutting-edge technologies have the potential to transform how business gets done. Indeed, much of that potential is already being actualized.

Their gift will empower our students to drive this change. More importantly, it will empower our students to drive this change in a meaningful way, informed equally by the subject-matter expertise, entrepreneurial spirit, and commitment to social good that already make Driehaus distinctive.

You can read more about the initiatives this gift will fund here. My gratitude goes out to the Crawfords for their generosity — and to the faculty, students, staff, and alumni who are already doing exceptional work in this space.

Driehaus is already driving change at the intersection of business and technology. Our Halperin Emerging Companies Fund recently invested $100,000 in Orgaimi, an AI tech firm specializing in data science models and predictive analytics.

In this issue

In this issue of the Business Exchange, you’ll read about how we’re working to prepare students for meaningful careers at the forefront of change. Students at the Northern Trust competition got the chance to delve into timely, real-world issues with guidance from industry experts. Opportunities like this don’t just set up our students for jobs after graduation. They set up our students for meaningful career trajectories, which will surely include jobs we can’t yet envision.

Read more about the case competition here.

Our faculty are also driving change by advancing our understanding of real-world issues. Read on to hear insights into how brands should and shouldn’t intervene in hot-button political issues and learn about the widespread, damaging phenomenon of weight-based mistreatment in the workplace.

Learn about pioneering research into weight-based mistreatment in the workplace.

Hear the surprising results of a study that examined how to approach discussing controversial political issues.

Underpinning so much of this work — as I know it underpins so much of your work — is the entrepreneurial spirit. The two alumni profiled in this issue, Triple Demon Dana Alkhouri and the late, prolific entrepreneur John Goode, embody that spirit.

Read the story of John Goode’s remarkable life and legacy here. 

Hear from Dana Alkhouri about making a career pivot and centering women’s stories.

In closing

Many of us are preparing to spend the holiday season with friends and loved ones: with members of the communities that make us strong. Although there are many challenges ahead, for Driehaus College, for DePaul, and for the larger world we live in, I find comfort in returning to what makes Driehaus what it is: our alumni and our students. Your passion — not just for innovating or forging your own path, but for taking others with you along the journey — are making a difference.

Sincerely,

Sulin Ba, PhD

Dean, Driehaus College of Business

“If you think you can’t do it, maybe you just haven’t found a way to do it yet:” The Remarkable Life and Enduring Legacy of John Goode at DePaul and Beyond

jmercha3 Alumni Profiles

John Goode, born September 24, 1934 and deceased September 16, 2024, embodied the entrepreneurial spirit. A polyglot who served on over one hundred company boards the world over, he was a portrait of the globetrotting, forward-thinking executives who built out the international reach of American business in the second half of the 20th century. As a distinguished DePaul alumnus, his life left an indelible impact on the DePaul community. 

An entrepreneurial upbringing 

An old, scanned in portrait photo of a middle-aged man in a suit, smilingBorn in the depths of the Great Depression, Goode quickly found his footing as a resourceful and creative young man. He embarked upon an enterprising path early: his first job was at the cash register of his mother’s shop at age seven, where he also took care of customers and stocked shelves. He was a quick study, even taking two buses to distributors to pick up boxes of candy for the store.  

Goode’s development through adolescence and into adulthood was a DePaul story through and through. In his high school years he attended DePaul Academy, an all-boys Catholic high school founded in 1898 – the same year that Saint Vincent’s College, better known today as DePaul University, was also established.  

It was a tumultuous period for Goode, who dropped out of school for a time and got into his share of trouble. But he eventually felt compelled to return to school, and begged DePaul Academy’s Father Fitzgerald to let him return. Father Fitzgerald was a talented teacher who would become a key mentor figure for Goode. The whole experience changed his life. It would also turn out to be the beginning of a fruitful, lifelong relationship with DePaul.

Goode went on to enroll at the Catholic university in the shady groves of Chicago’s Lincoln Park neighborhood in the late 1950s. During his studies, he was married with three children and worked full time as a doorman. In 1960, he became the first in his family to graduate from college. It would be the beginning of a long, remarkable journey, for which he would eventually be recognized and honored as a distinguished alumnus of DePaul University. 

A legacy of success, service, and kindness 

Goode’s positive attitude, natural talents, and DePaul education all propelled him into a remarkable business career. He worked his way up the corporate ladder to hold senior executive positions at many Fortune 500 industrial companies, eventually owning and serving as board chairman for Prestolite Electric, K&W Products, AP Labs, and American Innotek. He also invested in many businesses, and mentored many business owners over the years.  

Through it all, Goode retained a deep fondness for his time at DePaul, which he always believed had made a significant impact on his life, going all the way back to his formative experiences at DePaul Academy with Father Fitzgerald. And so, following his successes in the business world, Goode returned to the DePaul community to teach for the Department of Accounting in what was then the DePaul College of Commerce, eventually serving as an Associate Dean in the 1980s.  

Four middle-aged adults pose, smiling, with their elderly father
A photo of Goode with three of his children: John Jr., Jim, and Sue.

Although Goode went on to obtain advanced degrees from the University of Chicago and Northern Illinois University, he always maintained that DePaul had the greatest impact on his life. In true DePaul fashion, Goode was also an avid basketball fan, traveling to see the Blue Demons play in the NCAA Final Four in 1979. Eventually, all four of his children – John Jr., Sue, Lee, and Jim – would all attend DePaul themselves. His son, John Jr., even received his diploma on stage during his graduation from his father, who was then serving as an Associate Dean of the College of Commerce.  

Goode was well-known around DePaul for his commanding presence and jovial personality. Between classes, he valued friendship and camaraderie with friends and colleagues. Following the powerful example set by Father Fitzgerald earlier in his life, Goode strove to serve as a mentor to his students. After an especially brutal exam, he was known to meet up with the “survivors” (as he called them) at a local pub, where he would treat the students to drinks and lively conversation. He was also an avid golfer and sailor, and enjoyed taking students on sailing expeditions from Monroe Harbor.  

No problem too great to solve 

Goode made his mark at a national level. In the 1980s, he would go on to serve in the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, as well as the White House Council on Competitiveness. It was a far cry from his humble upbringing in the midst of the Great Depression: a testament, in this way, to Goode’s tireless entrepreneurial spirit.   

A scanned-in, black-and-white photograph of a suited man smiling as he speaks from a podiumThrough it all, Goode always held a firm belief in the foundational impact that the DePaul community had on his life and career. He was a prolific donor, giving millions of dollars to the university that had played such a formative role in his life. Such was his esteem for DePaul that instead of having a room named in his honor, he requested that the room be dedicated to his revered mentor, Father Fitzgerald. 

His experiences at the Chicago university cultivated his can-do, entrepreneurial attitude — one of the characteristics that those who knew him best remember as a cornerstone of his legacy. No problem was too great to be solved. As recounted by his son, John Goode, Jr., his attitude was well exemplified in one of his favorite phrases, a question he liked to pose when faced by adversity: “Are you telling me you can’t do it, or you haven’t found a way to do it yet?”  

Marketing Professor’s Research Leads to Surprising Conclusion about Political Conversations

Meredith Carroll Faculty Focus, Scholarly Pursuits

Middle-of-the-road stances risked alienating allies and opponents alike, research found

How do you navigate political discussions?  

You might expect, as many people do, that expressing “two-sided” or ambivalent positions about controversial political issues could help you bridge divides. In particular, you might expect that expressing ambivalence would make you more likeable to allies and opponents alike.  

A new study coauthored by DePaul Assistant Professor of Marketing Geoff Durso found exactly the opposite. Expressing ambivalence was not only unhelpful when it came to winning over opponents on contentious issues. It also hurt study subjects’ standing among those on the same side of the issue at hand.  

As a marketing professor with a background in psychology, Durso often works at the intersection of consumer behavior and political sentiment.   

Read on for a discussion of why the study’s results surprised him, what might explain the findings, and how insights from marketing and politics can inform each other. 

Or: Watch a video version of the interview on our YouTube channel, part of an ongoing series highlighting Driehaus faculty and what their research can teach us about the world around us.  

On politics as identity 

Driehaus College of Business (DCOB): What were your expectations going into this study? Did it surprise you to find that expressing ambivalence didn’t help — or in some cases even hurt — people’s likeability?  

Geoff Durso (GD): People generally like others who share their position. Then, if you think of people who disagree with you, it seemed reasonable to predict that expressing conflict in your own position might communicate some degree of respect or credence to your opponents’ position at the same time. So when it comes to both groups, you might expect that expressing two-sided opinions would be beneficial to people’s popularity, a sort of middle ground that everyone respected. But we find precisely the opposite pattern.   

My so-called position allies — those who agree with me on an issue — don’t like that I’m conflicted at all. They don’t like that I’m rocking the boat. And to my opponents, expressing conflict doesn’t matter, because I’m against them on the overall position. It doesn’t even register that I feel conflicted, or that my position acknowledges both sides.   

DCOB: How did you go about making sense of those results? Why do you think that was the case?    

GD: The way people think of each other is increasingly polarized. And what’s really interesting about that is that, sometimes, an issue position can become a group identity.   

Say, during the pandemic, I’m pro-mask mandate. But, I express conflict about it. I’m weakening the pro-mask mandate connection among my allies. And when it comes to an anti-mask mandate person, they consider me part of an outgroup “opponent” due to our larger disagreement on mask mandate policies.   

In other words, the nuances in my position don’t even register to opponents. And the same nuance makes my allies feel less connected to me.   

On the connections between marketing and politics 

DCOB: Some folks might be surprised to hear that a marketing professor researches political discourse. What do these two fields have in common?   

GD: I tell my students to think of politics as the marketing of a vote. You might have a dollar and you can give that dollar to any company (or candidate!) based on what products or positions they sell. Likewise, you can also give your vote to a candidate that represents what you want versus the other candidate. Both actions represent consumer behavior. It’s just the currency that varies.   

In other words, a marketplace is not just money, and it’s not just buying things. You can think more generally in terms of choices and decisions between many options in the marketplace. That’s what every marketing campaign has in common, whether it’s toothpaste brands or presidential candidates. The stakes vary, but the underlying marketing processes are similar.     

On where to go from here 

DCOB: Any takeaways from your study results that you think marketers should be paying attention to?   

GD: There’s more and more demand from consumers for brands to make sociopolitical kinds of statements. Our findings suggest that being two-sided about these is going to repel a lot of people. Trying to please everyone with a two-sided sociopolitical statement may simply lead to pleasing no one.   

DCOB: What questions has this research left you with? What do you want to understand better about this issue?   

GD: A truism of psychology is that we judge other people by their actions, but we judge ourselves by our intentions. Expressing ambivalence in our own sociopolitical position may feel personally right (we intend to bridge political divides) but we fail to appreciate how this would be perceived in reality – we may seem inconsistent or waffling, for instance.   

How do you get people to change their expectations around expressing ambivalence? How do you get them to shift away from being focused on their own intentions? Are there ways to generate win-win consensus on divisive sociopolitical issues, and how best to do so? That’s what I’d like to learn a bit more about in my future work. 

Three-Quarters of American Workers are Vulnerable to This Widespread Form of Mistreatment. Why Isn’t it Talked about More?

Meredith Carroll Faculty Focus, Scholarly Pursuits

Driehaus researchers shed light on weight-based mistreatment in the workplace

Research can be pathbreaking in any number of ways. It can distill received wisdom — or upend it. It can organize existing knowledge or chart a new course forward.

Or, like a paper recently published by four Driehaus researchers, research can put a name to something at once widely experienced and seldom discussed. Mistreatment in the workplace based on weight is an unfortunately familiar fact for those who experience it. But it’s rarely talked about: not among leadership; not in the media; and not even, thanks to shame and stigma, among those who are harmed by it.

“We wanted to study something that is real,” said Jaclyn Jensen, a professor and the associate dean for student success at Driehaus, and one of the study’s authors. “We wanted to shed light on something important that we think people are overlooking.”

On why weight-based mistreatment has gone unchecked

Jensen and her coauthors — fellow management and entrepreneurship faculty Grace Lemmon and Goran Kuljanin, along with Doctorate in Business Administration student Renee Chu-Jacoby —  published the results of their work in October.

Across two studies, the team found that weight-based mistreatment is as widespread as it is damaging.

In the U.S., for starters, 75% of the workforce counts as “overweight” or “obese.” (That’s according to the Body Mass Index: a widely used measure that is also widely criticized.)

As part of their study, the Driehaus team surveyed 1,008 adults who fell into this category. Among that sample, 758 people — or 75% — had been mistreated at work because of their weight within the past six months.

Together, these numbers sketch the outlines of a pervasive phenomenon, reinforced by widespread cultural stigmas. These stigmas, the researchers speculate, are part of why the problem has gone unchecked for so long.

“In our culture, we believe that if you’re larger, you’re responsible for being larger,” said Lemmon. “Larger bodies are associated with less competency, less warmth, more selfishness.”

“This is a topic that crosses the personal and professional divide,” added Jensen. “We maybe don’t have scripts that tell us whether we should be talking about it at all. Or, if we are, why we’re talking about it. Those guardrails just aren’t there.”

On why weight-based mistreatment can be hard to spot

For those who experience it, weight-based mistreatment is many-faced, many-formed. Jensen, Lemmon, Kuljanin, and Chu-Jacoby worked with a smaller study population to account for the full spectrum of how weight stigma shows up in the workplace.

They surfaced plenty of examples of overt, aggressive mistreatment: name-calling, exclusion, physical harassment. They also found examples of larger-bodied workers being perceived as less competent and less professional: of these workers being denied access to information or roles because of their size.

Just as damaging — and perhaps more surprising to those who haven’t faced it— were seemingly benign comments known as “benevolent mistreatment.”

Benevolent mistreatment might masquerade as concern for a larger-bodied coworker’s well-being. It might manifest as the suggestion to opt for a salad over a sandwich, or the snide remark about too many trips to the candy bowl — all directed at larger-bodied colleagues without being levied at smaller-bodied individuals who make similar choices.

Benevolent mistreatment, the researchers found, was just as damaging as other forms. No matter how overt or covert the behavior targeted at them, study subjects were likely to withdraw from work; to experience rumination and shame; or to neglect selfcare.

“[Benevolent mistreatment is] very much somebody entering your personal space: your personal emotional space; your personal cognitive space,” said Lemmon. “It might not be physical in nature. But it is still somebody trying to get their way into your life and control you. There’s an element of control implicit in benevolent mistreatment that’s not present in the other forms of mistreatment. And I think that’s why people react so strongly.”

On the potential costs to organizations

Weight-based mistreatment at work, the study found, is undeniably detrimental to workers’ mental health.

Equally, allowing weight-based bullying to proceed unchecked can cost organizations.

“It turns out that how people are treated inside organizations affects their behavior,” said Kuljanin. “That’s why I like this line of work. When you mistreat people, you’re clearly not getting the best out of them.”

The team hasn’t yet had the chance to quantify the impact of weight-based mistreatment on organizations. But, given the scale of the problem and existing research in workplace climates, they conjecture that these costs include lost productivity, deteriorating collaboration, and difficulty attracting and retaining talent.

“We’re social creatures,” Kuljanin said. “We talk about each other and gossip all the time. Organizations develop reputations. And so if you’re an organization that has a reputation for this kind of mistreatment, then you’re going to be missing out on a whole bunch of talent.”

On where to go from here

An issue so widespread, the researchers stressed, will necessitate solutions at any number of levels: from organizational culture right through to public policy.

As for what organizations can do? According to the team, existing research suggests that culture changes happen on many fronts. It happens when organizations change their policies. It happens when leaders draw a clear line. And it happens when all workers — but particularly those in positions of power — give one another models of how to act with compassion and empathy.

When workplace culture does shift, though, that change tends to be pervasive. It’s less about a shift in any one kind of behavior, said Jensen, than it is about a shift in the values underlying people’s choices.

“Take trying to diminish sexual harassment,” she said. “The message isn’t just, ‘respect your female colleagues.’ The message is, ‘all your colleagues deserve to be valued.’ So there are ripple effects. Those types of environments see less sexual harassment. But they also see less of other kinds of harassment, too.”

Compassion and empathy, the authors agree, are two such values that might drive change around weight stigma in the workplace.

—

All told, Lemmon, Jensen, and Kuljanin hope that drawing attention to the scope of the problem will be a catalyst for change.

“When you study nastiness in the workplace, you quickly learn that people know it’s going on,” said Jensen. “It’s just that they don’t necessarily want to talk about it. So one of the things that would be good to normalize, for organizations, is this idea: Not talking about it doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist.”

“If the thrust of our outreach is awareness,” said Lemmon, “we’re happy.

For Driehaus Students, a Deep Dive into Forex Becomes a Testament to Teamwork — and a Launching Pad for Careers

Meredith Carroll Features, Student Stories

The foreign currency exchange market is endlessly complex and constantly shifting. For the institutions that trade on it, being able to do so seamlessly — and in a way that maximizes profits — is paramount.  

Four young men in suits -- three of them visibly related -- pose, smiling, in front of a modern, glass-walled classroom.DePaul students dived headfirst into the complexities of the foreign exchange market (also known as Forex) at the inaugural Northern Trust case competition on October 17 and 18.  

Co-organized by Driehaus’ BETA Hub and the School of Computing and sponsored by Northern Trust, the competition charged teams of students (who could compete on a business or technology track) with improving a hypothetical bank’s process for Forex, including cryptocurrency. With guidance from Northern Trust professionals, students had just over 24 hours to devise a workable solution — and sell it to a panel of experienced judges. 

Preparation, delegation, details — and trust

For the four Driehaus students who won the business track, the victory was a testament to the importance of preparation, delegation, details, and trust.  

“I think DePaul did a great job preparing us,” said team member Diego Villaseñor. “What really helped us was knowing how to do due diligence, how to do your homework, and how to ask the right people the right questions.”   

Diego, his brothers Fabian and Maximos, and their teammate Nick Lopez came in with a wide array of strengths. All seniors, their majors span accounting, marketing, management, and finance. 

“The last thing you want is to be stressed about your other team members,” said Lopez. “I don’t think there was a single moment where that happened. We were able to divide and conquer. I took over the cryptocurrency side, and I knew my part forward and backward. We knew that we could trust each other with what we were assigned.”  

Four young men in suits gather close around a whiteboardThe team had been working on building trust since long before the competition — or even their time at DePaul. The three Villaseñor brothers are triplets; Lopez is a longtime friend who grew up down the street in Orland Park, a southwest suburb of Chicago.  

The group found a room where they could focus. They brought in a whiteboard to jot down ideas. Diego, the group’s finance expert, brought in a second monitor. Feedback from the judges helped them quickly to home in on the main questions: 

“There are a lot of buzzwords when you talk about crypto in particular,” said Maximos. “You can come up with a lot of ideas. But how are you going to do them?  What are the legal parameters? Those are the common questions teams kept getting asked by judges.”  

On selling your idea

Once the team had the framework of a solution in place, they faced a second hurdle: How to sell their solution to a panel of judges in just under 10 minutes? And how to ensure their solution would be memorable?  

Fabian’s experience in sales helped them arrive at a solution. They would anchor their presentation around Carmen: a fictitious pension fund manager who needed her bank to be able to make trades on foreign assets.  

“It’s so important to make the information tangible,” said Fabian. “You can have great information. But if customers don’t understand it, what use is it?”  

“With the Carmen story, we were able to talk about a particular client and specific issues she might have,” echoed Maximos. “It really made our presentation come full circle.” 

Equally important was being ready to embrace the unexpected:  

“During the Q&A portion,” said Diego, “it was so important to defend your answers, to make sure the judges were able to understand. We had to get comfortable with being asked questions on the spot.”  

Connections, careers, and where to go from here

Four young men in suits pose, smiling. They are wearing nametags and lanyards.Reflecting on the experience as a capstone of sorts for their time at DePaul, the team returned to the value of making connections — to one another, to professionals, and to their careers.  

“I think a lot of times, students are nervous about doing a case competition – or to network with people there,” said Lopez. “One of the mentors we spoke with was the Senior Vice President of FX Technology and Product Development for Northern Trust. He’s a very successful individual – but at the end of the day, we’re all people. I think a lot of the success we had was connecting with people on a personal level.” 

All four teammates see direct connections between their experiences at Driehaus, in the case competition, and where they’re going next.  

Maximos will be starting a full-time role in HR at Plante Moran, where he’s been working part-time while he finishes up his studies.  

“A lot of what I work on relates back to this case study,” he said. “There’s a lot of communication. You need to be able to have trust, and to be able give and receive constructive feedback.”  

Fabian will continue pursuing his passion for tech sales in a role at Salesforce. This work, he hopes, will allow him to continue helping fellow Blue Demons advance their careers.  

Diego is choosing among competing offers in consulting. It’s an industry, he said, that speaks to his passion for project management and learning about new, complicated topics quickly — both skills he got to hone at the case competition.  

Lopez, who is graduating in June, is preparing to sit for his CPA exam. After graduation, he has an offer lined up with Apercen Partners, a boutique tax consulting firm for high net-worth individuals: the kind of setting where he may well be able to implement what he’s learned from his deep dive into Forex and cryptocurrency.  

When the team looks back on their time at DePaul, they think of opportunities like this case competition. Over time, the team said, such opportunities can accumulate into invaluable experience. 

“All four of us are first-generation college students. That, and coming from a Latino background, really lit a fire under us to make the most out of our time here,” said Maximos. “I think case competitions like this really help you build those connections and get experience. Win or lose, you’re still going to get something – and it’s those connections with those people.” 

You Create Your Own Power: Triple Demon Dana Alkhouri Reflects on the Entrepreneurial Mindset

Meredith Carroll Alumni Profiles

A headshot of a young woman with long hair, smilingDana Alkhouri is many things: A Triple Demon who earned her bachelor’s, her master’s in public policy, and her MBA from DePaul. A journalist who covered the height of the pandemic on the ground in New York working for ABC News. And, as of a few years ago the founder of The Sidelines, a newsletter that focuses on women in athletics and wellness.

Recently, Dana shared her insights into making a career pivot, making space for women’s stories, and making it in the face of skepticism.

Driehaus College of Business (DCOB): Tell us about your current project, The Sidelines: a newsletter focused on sharing stories from women’s sports and wellness. How did it get started? What’s the most impactful advice you received along the way?

Dana Alkhouri (DA): The Sidelines is a sports newsletter by women and for all.

My friend Megan Schaltegger and I launched it in 2020. We started it because, back then, there was not a huge amount of interest in coverage of women in sports. It was such a niche industry. So we thought: let’s get ahead of it.

We initially wanted to start as a website. And we got advice from another founder to start as a newsletter instead. We’ve built out some great partnerships and gotten a great group of readers that way.

DCOB: Did you always know you wanted to be an entrepreneur? How did you launch your career in journalism, and how was DePaul part of that?

DA: I’ve always had this entrepreneurial mindset. When I was a kid, I started this jewelry business on Etsy. During the pandemic, I started a sweatshirt line. I’m always looking for a project.

I have done the majority of my education at DePaul. That just goes to show how resourceful DePaul is and how much they offer to their students. And how well they connect with their students and stay in touch with them.

I had so many great experiences at DePaul. I studied abroad, primarily focusing on the EU and NATO. I had some really dedicated journalism professors who helped me figure out an independent study. That’s an amazing thing about DePaul. They’re so resourceful. They’re so dedicated to making sure students can pursue what they want.

DCOB: Around the time you launched The Sidelines, you were pivoting from a career in journalism to one in business. Can you talk about that transition?

DA: In 2020, I was working at ABC. I was going into the office every day. I was covering the pandemic, the election, everything that was going on. It was an eye-opening experience. But after awhile, I realized I needed a break from hard news.

A panel of five woman at the front of a meeting room, seen from an audience perspective with three rows of attentive listeners aheadI was able to enroll in DePaul’s MBA program full time — and fully online. During that time, in the summer of 2021, I started working at Goldman. I was working full time and going to school full time. It was important to me to do my MBA side-by-side with working at a bank, with working in business.

I graduated with my MBA last summer. It was a great experience – great connections, great networking.

DCOB: You’ve gotten the chance to speak to so many inspiring athletes and founders. What’s stuck with you about those conversatiA screenshot of a TV program in which two women are interviewed. The chiron reads: Why is now the time for a female focus in sports?ons?

DA: There’s this question I always ask: What is your biggest piece of advice to a woman trying to break barriers in the sports industry? Their responses are so awesome.

A lot of them have talked about the need to push through. They’ve talked about not taking no for an answer. When you get criticism, it means you’re doing something right. That’s really stuck with me.

When we launched The Sidelines, people had so many questions. They were skeptical if people were going to read it. But facing criticism was my favorite part of it. Because criticism means that you’re reaching people.

Hearing criticism is also really important because, sometimes, you need a vision from the outside. As a founder, it’s easy to get tunnel vision. We’ve actually ended up incorporating content in response to criticism.

DCOB: What does entrepreneurship mean to you?

DA: Freedom. Entrepreneurship means having an idea and being able to bring it to life. And I think there is freedom in that. You create your own power. You’re doing it for yourself. And you’re doing it for the people who work with you, and work for you, and for the audience that you are creating.

AI Insights and Consumer Neuroscience: Faculty Research at the Technological Frontier

Meredith Carroll Scholarly Pursuits , , , ,

By Jamie Merchant

A neon sign reading "The Future is Yours to Create" The hype has been extraordinary.

Over the past two years, news outlets have blanketed the public with stories about the impact of large-language models (LLMs), or “artificial intelligence,” and their profound implications for human civilization. The CEO of Tesla and billionaire investor, Elon Musk, warns that the technology represents one of “humanity’s biggest threats.” Other commentators predict a more benign future in which AI liberates us from toil, taking over the mundane tasks of office work.

With conflicting reports like these, one could be forgiven for feeling confused.

Putting the hype aside, what are the facts on the ground? How is this emerging technology actually used by businesses and organizations?

At DePaul’s Driehaus College of Business, new faculty in the Department of Marketing are cutting through the headlines to investigate the promise, and the limits, of LLMs for modern businesses.

One innovative use of LLM’s is for producing “synthetic data”, AI-generated responses that simulate humans in order to inform business intelligence. “How good is AI at really representing human variety?” asked Ignacio Luri, an Assistant Professor of Marketing at Driehaus. “That’s something I’m skeptical about. But it’s happening, so I’m studying it.”

Two men with Driehaus scarves engaged in an animated discussion
Luri, at right, in the Beta Hub

Luri, whose background is in marketing and linguistics, also studies what he calls the “market conversation”: the dialogue that unfolds around companies, consumers, and the brands that connect them. His current research focuses on the uses of AI analytics for studying that conversation. “I mostly study big data,” he said, referring to the modern study of human behavior based on very large data sets. “But I also have a qualitative toolkit.

“The market conversation is very cultural at heart,” he explained. “It happens in a cultural context. It can be really tempting to take a dataset and just crunch the numbers. But we’re talking about people. When we’re talking about the consumer conversation, things happen in a context – always. Who said that? When? Why? In what context? To whom?”

In other words: how consumers see brands, and conversely, how companies understand their customers, are both products of an ongoing dialogue between them. And, like any dialogue, the market conversation unfolds in the assumptions, habits, and beliefs that characterize particular people in a particular community at a particular point in time – that is, in all the messiness of human communication.

How apt are large language models to capture the subtle nuances of human speech, or the unique meanings that attach to specific words for a given community? Amidst all the enthusiasm for AI, Luri insists on the importance of not losing sight of the human element – the inherently contextual nature of communication.

“All that matters. It’s important not to abstract away from all that reality.”

 

As with generative AI, buzzwords swirl around the emerging field of neuromarketing. According to the Harvard Business Review, this new field “studies the brain to predict and potentially even influence consumer behavior and decision making.” One can easily imagine the value of this technology for businesses.

Such is the potential, but how does it work in practice? Most importantly, what are the real advantages and limits of the technology?

“With neuromarketing, I always say it’s a supplement, not a replacement, for traditional marketing research,” said Jennifer Tatara, Assistant Professor of Marketing at Driehaus.

A computer with a web cam poised on the top and an article about eye-tracking software displayed on the screen
A computer in the Beta Hub equipped with neuromarketing research software

Tatara works at the cutting edge of the neuromarketing field, which mines insights from psychology, marketing, and economics to look at the science behind consumer decision-making. Neuromarketing introduces biometric data into the study of consumer behavior, assisting researchers with an age-old question: what motivates people to make the decisions they do?

Marketing researchers and professionals, of course, are interested in a specific subset of people: consumers.

“We can use these tools to see into the decision-making process in a different way,” said Tatara, “to get into the black box of decision-making. We need a wide range of tools to get the full picture. But without biometric tools, you’re missing a piece of that picture.”

Some of these tools might be familiar. Electroencephalograms, for instance, gauge mental activity by tracking the small electrical impulses given off by the brain in response to stimuli. But some are more exotic: eye-tracking software yields insights into where consumers’ focus is drawn. Galvanic skin response, a measure of minuscule amounts of sweat, correlates with subjects’ emotional arousal.

Tatara emphasizes the potential of these tools to help both consumers and businesses make better, more satisfying decisions. But she is also quick to deflate the exaggerated claims sometimes made on its behalf, and to point to the ethical dimensions of this new field. As she puts it, “there’s no magical ‘buy’ button in the brain – this isn’t mind control.”

“Like with any new tool, there are ways to use it positively and ways to use it negatively. As marketers with access to these tools, it’s our job to make sure we’re not only selling, but we’re also helping. With a better understanding of how people make decisions, we can help them make better decisions.

“That’s why I’m happy that DePaul is taking an active role in teaching these tools. Here, faculty and students study and apply these tools; we’re doing it ethically, and we’re doing it to help consumers, at the end of the day.”

Finding your Towering Strength: Paula Price’s (BUS ’82) Extraordinary Career

Meredith Carroll Alumni Profiles, Features , , , ,

Paula Price (BUS ’82) shares her insights from an extraordinary career as a leader

By Meredith Carroll

Look at Paula Price’s (BUS ’82) resume, and it could be tempting to split it in two.

There’s her leadership experience, as extensive as it is varied. There’s her tenure as CFO for multiple Fortune 500 companies; her years of teaching for Harvard Business School; and her current role as an independent board director for four major, publicly traded companies.

And then there’s the part of her career that started right here at DePaul. The part where she mastered accountancy, the “language of business.” The part she spent on the ground, immersed in the many small but critical details that keep businesses running.

It is easy to imagine these two phases as diametrically opposed: first the view from the ground, and then the view from 30,000 feet. First the microscope, and then the panoramic lens.

Diametrically opposed, that is, until you hear Price tell her story.

A Tale of Dedication to Curiosity and Craft

Photos of Price on stage in conversation with Sulin Ba, Dean of the Driehaus College of Business, on April 22 (Photo credit | Working Anchor)

On April 22, Paula Price returned to DePaul to share insights from her career. She was the first speaker in the college’s Executive Speaker Series: a series, established with a gift from Cory Gunderson (BUS ’91) designed to help DePaul students envision and embark on their own paths to success.

Sitting across a small stage from Dean Sulin Ba, Price speaks in the measured tone of an experienced leader. She chooses each word with care and clarity. She is passionate about taking the time to get it right — whether “it” is a major decision in a corporate boardroom, or a visit to her alma mater.

What shines through above all else, though, is Price’s commitment to curiosity.

She lights up when talking about her early career. You can see the student in her; the young DePaul graduate, eager to master a notoriously challenging discipline.

“I spent the first several years of my career in public accounting really honing my skills and honing my craft,” she recalls. After that came a tenure in industry, when she began working with senior executives.

“What they wanted to know,” she says, “was: ‘is this a good business idea? Does this create value for our shareholders? Does this idea have a good return?’ It became very evident to me that accounting should do more than talk about the past. It should illuminate the path forward.”

It is the first of many moments of clarity – in the way Price speaks about the world of business, in the way she charted her own course through it. That fundamental insight led her to the University of Chicago, where she earned her MBA in finance and strategy. She became obsessed with putting her insight into action.

“How do you create financial models for looking at new product lines? For looking at acquisitions? For looking at research and development projects?” she remembers asking herself. “I just began building all these models. People knew that I was modeling these things. And they were asking me to work with them. They were asking me to lend my models to them.”

“I kind of thought,” she adds with a smile, “I could build a financial model for anything.”

From left to right: Malik Murray (BUS ’96, MBA ’04), Dean Sulin Ba, Laura Kohl (MBA ’94), Paula Price (BUS ’82) and Cory Gunderson (BUS ’91). Murray, Kohl and Gunderson are all members of the Driehaus Business Advisory Council. (Photo credit | Working Anchor)

Price’s curiosity, and the keen insights it generated, propelled her to the C-suite.

“Even as a CFO, the idea of fusing accounting, finance and strategy together was essential,” she says. “It was essential to telling the story of our business, to telling the story of our strategies and how they created value. To telling the story of what they would do in the future.”

There’s such clarity to the way she tells her story that it can be hard to imagine her path as anything other than foreordained. Hard to remember, too, that her time as a top leader spanned multiple major financial crises.

When Price looks back on moments of turmoil, it’s her dual perspective she returns to. Her ability to see the big picture without losing sight of the small but crucial details. To keep her eyes on the horizon without losing sight of the world around her.

“The biggest role of the CFO is to create space for innovation,” she says, when asked about difficult decisions she has faced. “And economic downturns often coincide with the greatest need to invest in innovation. That leads to tough decisions.

“What’s hard,” she adds, “is that at the end of those kinds of decisions are people.”

The People Factor

And that’s what Price returns to, what she never loses sight of in telling her story: people.

During her visit, she is asked about her seemingly inexhaustible career: the way her resume encompasses seven top leadership positions at major, publicly traded companies. That’s not to speak of her time teaching the next generation of leaders at Harvard Business School, or her service to nonprofits and her community.

It was all simpler, she says, than it might look from the outside.

“For every major move in my career,” Price says, “I can point to a relationship that is based on trust. Trust in my work. Trust in my abilities. Trust in my integrity. These relationships – they lead places. Connections lead places. Every person. Every change. Whether it’s moving to London. Moving back to the U.S. Moving into teaching. Moving out of teaching. Pivoting back into corporate. Pivoting onto boards. I can point to a person. For each move, I can point to a person.”

“You can’t be my friend overnight,” she quips, later, when Dean Ba points out that many of her friendships have lasted decades. In fact, some of them have lasted since high school. Two of her friends from her days at what was then called Jones Commercial High School sit in the front row, laughing. All night, they’ve been cheering her on.

Price and Dean Sulin Ba pose with two of Price’s close friends, both of whom attended DePaul alongside her: Charlena Griggs (far left) and Aaron Tolbert (BUS ’82, far right)
(Photo credit | Working Anchor)

Price sums up her advice to the students and young alumni in the audience by reflecting on her own career and the principles that have guided it:

“I have four pieces of advice. The first is: to find your towering strength. That is, the thing that distinguishes you from the next person. And, when you find it? Own it, hone it, and leverage it.

“The second, third, and fourth, is to: Build great relationships. Build great relationships. Build great relationships.”

From Chicago to the FBI: The Education of Sean McWeeney (BUS ’61)

Meredith Carroll Alumni Profiles, Features , , , ,

The retired FBI agent, corporate executive, author and philanthropist reflects on the educations he received — in school and outside of it

By Meredith Carroll

An elderly couple posts against a scenic, outdoor backdrop
Millie Cronin and Sean McWeeney | Photo provided by Sean McWeeney

Now retired, Sean McWeeney (BUS ’61) lives a quiet life in Reston, Virginia, with his wife, Millie Cronin. They are both widowers; in fact, they met through Cronin’s first husband, a coworker of McWeeney’s. They volunteer for their local parish. They spend time with their family. They support causes close to their hearts, including DePaul. Just this year, McWeeney established the McWeeney Family Scholarship Fund to help under-resourced students attend DePaul.  

McWeeney’s life up to this point was anything but quiet. He served for decades in the FBI, where he played a central role in the capture of notorious Mob boss Carlo Gambino. He rose through the ranks to become the longest-serving section chief of the Organized Crimes division. After his retirement, he launched Corporate Risk International, a global security firm specializing in kidnapping and extortion cases. It’s a career so action-packed that, with the encouragement of his family and friends, he wrote a book about it, entitled “Up by the Bootstraps.”

Like many success stories, McWeeney’s life attests to the ever-shifting balance between luck and hard work. It’s a story about being in the right place at the right time, but it’s also about having the right skills to rise to the moment. It’s a story about education, broadly defined: the kind of education you get from the people and environments around you. The kind of education you make out of what you are given.

McWeeney’s education would ultimately take him around the world. But it began right here in Chicago.

A Chicago Childhood

It has been decades since McWeeney lived in Chicago – a lifetime, even. But his roots are still evident. He speaks with a faint Chicago accent. He talks about himself with a distinctively Chicagoan strain of understatement: humble yet direct; self-effacing yet also, justifiably, proud.

McWeeney was born in 1938 to two Irish immigrants. Among the kids in his West Side neighborhood, he can’t recall knowing anyone whose parents were born in the U.S. Being in that environment at that time was an education – only McWeeney didn’t know it yet.

“I was a scrappy kid,” he recalls. “I had an unusual name for that time, and they made fun of me for it.”

It was easy to fall into trouble.

“A lot of people I grew up with became Mafia,” McWeeney says. “We had one person we knew quite well whose brother was killed by the Mafia.”

It was an environment that offered up two ways to navigate the world.

“You either win one way, the good way,” McWeeney recalls, “or you win the bad way. And I happened to be lucky in who I turned out to be. Going to a school like DePaul certainly helped – and so did having good parents. I was lucky in that regard.”

The West Side gave McWeeney one kind of education. In school, he received another.

For high school, he earned a four-year scholarship to St. Ignatius College Prep. It promised to be a pivotal moment for McWeeney. But it lasted just two weeks.

McWeeney was kicked out after a fight with a boy who made fun of his name. He transferred to St. Mel’s, another Catholic school.

“St. Mel’s identified me as a bit of a thug,” he says.  “They assumed that ‘this guy isn’t going to college. This guy won’t go much further because he’s a scrapper.’ That’s part of being from the West Side, I guess.

“Anyway,” McWeeney adds, with his trademark understatement, “I outdid their expectations.”

From DePaul to the FBI

Outdoing those expectations began in earnest when McWeeney enrolled in the College of Commerce at DePaul University.

At DePaul, McWeeney found his place.

Despite working a grueling overnight shift at the railroad switchyard off 35th and Pulaski, he was active in sports and in his fraternity. In his senior year, he was elected class president.

He also met his first wife at DePaul: the late Joan Hennessy, a fellow student. They were set up on a blind date. They would travel the world together, raise a family, and launch Corporate Risk International from their kitchen table.

When McWeeney looks back on his time at DePaul, it’s his good fortune that he stresses. The good fortune to have met Hennessy; the good fortune to receive an education that allowed his world to expand, equipping him with tools he’d need to earn his MBA and launch a second career as a successful entrepreneur. Good fortune — and the commitment to taking advantage of it.

A black-and-white photograph of a man with a bowler hat and a rueful grin, escorted by a younger man behind him
McWeeney, at right, escorts Carlo Gambino into the courthouse for his hearing. The photograph would be widely reproduced, leading McWeeney to receive media enquiries up until today. | Photo provided by Sean McWeeney

From DePaul, McWeeney ventured out into the world. He joined the Navy as an officer candidate. He moved to Rhode Island, where he earned his MBA.

The MBA allowed him to stand out when he applied for his dream job as an agent at the FBI.

From day one, working in the FBI was its own kind of education. He lived in cities in distant corners of the U.S. He learned all he could – from the culture, and from agents who were stationed in these posts as discipline.

“The punished agents knew how to get the job done,” he writes in his memoir. They were also repentant, “eager to share their story and what they learned from it.”

In the summer of 1969, McWeeney and his family landed in New York, where he was eventually assigned to the Gambino Squad.

Thanks to his upbringing, he was precisely the right man for the job.

“There were a lot of agents, believe me, who were a little leery of talking to the Mafia,” he recalls. “But when you grow up where I did, you just kind of learn to talk to them. I used to go right up to them – let them know who I was and what I wanted to know.”

He approached his work as a plain dealer: collected, straightforward, respectful. In McWeeney’s hands, even the arrest of Gambino was understated.

Gambino’s wife and children were with him, McWeeney recalls, when McWeeney and his agents pulled him over near his home in Brooklyn.

“He seemed surprised,” McWeeney writes, “but consistent with his typical demeanor, he remained calm and gave us no trouble during the arrest.”

The Capstone of a Remarkable Career

The Gambino arrest, like McWeeney’s years at DePaul, was a turning point in a much longer story. From there, he would go on to senior leadership positions in the Bureau. He would found a successful, global company.

A book cover. The title is Up By the Bootstraps and the cover displays a pair of worn, old-fashioned leather combat boots with a pair of handcuffs lying at their feet
McWeeney’s memoir, Up by the Bootstraps, details his life and extraordinary career. | Photo provided by Sean McWeeney

But if you ask McWeeney, it’s those early days as an FBI agent that stand out.

“If anyone ever asks what I did, my first reaction is to say I was an agent,” he says. “I was a top executive, of course. But I’m very, very proud of the fact that I was an FBI agent.

“It was the first time my father ever said he was proud of me – and I heard that from secondary sources,” he recalls. “My dad was soft-spoken, a tough guy. All he did was work, work, work. For him to have said that meant a lot.”

International Student Spotlight

Meredith Carroll Student Stories , , ,

Two international students share their takes on Chicago, on finding their path and on the importance of mentorship

By Meredith Carroll

Serigne Dramé

What do I think of DePaul in a sentence? A school that gives you the tools and the flexibility to succeed.

Where is home for you, and how did you choose DePaul?

I’m from Senegal.

A headshot of Serigne Drame
Photo provided by Serigne Dramé

The “me” from 2019, when I applied to college, had a much different vision for my future. I wanted to be a game designer. And I applied to DePaul because it’s known for that. I was accepted to a number of different places — some in the U.S., some in France. What made the difference was that my sister was in Chicago and going to IIT.

Speaking of Chicago — what’s your experience been like in the city?

There’s this weird cycle. The winter gets so bad that you start thinking, “maybe Florida sounds nice.” But then the summer happens. And you think, “this is so nice I’m going to give it another try.”

I’ve taken bachata classes. For a time, I did pro wrestling. That’s the other thing about Chicago. It gives you so many possibilities. It’s international to an extent. And that’s the big draw.

The one thing I’ve noticed is that most people who live here think you’re from Chicago. That can be a good thing and a bad thing. The good thing: it’s easy to be integrated. The bad thing: people assume you know things — slang, expressions, politics — you don’t.

How did you go from studying game design to the degree you’ll be graduating with: a double major in Management Information Systems and International Business?

My first year was 2020-21. It was all remote. At the end of that year, I realized that I wanted to do more. MIS stood out because it offers this blend of business and technology.

MIS is one of those majors that you don’t hear a lot about. But what I like with it was that the core classes were business classes and the electives were technical — data analytics, databases, cybersecurity.

It’s more applied. And there’s the versatility. Looking back, if I had been a Computer Science student, I don’t think I would have gotten my M&A internship. I was able to take applied finance classes, and that allowed me to do well in the technical interviews.  The big advantage is the flexibility.

Searching for jobs and internships as an international student can be especially challenging. What has the experience been like for you?

I did two internships during my time at DePaul, both of them at EY. In September, I applied for a job at Deloitte. I heard back from them in January. And I got it. I feel lucky. There was a lot of hard work involved; but still, I feel lucky. The market is hard. And most employers don’t sponsor visas. There’s a lot of pressure; if you don’t find a job quickly, you’ll have to return to your home country.

The school of business has been really helpful for two reasons. I mentioned the flexibility aspect. But there’s also the fact that we’re in Chicago. Chicago is a big market; there’s a lot of professionals. Even beyond the career fairs, everyone has connections. You can just ask faculty after class, and they’ll connect you to someone.

How would you sum up DePaul in a sentence?

DePaul is really, for me, an example of it is what you make of it. If you leverage the Career Center, the knowledge that you get from classes, the connections, the career fairs, the software resources, you can go far.

What do I think of DePaul in a sentence? A school that gives you the tools and the flexibility to succeed.

 

Suchita Farkiwala

I have come to see the world from a bigger, broader perspective. Every day, there are things that I am learning, things that I am unlearning and things that I am relearning.

Where is home for you, and what has your experience at DePaul been like?

I come from Ahmedabad in Gujarat, India. Currently, I commute from Morton Grove, where I live with my family.

DePaul is in the heart of Chicago. So you get the best of the big city experience. The diversity at DePaul is incredible. People come here from all over the world.

A headshot of Suchita Farkiwala
Photo provided by Suchita Farkiwala

What were your career goals when you arrived at DePaul, and how has that changed?

I am an accounting undergrad. When I started, I simply wanted to make money, get a stable job, and make my family proud. Basically, I wanted to live the American Dream. But DePaul changed the way I see my life, what I want to do in my life.

Now, I want to give back to the community. I want to do something that impacts the lives of others. My professors inspired me to follow their path. One day, I want to come back to DePaul as a professor and help others so that they can be another success story from DePaul.

Mentorship has been a central part of your experience at DePaul. Tell us more about that!

Faculty at DePaul have been incredibly supportive of me, even before I started my journey as an accounting major here. Within the accounting department, Kent Klaus and Margaret Tower have been especially helpful. They pushed me to apply for on-campus jobs. They encouraged me to pursue an internship at Deloitte – and I got it.

Ever since I got that internship, I’ve tried to help other students so that they can get this chance too. I sit down with them: help them to get better grades in accounting class, get their resume done, practice interviewing with them.

Outside of that, I have been active with International Student and Scholar Services as a mentor. Mentorship is a gift that keeps giving. It’s made me grow so much as a person, as a professional. I’ve met so many new international students and learned so much about their cultures. It’s given me the chance to be the reason someone feels seen, heard, cared for, and valued.

What’s your favorite advice to give your mentees?

I tell them: Any time that you feel that your question is too dumb to ask, ask me. At DePaul, I have never found a person who said no to me when I needed help. Regardless of whether my question was academic, professional, or just about learning the basic ways to survive in Chicago.

Miracles don’t happen in a snap. Don’t rush. Give yourself some time to experience the magic of DePaul.

Finally: Don’t think that you are different. Think that you are unique. It will change the way you think about yourself. At DePaul, we celebrate that. There’s no pressure to fit in. So be yourself.

What’s some memorable advice you have received?

My accounting professors and a mentor from Deloitte both told me: Use your career as a canvas. Ask for what you want. Do whatever makes you happy. Accounting is very, very tough. It’s a tough major; it’s a tougher profession. So never feel like you can’t do this. Take the initiative.

My father always tells me: The only way to grow is to help other people grow. The only way to heal is to help other people. So don’t come back home with a trophy unless you are already committed to paying it back to those who made it happen.

How has DePaul changed you?

My professors have been here for me, my friends have been here for me. My supervisors and colleagues have been incredibly supportive.

My mentors always tell me, “don’t expect less for yourself.” They made me believe that.

I have come to see the world from a bigger, broader perspective. Every day, there are things that I am learning, things that I am unlearning and things that I am relearning.

My success is a shared success of my family and my DePaul community.

Now, DePaul feels like a home away from home.